I went back to work 4 weeks after giving birth. I had dizzy spells from how exhausted I was.

The author (not pictured) had to return quickly to work after giving birth.

When I gave birth to my first child, I mistakenly believed I would be able to ease back into the workforce by working some of my hours from home.

When things didn’t go as planned, I found myself returning to work before my daughter was 1 month old, and it took a dangerous toll on my mental and physical health.

We couldn’t afford full-time day care

Shortly before finding out I was pregnant with my first child, I was promoted to a management position at my job in the hospitality industry. While my pregnancy was planned, I didn’t understand the financial reality of growing our family until I was pregnant and visiting daycares.

After it became clear that the monthly expense of care was far more than our budget could handle at the time, I met with my boss, and we cooked up a plan for a flexible schedule that involved a long weekend, some office hours from home, and working second shift one day of the week.

This unconventional schedule would allow me to clock 40 hours while only needing to pay for childcare around 15 hours out of the week. Because my boss was so encouraging of the plan, I was surprised to learn during my maternity leave that upper management had never approved my “new schedule.”

My husband and I were left scrambling to sort things out after my daughter had already arrived. It became pretty clear that returning to my old job wasn’t going to be an option, and I started piecing together part time work on weekends and evenings. Unfortunately, the pay cut I would be taking meant I needed to get back to work as soon as possible.

I went back to work when my daughter was 4 weeks old

During my first shift back, I was dangerously exhausted. I had been up with my daughter most of the night. Because I was working in a hospital, I was on my feet most of the day and found myself experiencing dizzy spells. I was also struggling to stay awake on the drive home at the end of the day.

More concerning, I think, was the toll all of this exhaustion was taking on my mental health. Thoughts of self-harm plagued me; I felt hopeless in my situation like there was nothing I could do to improve things.

I wondered if I had made a mistake becoming a mom because my husband and I couldn’t give my daughter a more stable situation. This also changed my relationship with my daughter at the time. She struggled with sleep, and the more burned out I got, the more high-stakes every sleepless night felt to me. It was hard to be patient. It was hard to enjoy those first few months of her life.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my symptoms were red flags for postpartum anxiety and depression. I wouldn’t seek help for my maternal mental health struggles until I was pregnant with my third child.

Looking back, I feel disappointed

When I think about my time as a young mother, I feel disappointed that I didn’t have the resources I needed to properly rest and take care of myself and my daughter after giving birth. It’s hard not to wish for the time back, for a do-over that would be even a fraction easier for me and my family so I could enjoy her newborn days more.

A lot has changed for me since then, beginning with vastly different postpartum experiences with my three younger children. After my second was born, I took a short but adequate maternity leave of eight weeks and returned to work on a more stable schedule with more childcare support.

Shortly after my second child turned 1, I left my job to freelance full-time and have been home with my kids while writing part-time since then. I’m grateful that the work I do now is flexible enough to allow me to take care of myself when something changes in my life. I have taken time off for postpartum, after the loss of a sibling, and during a particularly challenging pregnancy.

I’ve worked very hard to create the kind of career that works with my life as a mom, despite unpaid maternity leave and astronomical day care costs with no financial assistance.