Maternity Leave Is Not Like Summer Break For Adults

Opponents of paid family leave have no idea what it's like to look after a newborn, and they're making that our problem

Wet Hot American Summer/ Focus Features

Late last month, Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer proposed a 12-week paid family leave program in her state. There is currently no federally guaranteed paid family leave in the US; we are the only wealthy country in the world that treats parents and caregivers this way. If Michigan were to enact Governor Whitmer’s proposal, it would become the fourteenth state (plus the District of Columbia) to provide more than the federally guaranteed firm handshake and fuck you to new parents. 

Paid family leave is massively popular across the country. A poll conducted in February of this year found that 79% of Americans including 72% of Republicans support paid family leave. It’s popular in Michigan as well; a majority of Michigan voters support the measure. 

It’s not so popular, however, with elected Republican officials. And it’s super not popular with the Republican Party of Michigan. Earlier this month, a memo from Michigan GOP belittled Governor Whitmer’s proposal as “summer break for adults.” 

You’ll excuse me for waiting a few weeks to formulate a response to this characterization of maternity leave; the first ten or so times I tried to sit down and write about it, I got so angry that I felt like I was going to pass out, and by the time that feeling passed, my toddler had awaken from her nap, and the rest of the day went to shit, productivity-wise. 

Once the rage-tunnel vision cleared, my first thought of the snide “summer break for adults” moniker is that there are two possibilities for how something so offensively stupid was publicly released.

First, whoever wrote the memo for the Michigan GOP has never cared for a small child themselves– either they don’t have kids and think it must be easy or they do have kids but didn’t do any of the work required to raise them. The second good-faith possibility I’ve chosen to embrace here is that they do have kids and were at one time familiar with the work required to look after them during the early days of their lives, but enough time has passed that their brains have done that funny full-wipe thing that parents’ memories undergo, where we forget how bad things were at the beginning because our brains are trying to trick us into having more children. 

So, I figured that I’d write this, just in case some Republican staffer in another state considering paid family and parental leave happens to google “what happens during maternity leave” before firing off a memo revealing that they have no fucking clue what they’re talking about. 

Here’s what I did on my summer break for adults. 

Day one. Arrival at camp, aka returning home from the hospital. We hauled our little seven-pound, three quarter ounce bundle of joy into our home and introduced her to the pets, who were both incredibly freaked out but not aggressive. Winning already! 

Up next: activity sign ups! Of course, I made a beeline for BREASTFEEDING. I had decided that BREAST IS BEST because my husband and I agreed that we were going to be too tired to wash and sanitize bottles and pump parts 24/7 while also looking after a newborn baby. But even if I hadn’t decided that breastfeeding was the right move for me, BREAST IS BEST was practically shoved down my throat at the hospital by a lactation consultant who woke me up from my first post-delivery nap to pull and knead my boobs and lecture me about proper technique. How did humans survive without professionals teaching them how to feed their own young? A mystery.

BREAST IS BEST meant that I, the one with the breasts, would not be allowed to sleep for more than three hours at a time for at least a month, because tiny little babies need to eat once every three hours, and they need my breasts to do it (Oh, it’s three hours between the start of feeds, so if a baby starts eating at noon, they need to be fed again at 3, regardless of how long the noon feed took) Lactating breasts need to express milk once every three hours in the early postpartum weeks, so they (the breasts) learn how much milk they’re supposed to produce. I had no idea that I needed to spend the first month of my child’s life training my boobs like athletes during the preseason, but summer break for adults is full of surprises! 

(Even if I hadn’t signed up for BREASTFEEDING, my schedule during the first month would have been about the same if I was formula feeding or if I were pumping exclusively, because babies need to eat when they need to eat. I could have hired a night nurse or round-the-clock child care in order to help make the schedule less extreme, but this summer break for adults was already pretty expensive!)

On to summer break for adults cabin assignments! I thought I’d be assigned to “my own bedroom,” but that was silly of me– the baby got assigned to that room, and new campers get priority over old campers, even if all of the old camper’s stuff is in there. But that’s okay; thanks to my choice of camp activities, I can just sleep in whatever cabin I want– the recliner in the office, the couch in the living room, my car, just sleep where you can because who knows when the next opportunity will roll around… it’s a little bit like being on a road trip or on the run from the law! 

I did find, on my summer break for adults aka maternity leave, that I spent a lot of time in the bathroom. That’s because my body was in shambles. I was terrified of using the bathroom due to the fact that peeing burned and the other thing made me feel like my entire body was going to turn inside out– if you don’t know about the dreaded First Postpartum Poop, ask your mom. But luckily, my bathroom was always stocked with all of the luxuries a vacationer would need– adult diapers to collect the blood leaking out of the dinner plate-sized open wound the placenta left on the wall of my uterus, a cute little portable bidet that made it hurt slightly less on my stitches when I peed, a little sitz bath to fill with warm water in order to soothe my pummeled taint, numbing spray for the pain, huge maxi pads filled with a cold solution, regular huge maxi pads, and, of course, stool softener. It was like being at a spa. 

