Workin' Moms

Workin’ Moms, a sitcom created by Catherine Reitman based on her own experiences, and now streaming on Netflix, encapsulates exactly what to expect after you have a baby (your life turns upside down overnight), realistically depicting all the comical, raw experiences of sharing your life and time with a new person. People don’t warn you about that before you become a first-time parent. This hilarious show follows four women (all friends who attend the same mommy and me group) who, in the first season, return to work after their maternity leave ends, reluctantly leaving their babies in a caregiver’s hands after being attached to that infant day and night; nevertheless, they’re also relieved because going back to work is a much-needed respite from the round-the-clock care and supervision a newborn requires. If you’re a mom you’re likely to find yourself reflected in one of these women: Anne, a psychiatrist with a nine-year-old daughter and an infant, finds out she is pregnant again (“This baby is a virus,” she says after throwing up outside her daughter’s school), and decides to have an abortion; Kate, ambitious and driven in her career, choses a promotion at her public relations firm that takes her to another city, sacrificing months and miles away from her son Charlie; Frankie is experiencing postpartum depression; and Jenny who doesn’t want to go back to work because she doesn’t care about her job and doesn’t feel hot anymore after having her daughter. I related so much to this show, especially after watching the first season almost two years ago when I had my first son, Sebastian, because it hilariously explores the difficult balance of being a mother—especially when you’re experiencing it for the first time—and sustaining a sense of self. Raising a child is a full-time job, breastfeeding (if you choose that route) is a full-time job, and then there’s the 9-5, throwing your equilibrium off because there’s just not enough of you to go around.

I love that this show centers around the lives of working women, mothers who love their babies as much as their careers, reflecting, in an authentic way, the challenges of transitioning from being at home with your child to returning to work and returning to yourself, which is a relief. I related to that so much when I went back to work because taking care of a newborn was not what I expected. I got a small dose of what I was in for at the hospital when, after having delivered my son at 3:38 am and brought to my room shortly after, time on the clock sped like light years and before I knew it it was 6:00 am and I hadn’t slept. For nebulous reasons, I didn’t think I needed to read any parenting books to prepare for childbirth, thinking, “It’ll just come naturally to me, what’s the point?” Turns out those books could’ve taught me a lot because I quickly discovered I knew nothing about babies, like how often they ate, which would’ve been good to know after I ignorantly decided that I would not give my son formula and would strictly breastfeed after reading all the benefits—I’m pretty sure only the benefits are disclosed—of breast milk for the baby and the mother. Had I known that a baby feeds off you like a vampire every two hours, and that I would be the only supplier, I would have said hell no to breastfeeding.

I always thought that the day I had a baby I wouldn’t let him out of my sight at the hospital, fearful that my ordinary life would suddenly turn into an ominous plot of a novela where a sinister villain sneaks into the nursery and switches my baby for another. (Again, with a modicum of research I would’ve learned that newborns now stay in the room with the mother.) Well, after a whole day of breastfeeding (and being shocked by that fact), and not sleeping since I had given birth, the fear of anyone stealing my infant went right out the window when, at nightfall, my son couldn’t stop crying after I had already finished feeding him. Remembering the nurse’s offer to take Sebastian for a little while, I turned to my boyfriend, who was sleeping on a stiff sofa, and timidly asked, “Should I call the nurse to take him?” With his approval, I pressed the call button and waited, thinking only of rest. Opening the door, the nurse mentioned something about “cluster feeding,” whisked him away, and I shut my eyes, wondering if I could really do this.

