Maybe I Didn’t Need a Break From My Baby. Maybe I Needed a Break From Everything Else.

Maybe I Didn’t Need a Break From My Baby. Maybe I Needed a Break From Everything Else.

There’s a thought I’ve been slowly forming over the last several months, and I think I’ve finally figured out how to put words to it.

When Barrett was around three to five months old, naps were rough.

Like… really rough.

For a while (or like two or three whole months), twenty or thirty minutes was a pretty normal nap around here. Sometimes even if he fell asleep while breastfeeding, I could barely move or attempt to put him down without waking him back up. It felt like there was almost no predictable margin in my day.

And as someone who owns a business, works at home part-time outside of that business, has a house to keep up with, pumps and breastfeeds, and generally functions much better when life doesn’t feel like one giant pile of unfinished tasks… that season was hard.

I felt “on” constantly.

But looking back now, I’ve realized something important.

I genuinely don't think Barrett was the thing I desperately needed a break from.

I think I needed a break from everything else.

The Baby Wasn’t Necessarily the Problem

There’s a really common way people talk to moms, especially moms with babies.

“You need a break.”

“Let somebody keep the baby for a while.”

“I’ll come hold him so you can get some things done.”

“Go take some time for yourself.”

And please don’t misunderstand me. Sometimes that is exactly what a mom needs.

There are absolutely days when handing the baby to somebody you trust and leaving the house for an hour sounds wonderful. There are appointments we need to go to alone. There’s work that requires uninterrupted concentration. There are moments when we’re touched out, overstimulated, exhausted, or simply need to exist as a human being without somebody physically attached to us.

I’m not arguing against any of that.

I’m also not speaking for every mom.

But I’ve realized that during one of the hardest seasons I’ve had so far in motherhood, what I personally wanted most wasn’t necessarily someone to take my baby away from me.

I wanted someone to take some of the other stuff away.

The laundry.

The dishes.

The bottles.

The clutter.

The kitchen that somehow needed cleaning again even though I swear I had just cleaned it.

The random things sitting around the house that needed to be put back where they belonged.

The mental list constantlyyy running in the background while I was nursing my baby.

The feeling that everything around me was slowly piling up while I physically couldn’t get to it.

THAT was what was stressing me out.

“I’ll Hold the Baby While You Clean” Isn’t Always the Help We Think It Is

A lot of people always offer to come and hold the baby so the mom can get other things done.

And it usually comes from a place of love and genuinely wanting to be helpful.

They're basically saying, “Let me take something off your plate.”

And sometimes, especially if I have client work that needs to be completed so that my business can actually make money, that kind of help genuinely would be useful.

But during that three-to-five-month stretch, if someone had asked me what would make my life noticeably easier, I probably wouldn’t have said:

“Please hold my baby so I can wash laundry.”

I would have said:

“Please wash the laundry so I can hold my baby.”

And I think that distinction matters.

Because sometimes when we tell a mom, “I’ll watch the baby so you can clean,” we aren’t actually giving her a break.

We’re just moving her from one job to another.

Or really moving her from the job she actually wants to do do the job(s) she's dreading doing.

Instead of feeding the baby, she’s loading the dishwasher.

Instead of rocking the baby, she’s folding towels.

Instead of sitting on the couch nursing her child, she’s cleaning bottles.

And yes, those things still need to get done.

But I’ve started wondering why our automatic assumption is so often that the baby is the responsibility she needs relief from rather than the mountain of responsibilities surrounding the baby.

Most of the Time, I Wanted to Be the One Comforting Him

This is probably the part that has become even clearer to me now that Barrett is older and I look back on everything.

There were days when naps were awful, and he needed me constantly.

There were days when I felt like I accomplished almost nothing.

But I still wanted to be his mom.

I still wanted to be the person holding him.

I wanted to nurse him.

I wanted to comfort him when he was upset.

I wanted to sit there while he slept against me.

I wanted to be the familiar person he looked for.

And honestly, there’s something almost painful about looking back now and realizing how quickly that version of him disappeared.

His sleep is completely different now.

His naps are much more predictable.

I actually have stretches during the day when I can work, clean, pump, write, or do whatever else needs to happen.

And ironically, now that I have some of the margin I desperately wanted back then, part of me misses

those tiny contact-nap days.

Motherhood is rude like that.

You can be desperate for a difficult season to change and still grieve it when it does.

Two things can be true at once.

I can remember how exhausted and overwhelmed I was without pretending that I hated being needed by my baby.

Because I didn’t.

I Think A Lot of Moms Are Trying to Explain This

Over the last several months, I’ve started noticing other women—especially women around my age with young kids—talking about versions of this same thing online.

Not every mom feels this way, obviously.

Some moms genuinely need somebody to take the baby for several hours.

