Having a Baby at 27 vs. at 18

There are so many ways that having my second child was easier than when I had my first.

A few being…

· I’m married.

· We own a home.

· We are financially stable.

· I have a car (yes, I was catching the bus to and from work when my first daughter was born.)

· I had almost 9 years of parenting experience under my belt.

I understood all of these things going into my second pregnancy but what I didn’t anticipate was all the ways that having my second child would be more challenging.

First, let’s state the obvious, I had a serious lack of appreciation for my 18 year old body when I had it. Carrying a baby at 27 came with so many more aches, pains and pounds than I had previously experienced.

But beyond that, when I had my daughter, I was a hostess at a restaurant. Now I was in charge of 2 companies with a 3rd one on the horizon. Preparing for my maternity leave took the full 9 months of my pregnancy. I trained my mentee on every aspect of my job that she would need to handle. I was due in early November, which meant that my maternity leave would overlap with our busy holiday season. I did everything within my power to ensure that the spas would continue to thrive during my absence.

Then I returned to work after my maternity leave and I was told I did such a great job training everyone to fill in during my absence that I needed to think about what it was I was going to do now.

Ouch.

On top of that, I became informed that a business coach our leadership team had been using for some time had expressed concerns about me being “checked out”. When I confronted him about this, he told me that I knew when I decided to have another baby that I would have to choose between prioritizing work or my family.

Yep. That happened.

These two punches to the gut, on top of being hormonal and sleep deprived, crushed me more than I ever let on at the time.

To make things harder, I was exclusively breastfeeding, which meant splitting my hour lunch break into three 20 minute breaks in order to pump at work. I was constantly concerned with the perception of this.

The more sleep deprived and stressed I became, the worse things got. I started becoming forgetful and making mistakes, like screwing up payroll for an entire spa location or realizing once I made it all the way home that I forgot my milk in the break room fridge at work and had to drive all the way back to retrieve it. As a perfectionist, these errors were not something I wasn’t used to and it killed my confidence.

To be clear, my boss was always supportive, he allowed me to take my pumping breaks with no issues, he was forgiving of my mistakes, but that didn’t change the fact that I was self-conscious about showing a different side of myself at work that I had never shown before. A more vulnerable, emotional, hot mess side.

My saving grace during this period of my life was audiobooks. At a time when I could barely find 10 minutes to take a shower, utilizing my work commutes to do something for myself felt great. I was driving to Dayton 3 days per week, which meant at minimum of 6 hours in the car.

Within a couple of months I listened to How to Win Friends & Influence People, #GIRLBOSS, The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Rich, and You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Yourself and Start Living an Awesome Life.

With each book, I started to feel more and more like myself again. I began accepting the fact that my life will never go back to the way it used to be but that I could make it even better.