I have to say, I spent the first part of my maternity leave in a sleepless daze. At the end of four weeks, my husband took a week-long business trip, and my sweet mother-in-law came to stay with my newborn son and me. Early that week, my postpartum anxiety set in, and it escalated over a couple of weeks. I cried every day and the thought of putting my sweet baby in day care was abhorrent to me. I begged my husband to let me quit my job. I hovered over my baby, and asked every living parent I knew how to raise a baby. See my blog post about how I discovered I had postpartum anxiety and what I did: http://www.twocannoli.com/2011/09/this-friend-saved-my-life.html

I'm lucky, though - I work from home. At the time of my maternity leave, we lived in a one-bedroom apartment and both my husband and I worked in the main room harmoniously. When I started to panic about maternity leave, we decided to get a nanny. Which required us to move in a bigger place. So while I interviewed nannies like crazy, my husband searched for houses and took over the 4 AM feeding so that I could battle my anxiety and insomnia.   While I took care of the baby and wrestled with new baby stuff, my husband packed up the apartment and moved everything himself to our new rental house.

Since I had a c-section, I had 8 weeks of paid maternity leave, and had saved up three weeks of vacation time for 11 weeks, and it happened to end right around Thanksgiving, so I had a few extra days. I returned to work, and cried when I handed my baby to the nanny - whom we kept as our nanny until my son was 22 months, when she went off to school. I begged off from our annual sales kick-off in Istanbul, using nursing as my reason. My company is European and took this in stride.

I have a great job and I'm very lucky to work from home, a supportive husband who also works from home, and a second fabulous nanny to continue what the first one started. Life is good!

Kristin Shaw
@AustinKVS (Twitter)
Austin, TX