Some desperately need alone time.

Some need sleep.

Some need childcare.

Some need to go sit in silence somewhere and drink a coffee without anybody touching them.

There is no universal postpartum experience.

But I keep seeing a whole lot of women say some variation of:

“I don’t necessarily need you to take my baby. I need help with everything else so I can actually enjoy my baby.”

And I get it now.

I really, really get it.

Because there is a strange thing that happens when you become a mother.

Caring for your baby becomes a massive part of your life, but all of the responsibilities you had before becoming a mother don’t magically disappear.

The laundry still exists.

The bills still exist.

Your job still exists.

The grocery shopping still exists.

The house still needs attention.

You still need to eat.

If you own a business, the emails definitely still exist.

And now you’re trying to manage all of that while caring for a tiny human who may have absolutely no awareness of the schedule you wrote in your planner that morning.

Especially for small business moms, I think this can get complicated quickly.

There’s not always a clean line between maternity leave and going back to work.

Sometimes you’re answering a client email while nursing.

Sometimes you’re scheduling work or discovery calls around naps that may or may not actually happen, then find yourself scrambling when the baby wakes up halfway through your meeting.

Sometimes you finally get the baby asleep and have to decide whether the next thirty minutes should go toward your business, your house, food, laundry, pumping, showering, or staring blankly at the wall because your brain has temporarily stopped functioning.

The problem isn’t necessarily that you don’t want to care for your baby.

The problem is that caring for your baby is happening alongside twelve other roles that nobody removed from your job description. Your life and your main priorities have fundamentally changed overnight, but not in place of your other responsibilities— in addition to them.

And that is an absolutely massive life shift that even I couldn't have prepared enough for.

Practical Help Can Be Incredibly Intimate

I think we sometimes underestimate how meaningful practical help can be because it isn’t very glamorous.

Holding a baby is fun.

Folding somebody else’s laundry?

Less so.

Snuggling a newborn feels special.

Emptying somebody else’s dishwasher probably doesn’t.

But sometimes the least glamorous forms of help are the ones that give a new mom the most breathing room. The ones that quiet our minds for a little while.

Imagine walking into the house and saying:

“I’m going to straighten up the kitchen. You sit with the baby.”

“Give me the laundry basket. I’ll fold it.”

“I brought dinner. Don’t worry about feeding us.”

“I’m running to the grocery store. What do you need?”

“I’m going to wash the bottles and pump parts.”

“Go nurse him. I’ll take care of this.”

There is something deeply caring about noticing the invisible work and simply doing some of it.

Especially if you can do it without turning the mom into the household project manager first.

Because, respectfully, asking someone to write you a detailed to-do list so you can “help” is sometimes just giving her another task. 😂

Look around.

There are probably dishes.

There is probably laundry.

There is almost certainly trash somewhere.

There is a very good chance something needs wiping down.

Start there.

Maybe We Need to Ask a Different Question

Maybe instead of automatically asking a new mom, “Do you want me to take the baby?”

we ask:

“What would make your day easier?”

Because the answer might be, “Please take this child for two hours.”

And great.

Do that.

But the answer might also be:

“Can you unload my dishwasher?”

“Can you bring us dinner?”

“Can you hold him while I shower?”

“Can you clean my kitchen while I feed him?”

“Can you sit here and talk to me while I fold laundry?”

“Can you watch him for an hour so I can finish this client project?”

Or even:

“Honestly, I don’t need anything today.”

The point isn’t deciding for moms what kind of help they should want.

It’s giving them room to tell us what would genuinely reduce the weight they’re carrying.

I Didn’t Always Need Less Motherhood. I Needed Less of Everything Competing With It.

That’s probably the simplest way I can explain what I’ve realized.

Anytime someone asked me how things were going, and I said I was tired, or it's been "a little crazy," it was probably easy to assume that the mom part of life was what was crazy or why I was tired.

And to some extent, obviously, yes, the mom part of things definitely contributed to my tiredness, but for the most part, it was everything else on my plate.

During that exhausting season, I didn’t necessarily need somebody to make me less responsible for my baby.

I needed fewer things fighting for my attention while I was trying to care for him.

I wanted my house to stop yelling at me.

I wanted the laundry pile to stop growing.

I wanted the bottles to magically wash themselves.

I wanted to sit and nurse my baby without staring over his head at twelve things I felt guilty for not doing.

I wanted enough margin that being needed by him didn’t automatically mean falling behind everywhere else.

And now that I’m on the other side of that particular season—at least for now—I think I understand something I couldn’t quite articulate when I was living it.

Sometimes the most loving thing you can do for a mom isn’t to give her a break from her baby.

Sometimes it’s giving her a break from everything else so she can actually be present with the baby she loves.

And maybe that’s a kind of help we should offer a little more often.