I am not Super Woman.
I recently went on maternity leave, but I made a big mistake: I over-estimated my abilities and gave my boss false hope about how much I could do during my last few weeks of work. I also vastly underestimated how much time I would want off before my due date. I told him I hoped to stay until a week before I was due. Unfortunately, he ignored the “hoped” part and took that as my absolute-for-sure-nonnegotiable Last Day of Work.
Then, about three weeks before that date, he panicked and realized he was losing me. Even though he planned to hire a temp to replace me, he was convinced that the temp would in no way be as fantabulous as me. (I’m just that good.) So there were a tremendous amount of things he wanted me to do before I left, on top of my regular workload, including working a number of extra hours.
Still, the boss expected more and more of me, even as I was able to give less and less. He even started talking crazy talk—telling me he was holding off on hiring a temp, in case I was able to work longer than we’d agreed. This would have put me working until the moment I went into labor. No thanks.
Anyone who has ever been pregnant will tell you that in the last month of pregnancy the body and brain effectively shut down. I thought I would be the exception to this rule, but no dice. Apparently, I am human after all. Physically, I felt as if I had run a marathon. I had basically no strength in my muscles whatsoever. I was exhausted and run down constantly.
Mentally speaking, it was as if I’d become retarded. My Lamaze teacher gets mad when people refer to Pregnancy Brain that way. As the woman prepares for motherhood, she says, her mind naturally blocks out that which does not directly related to her and the child. She no longer needs to save the world, so everything else gets the mental silent treatment. Well, fine. Whatever it is, it makes even the simplest tasks seem complicated and impossible.
As a result, my poor boss would present me with what, in retrospect, were incredibly straightforward tasks, only to be met by my blank look and hormone-emotionally-fueled trembling lip.
I finally had to throw in the towel, and left work two weeks earlier than I’d hoped, but because I hadn’t been clear enough about my needs, this left a few projects unfinished, and for that I feel terrible.
So learn from my mistakes: prepare better for your own maternity leave.
By the time you read this, I might have a baby.
