I just started back to work last week after two months of maternity leave (plus a week and a half before that of being on bed rest). Maternity leave was the best idea anyone's had in years. I had no idea until after the birth of my son how difficult it would be to balance this new part of my life with all the other bits and pieces of it.
Towards the end of my leave, I got this idea stuck in my head, and I'm not sure where it came from or how it became so strong, but I HAD to make bread before I went back to work. I couldn't explain it, it was just something I had to do. Even on maternity leave when life was so much simpler, it took several days to get planned out. First I looked through my bread book (the name of it is actually Bread) to pick out the recipe. Then I had to think ahead far enough to figure out when that week I could logistically make the pre-ferment in the evening and have the next day relatively free to do the rest of the steps. I finally settled on an evening/day that would work and got to work on my bread.
The process of making the pre-ferment (I used a pate fermentee), letting it do its work overnight, then periodically mixing it with other ingredients, folding it, pre-shaping it, letting it bulk ferment, shaping the final loaves, and then steam baking the loaves was quite an ordeal. This bread guy is like the Martha Stewart of the bread world, and that's probably why I knew I had to use one of his recipes (really rather than recipes, they're formulas. This is big time science). Trying to balance caring for a baby and all the other things going on at home with with making this bread was a lot. There were steps I couldn't get to in time because my husband had made dinner and it would have been bad to not eat so I could tend to my bread (especially when we had someone over for dinner). Since I had never made any of these breads before, it was overwhelming at times trying to read and retain what the next step entailed, while trying to answer questions my husband had about things (was it 'what do you want to drink for dinner?' or 'do you think we need to do another load of diapers to get us through the weekend?' or 'when are you going to make another batch of baby wipes?' I'm not sure).
Whatever it was that caused me to decide that making this bread was something that I had to do, I don't know, but it was a great lesson for me in balancing and dealing with something that could be overwhelming at times. That's right where I am right now with work and the rest of my life, only on such a larger scale than baking bread. There are steps that happen late or not at all. I'm having a hard time retaining information while simultaneously answering questions or emails or trying to figure out how many diapers and bottles are needed to make it through a nine hour day away from home. I'm at work physically, but having the most difficult time retaining what my job entails and keeping all my projects straight. Sleep deprivation is making it hard to remember some people's names, or to be able to count three hours from now (seriously, that's often an impossible task for me - I miss numbers now that my kindergarten self would have breezed through). Then I get home in the evening and fall asleep feeding my son, and guiltily wonder if he's unusually fussy this evening because this transition of being home with me to being at a babysitter's all day is traumatic for him in some way. My husband asks me after several minutes of an inconsolable baby crying in my lap if I want him to take the baby. I say no because I need to be the one to calm him down this time. I need to know I can still do that, and that I'm not failing my new job as a mom.
I miss the day of baking a loaf of bread. I had no idea then what these days back at work would be like. It wasn't emotionally traumatic leaving my days at home with my son like I thought. It's really hard dealing with a whole new level of this balancing act. How do people have children and still work? How does this work?? I know in my head there will come a day that I'll look back at this stage and smile, not knowing exactly when I transitioned to being able to handle it all much better. Knowing that day will come helps now. But in the meantime, this is still difficult, just like it was to get that bread made.
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