And speaking of spa, my boobs really got pampered while I was on my adult summer break. Pain relief creams and balms, heating and soothing pads, even a vibrating warming “massager” to help unclog ducts and prevent me from coming down with a serious infection called “mastitis” were all available to me. After the first month, I didn’t need to use the breast spa cart as often as I had at the beginning, but I did need to sit there once a day hooked up to a machine that pumped milk for me. I even had a special expensive bra for it. The humming of the breast pump was soothing, like a sound bath while somebody yanked repeatedly on my tits. 

During the first three months of my baby’s life aka my adult summer break, between the sleep deprivation, physical pain, hormonal fluctuations, and overall existential anxiety that comes from being a new parent, I did spend a lot of time crying, trying in vain to keep my immediate environment from descending into chaos, and spiraling. But, then again, so do people who pay thousands of dollars to go on guided ayahuasca retreats in the desert. It’s cleansing. 

And just because my husband wasn’t physically involved in the birth and all of its attendant injuries doesn’t mean he didn’t also have an incredible summer break for adults. His chosen activities were Diaper Duty and Occasional Nap Putdown, both of which, like Breastfeeding, also met once every three hours. It was cool to have the same vacation schedule as my husband even though we were doing different activities. It kept us equally sleep deprived, which was a bonding experience not totally unlike the kind of bonding experience political prisoners have when they’re kept awake for so long they hallucinate. (Although that is a Geneva Convention no-no, I haven’t heard of any babies being prosecuted for war crimes.) 

Despite having similar schedules, my husband and I didn’t get to hang out much. That’s partly because one of the things I needed the most when I didn’t have a baby physically lying on top of me was time to be alone in my house with nobody touching or talking to me. And so my husband would take the baby with him on walks with the dog, so that I could take a shower or sit at the dining room table and stare at my hands or have a zoom therapy session. Sometimes, my husband and I would try to do something relaxing like watch an episode of The Sopranos, but the baby would start crying halfway through and we’d have to switch to a more baby-friendly activity, like feeding the baby, or getting into an argument over how to get the baby to stop crying. 

I almost forgot about one of the best parts of summer break for adults– the field trips! After having a baby, parents are invited to bring said tiny little baby to the doctor when the baby is only days old, and then again at regular intervals. It was really fun to go through the long process of packing up the things the baby might need, getting the baby into her little car seat, carrying the car seat down the stairs, driving to the doctor’s office, carrying the car seat up the elevator, and spending half an hour waiting for the doctor to see us every time we visited, even though we had an appointment. That time we spent waiting gave us the opportunity to really take in the details of the exam room and come away with an authentic experience. After the first couple of months, I felt like I’d really actually lived there.

I was delighted that my summer break field trip package came with a surprise addition: Our daughter was born with an injury that has required ongoing care from when she was a week old onward, which meant that in addition to the regular doctor trips, we were bringing her to a specialist until she hit three months old (and then again every three months after that, plus weekly physical therapy appointments). I learned a lot on these trips, like what time of day the parking garage at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles would fill up completely and I’d need to just spend several minutes driving around waiting for somebody to leave (pro tip: get there before 8:30 am).

I see a lot of people looking fabulous, relaxed, and happy on their vacations, but I don’t think I was looking my best during my summer break for adults. Turns out, “getting enough sleep” and “not being constantly dehydrated from breastfeeding” are two important components of a glowing complexion. 

I didn’t get to bust out my fabulous party clothes on my summer break for adults either– despite what Kate Middleton’s postpartum photos might lead a person to believe, the human body continues to look pregnant for several days after giving birth, and after that, it kind of slowly deflates over the course of several weeks or months. I was lucky; it took me about six months after giving birth before I was able to fit into my least favorite pair of pants from before, and about a year and a half before I felt even remotely physically attractive again. That’s because maternity leave is one of those “survival” vacations, like Outward Bound or being in an airplane that crashes in the mountains. 

One complaint I have about summer break for adults: it’s only twelve weeks long, which is about how much time it takes for a human baby to transition from being a tiny black hole of endless need to being a tiny black hole of endless need that is also starting to give back some indication that they are aware of you and enjoy your company. It didn’t even seem like my daughter enjoyed the fact that we were on such a fabulous vacation together until it was almost over! Luckily, my husband and I agreed at the end of our summer break for adults that it was best for our family for me to cut down my work hours and extend the fun, so, in a way, my fabulous summer break for adults continues nearly two years later. 

I’m now at an age where I need to make a decision on whether or not I want to have another child– which means, you guessed it, another summer break for adults. But this first summer break for adults has taken a lot out of me; I don’t know if I’ve got another one in me on account of the fact that the first one was so much fun that I feel like I’m still processing it. You know the saying: it feels like I need a vacation from my vacation!