Is there a way you and your husband could both work, and stagger your workdays? Someone does mornings with the baby, someone does evenings?
As someone who’s been spending more hours parenting than I️ ever thought I️ would or wanted to (blame: husband’s job, cursed sense of responsibility, “flexible” career), I mourn the professional velocity I️’ve lost, along with a community of friends.
But though I feel I’ve given up some of the brain cells that used to be dedicated to, and stimulated by, my work and my friends, I’ve also come to appreciate all the time spent with my kids—for their sake and for mine. Over my past four and a half years of parenthood I’ve shifted slowly into a more condensed work schedule and more kid time, and I️ regret not trying to spend more of the day with my older kid when he was a toddler. (But, to be fair, this year we have a nanny, so I️ can afford to be more sentimental.)
All this is to say: I️ do think you’re wise to value spending serious time with your kid—and it’s striking to me that you know how important this is, amid the upheaval a first baby brings. But all day every day for the foreseeable future sounds, in your case, as it would be in mine, worryingly sacrificial. Nice for your child at first, perhaps, but not nice for you, to lose such a significant part of yourself. So, in the long run, not nice for anyone. You mention, I️ think, being left with traces of sadness from your own mom’s choices. Or should I say “choices”? And I️ can relate. Sacrifices do have to be made when a big, wonderful baby enters your life. Only, I️ think, not sweepingly definitive ones.
Mostly, I️ hear the agony in your e-mail. It sounds to me like a clear desire for a life outside of family trying to free itself from layers of expectation—yours and others’ and society’s—with a confetti sprinkling on top of dissatisfaction with the corporate world.