Thinking he was being hyperbolic, I laughed when someone told me I’d be a walking zombie once the baby was born. I wish I would’ve taken the warning seriously because he was right—with an infant at home you don’t sleep when you want to, you don’t shower when you want to, you don’t even eat when you want to. Your schedule is contingent upon the needs of your tiny baby who demands all your time and attention during their waking hours; if you’re breastfeeding, there’s about a two-hour gap between the next feeding and it’s always a battle deciding between sleep or other less important things, like showering, eating, cleaning. My experience with breastfeeding was stressful, time-consuming, sleep depriving, and lonely. I never knew if he received enough milk and he always seemed to be hungry. I looked forward to my partner coming home from work each day because he then took over and I’d go outside to walk the dog, which was the first time all day I had fifteen minutes for myself outside of the house. Standing outside, the air felt crisp, fresh, the foliage of the trees seemed greener, the sky was as clear and blue as the ocean’s surface. I was so grateful my son was born in April so that I could enjoy the heat from the sun, and the unfiltered beauty of nature. Listening to J. Cole’s newly released album, KOD, I walked my Schipperke and drank in every second of freedom I had. I think even a rainbow appeared on one of those walks.

While I feared postpartum depression because I felt that every celebrity was talking about it, I didn’t have that experience. What I felt was tired because I wasn’t sleeping and drained because I was breastfeeding, but what was more disappointing was that I wasn’t enjoying my baby. I felt guilty about admitting that I wanted to stop breastfeeding and stupid for not heeding my family’s advice when they suggested, prior to my son’s birth, that I should consider formula. I should’ve realized my mom knew better than me after having three babies of her own. I breastfed longer than I wanted to (four weeks), but the decision to stop became indisputable when one afternoon after I fed Sebastian and could tear into my Chik-fil-A wrap, I heard him start crying and my boyfriend said giddily from the other room, “Babe, I think he’s hungry.” I stared at my chicken wrap longingly and with unbridled rage, screamed, “He’s not hungry! You always want him to be hungry!” After that, we switched to formula and baby and mom couldn’t have been happier. Our bond wasn’t severed when I stopped breastfeeding, if anything it grew stronger because I was happier and he was getting all the nourishment he needed. It can be scary to think that you’ll lose your connection with your child if you stop breast-feeding, or go back to work, or simply get a facial to have a breather, but your infant will always be bonded to you.

In one of the mommy and me group scenes in Workin’ Moms, Jenny admits to the moms that maybe she isn’t connected to her daughter, Zoe. Anne disagrees and says to the group: “Nobody says that we have to be connected to our kids all the time.” It’s a challenge to balance your time between your child, your work, your passions, your relationships, and the myriad of things we all juggle, but preserving your identity is essential to maintaining your peace and happiness, which makes you a better parent. I’ve learned the hard way that multi-tasking doesn’t work: I’ve tried writing in my notebook while following my toddler around only to end up falling in the toy box. You can’t have it all and the road to child-rearing is littered with sacrifices. Adjusting to my new life as a mother was the toughest thing I’ve ever done because I yearned for the freedom I lost. In the same mommy and me scene, Kate agrees with Anne that we don’t have to be connected to our kids all the time and shares an amusing thought:

“Yeah, like Charlie, I love him to death, he’s my boy, but sometimes I wish he was…like, on that show The Leftovers, you know?” (She points to the sky) “Just taken right out of the back of my car, and then I get home and I’m like, ‘I know I went to the grocery store, but where’s my son?’ And then I’m free!”

Of course, no one wants their baby to disappear, (most of the other moms look horrified), I know I would have a full-on anxiety attack, but Kate is honest in her revelation that sometimes all we want is a break and that is okay; she’s still a great mom. She has a strict schedule for Charlie that the nanny must follow and she loves him deeply, compiling a to-do list for him on the chalkboard in the kitchen. I laughed when she strapped her baby in his bouncer and tells him, “I gotta check some e-mails, not because I’m not dedicated to your walking development, but because it’s boring.” I love that she doesn’t pretend to love or be excited about every moment with her baby because when they’re that young there isn’t a whole lot of thrills to the job. Workin’ Moms is a great show for exactly those reasons: It doesn’t make you feel ashamed or guilty for whatever “dark” thoughts you might have surrounding motherhood. Kate even reassures Frankie, who is high on antidepressants ready to end her life by jumping off a tree, that when it comes to motherhood she doesn’t know what she’s doing half the time, and feels like she’s faking it. I love that this show gives women the space to be frank about the hardships of motherhood. It doesn’t mean that you don’t love your baby. It just makes you human.

Workin’ Moms. Created by Catherine Reitman, CBC Television, 2017.