I have about two weeks left until my maternity leave is over and I jump back into the corporate world. At times it has gone so fast. I cannot believe that I already boxed up all of his newborn and some of his 3-month clothing. And then there have been times that time stood still. Such as the baby staying up all night. Through it all, there have rarely been dull moments.

I have never understood when people refer to maternity leave as a vacation. Ah yes, a vacation…like I am getting on an airplane and traveling the world or flying to some tropical place to lay on the beach and sip on cocktails with zero responsibilities.

I am not sure what their definition of a vacation is, but having another human inhabit your body for 40ish weeks, labor and delivery, then 12ish weeks of feeding the baby (I pump exclusively), keeping up with daily household chores, getting peed/pooped/thrown-up on and sleepless nights, all while trying to fit back into pre-baby clothes is not really what I consider a vacation.

During maternity leave what I did take a vacation from was wearing business casual clothing, HELLO yoga pants, not showering daily [yeah my husband loved that], not leaving my house daily [it is really hard with snow and bitterly cold temps] and not using an alarm clock. When you have a baby that has no sense of time, you really do not need an alarm.

With each maternity leave, I have learned things. During the first maternity leave we learned quickly that my husband can go on a lot less sleep than I can and still be nice. I need a solid 6+ hours or it is not pleasant for anyone. We learned how to sleep train a baby, how to do baby exercises to help with torticollis…the learning list was quite long since it was our first baby.

Now sitting near the end of my second maternity leave, I have been reflecting on the last 10 weeks. I realized once again I have learned a lot. For instance, I learned that I need to be very careful in what I tell our toddler.

The other day we were sitting at dinner and our toddler asked me for juice. We NEVER have juice at our house because he doesn’t like it. I responded to our toddler by saying, “We don’t have juice. Do you want milk or water?” He said, “Mommy, I want juice.”

I tried to explain that he doesn’t like juice so we do not buy it. He said, “Yes mommy, we have juice. Like ‘mommy juice.’ And pointed to our dining room.”

CRAP! Yes…I call wine “mommy juice.” Which currently, wine lives on a wine rack in our dining room. I tried to explain that what he was referring to is juice only for mommy. As his eyes glazed over, I realized there was no point in trying to explain this to him. I quickly changed the subject.

So this got me thinking. What have I learned from this maternity leave?

Top 10 Learnings from Maternity Leave

1. Baby smiles are contagious and will melt your heart. Regardless of how sleep deprived you may be. The smiles make everything better.
2. Baby smiles are creepy from the hours of 1:00 a.m. – 4:30 a.m. No seriously, they are. Sitting in the dark, rocking your baby and hoping they go back to sleep quickly, when there appears a gummy smile with their eyes closed. It is creepy. Period.
3. Nap when your baby naps. Snuggle when they want to snuggle. I did not take full advantage of this when our toddler was a baby. However, this time around I did because I now know how quickly they grow up.
4. Sleep training is not a one-size-fits-all. Our toddler got an “A+” in sleep training. Currently, our baby is sitting at a solid “C.”
5. Be careful explaining things to your toddler. They take things literally like thinking that “Mommy juice” [wine] is juice for all.
6. Grocery delivery, crockpots and the Instant Pot are all life and time savers. Especially in the winter with a newborn.
7. Babies can sound like a grown man when pooping. I never heard a baby grunt and then poop so loud. It is quite impressive.
8. Baby weight does come off, but slower the second time around. Verdict is still out on if my hips will ever return to where they once were.
9. Which brings me to learning #8. Having workout equipment at your house/a routine you can do there is key to helping shed the baby weight. I cannot always make it to the gym, so my husband built a gym for us and we recently got a spin bike. Thank you Facebook buy/sell board.
10. There is never enough time. So enjoy every second, even when things seem non-enjoyable [baby crying/screaming and fighting sleep]. I am not sure why it took me 31+ years and two kids to realize this, but better late than never.