Parenthood Juggle: Only One Body

Last spring when I was pregnant, I was accepted to Divinity School for a Masters degree. I had applied in January, after having tossed the idea around for a couple of years. We were trying to get pregnant when I applied, but my last miscarried pregnancy had taught me that a pregnancy wasn’t a guaranteed baby, and more than that, I felt impressed to apply, like it was the right move.  When I wrote my letter of intent, it felt like it came out whole-cloth, as if it had been written inside me already, and I was just extracting it.

If I’m honest, I was more ecstatically happy the day I found out I was accepted to school than the day I found out I was pregnant. My husband came downtown and took me to lunch, and morning sick as I was, I remember slumping over in my seat, resting my head on the booth bench, in joy. I couldn’t stop smiling.  

But once that dizzy happiness wore off, I couldn’t think straight about it. I was due in October. How would I have a baby during my first semester? I didn’t get very far with that question. I’d try to work it out in my head. “Okay, Divinity School, let’s think this through,” I’d say to myself on my way home from work. And then I’d get distracted. I’d pass a baby and I’d think, “Oh, that baby is wearing a hat!” I’d remember I had meant to strategize about school, but I wouldn’t be able to get back to thinking about it. By that point I’d be thinking about onesies with frogs on them.

I didn’t know what was happening to me. I was an ambitious soul, wasn’t I? Why couldn’t I figure this out? My lack of ability to follow through felt biological, like my body was protecting my future role as mother of the baby I carried. Maybe if I talked to the admissions office, we could figure out how I might take a few weeks off when I gave birth, then come back to finish up. But I knew this was an impossible idea. I knew I wouldn’t be able to write term papers with a newborn.

When I was trying to get pregnant the first time, I sat with a group of women in the dining area of Whole Foods, and when one of them mentioned having gone to Divinity School, I said I was thinking of applying and began asking questions. These weren’t Mormon women, but one of them stopped me mid-sentence, and asked how old I was, and when I told her I was 28, she said, “Do you want babies? If you want babies, it’s time to have babies. You’re not going back to school.” The other women agreed. I wasn’t going back to school; I was going to have babies.

I was confused and angry. Why did I have to choose? I had spent my whole life believing I didn’t have to choose. Who were they to tell me I couldn’t have both?

And there I was, pregnant, realizing that at least initially, it would be impossible to have both. I already had a PhD; the cost of tuition would be outrageous; there was no reason to fight to go back. At least not right then.

This had never occurred to me before that time, and it’s what strikes me now, a year later, as I stay home with my 4-month-old: I am only one body. As much as I wanted to go to school and be at home, I simply couldn’t do both. As a single person, I had always managed to do this and that, everything I really wanted I could fight to have, but nothing prepared me for how physically consuming motherhood is.

The same turned out to be true for continuing to work full-time: I could have fought to make it work, but for a lot of reasons it made more sense for me to be home. The physicality of this decision still astonishes me. Someday I may go back. For now I’m trying to let it sink in: I simply can’t be two places at once.

When I applied to school, I wondered why I was feeling prompted to apply, and what it would mean if I got accepted and also had the baby. What would God be trying to tell me? At the time I thought it would be so I would always have that acceptance: whether it worked out for me to go or not, I would know I got in. But I have to say that doesn’t mean much to me now. When I’m making dinner, and half of me is thinking, “I’m making dinner! I’m a mom and I’m making dinner!” and the other half of me is wondering what happened to the person who used to take the train to work downtown, it isn’t any consolation at all that I got into grad school. And now I’m wondering if it was the beginning of this lesson, this reality that motherhood means I can’t be two places at the same time. Even if I had decided to go back to work right away, I’d always be in one place or the other, and though I could make that work, I’d always feel divided.

I had ambitious inclinations about my education as I grew up, but I wish they’d been tempered with the reality of how difficult the balance is. I feel like I was unprepared for it. I didn’t know that whether one stays home or works often has very little to do with choice, though maybe I couldn’t have understood that until now. Most women I know make one decision or another because it’s the only thing that makes sense for them and for their families. I wish we honored that more, honored the women that are doing whatever they need to do-for their babies, or their finances, or their family, or their hearts. Maybe that’s what all of us are doing.

-Submitted by Deja

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