High Heels to Stroller Wheels: From A Working Woman to Motherhood

Once upon a time, I was a working woman in a fast-paced corporate environment. I worked fast, I walked fast. My world, and all the people within it, moved fast. I loved the work. I loved the heavy rush of accomplishment and achievement. 

And then I became a mother. The intense, energetic pace to which I had grown accustomed ground to a halt.

My days, once full of checked-off to-do lists and accomplishments, now revolved around new objectives: Feed the baby. Keep him happy. Get some sleep.

Simple enough, yet at times, nearly impossible to achieve.

It was like coming to the end of the people-mover conveyer belts at the airport. A jerking, halting downshift from process, procedure and productivity to…Pampers and poop. The intensity and energy required of me as a new mother was equal to the paying work I had done before (actually, mothering was way more intense) but the sense of accomplishment and productivity? Not so much.

Repetition replaced achievement, and all the truths I had come to trust as a woman in the workplace turned to dust and blew away in a cloud of baby powder.

I struggled to adjust to this new, slower pace, and my own lack of productivity. In my sleep-deprived fog, washing the baby’s laundry became a monumental task, and folding it, insurmountable. No matter how well I’d done my job as a mother the day before, the next day was a whole new playing field and the rules changed on a daily basis. Leaving the house was an accomplishment. Achievement was measured in ounces of breast milk, and whether or not I made it into the shower each day. 

Yet, in time, I began to find beauty in the slow simplicity of the new routines. A beauty I’d never had the chance to see before, running past it as I had for so long.

Slowing Down: My New Priority

Time moves so slowly in those early days of mothering. Sleep-deprivation is a powerful drug – it slows down time until we think it’s barely moving at all. And then we wake up and find we’ve been living in fast-forward. We blink, and our babes are no longer infants, but toddlers. Blink again, they are running for the bus stop. 

I realized that getting there, doing that, accomplishing this – faster – were no longer my priorities. Slowing down, breathing in, and watching, just watching, lest I miss something – those were my priorities.

There was a beauty in the pace. A beauty in the timeless afternoons in which there was nothing but my newborn babe and myself, he in my arms, tiny starfish fingers grasping at the air as he filled his belly at my breast, me simply staring at the miracle that was this tiny human I’d created. 

I discovered beauty in the sound of sleep – when the ultimate of all motherly goals has been achieved. and they are content, and fed, and sleeping. And I would stop for a moment in the quiet dark, just to breathe him in and out, feeling as if everything in that instant was right with the world.

There was perfection in those moments, a value in the very slowness of them, that in my working-woman world, I had never known before.  

It’s Not About The Destination Anymore

Even the pace at which I walked the world has had to change. For so many years, as a working woman I’d nearly run from point A to point B just as fast as I possibly could. But as a mother, I found myself clinging to the hand of a toddler as he struggled for balance, seeking the world from his own perspective and at his own pace. My steps slowed to match his. He couldn’t have cared less where we were going. It was the journey he was interested in, and everything along the way.

Earning A New, More Prestigious Title

Once upon a time, I was a working woman in a fast-paced corporate environment. In that world, there were credentials, and titles, and letters at the end of our names that were important and vital. Since the birth of my first son, I’ve come to recognize I wear a new title now: Mother. A title which carries with it all the effort, strain, expense, and struggle that those old titles held, but with far greater dividends. This is a title that will never fade, never be ignored. It will never cease to hold weight. 

Time moves even faster today than it did when I brought my first son home, and I eagerly seek out and search for the slow moments in our lives. We’re deep into adolescence, and despite this, I try to remember – cherish the journey. 

I’m still a working woman – a working mom – but the intensity and urgency with which I approach my employment has changed. I’m proud of my accomplishments in the workplace, but prouder still of my greatest contributions to the world. Nothing I ever did before, or in the future, will ever measure up to the achievements that are my sons.