And then there are the less tangible ramifications of returning to work quickly. “Those [postpartum] weeks are really critical for bonding,” says New York ob-gyn Francesco Callipari. “[New moms] miss their babies.” Glick spent the final weeks of her maternity leave
“dreading leaving” her son, she says. “I cried constantly.” Plus there’s the guilt. “I worried that if I went back, I would not be giving my baby what my friends had given theirs,” says Glick, who took 14 weeks for her second son and 10 for her third. Pumping and stockpiling breast milk gave her more of a sense of being in control: “That made me feel very connected because I felt like I was doing something really good for them.”
“Lack of sleep is also a big deal,” Callipari says. “When you’re sleep deprived, cognitive function goes down, and your emotional irritability goes way up.” Los Angeles designer Jenni Kayne discovered that the hard way after she gave birth to her first child last October. She began bringing her son and a nanny to the office with her just weeks later. “I would come home from work the first week [back] and be like, ‘What am I doing?’” she says. “I was exhausted and really emotional. And my husband would say, ‘This is why people spend three months at home.’”
Amanda Brooks was consulting at Hogan and Tuleh when she had her daughter, Coco, seven years ago. At the time she was uninspired by her career, so she had no qualms taking three months. “It was a bonding time,” she says. “It was just us. No nanny, no help.” But by the time her son was born two years later, Brooks employed a nanny so she could return more quickly to consulting part-time at Tuleh. She attributes one difference in her children’s behavior to the disparate maternity leaves: “My daughter is much more dependent on me than my son,” she says, sounding as if she’s not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
“Any mother will tell you that if she feels she really hasn’t had a chance to attach to her kid, it’s extremely stressful,” says Amaru. But in the end, many women want to return to their jobs fairly quickly. And Amaru says that’s okay. “You’ll find just as many women who are depressed because they stayed home too long. I think that kids are better off with well-adjusted mothers.”
By hiring a nanny to help with her second child, Brooks realized how much more time she had for herself and for a job that she loved. “When Coco was born, I would never even have a babysitter on the weekend. I was really moral about it. And as joyous as those moments were, part of it was slightly miserable,” she admits. “I was being too much of a martyr to the mom world.”
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