How Maternity Leave Was Different The Second Time Around (It's Not What You Think)

I had my second baby in August of 2025 and took a very generous paid maternity leave from my corporate job for 8 months. During that time, I felt like I got the privilege to travel back in time...to re-do all the newborn moments that I rushed through with my firstborn: moments that felt so hard at the time (why is he crying), moments I wished would end (why isn't he sleeping),  moments I just took completely for granted (his smell). I entered my second term of the newborn phase with an entirely different mindset and it changed everything.

Some people say the second child is a lot harder because you now have two to keep alive. But for me (and Brennan) we knew that was never going to be the case for us. There was absolutely nothing harder in our life than adapting to life with a third human in our household. I think it was largely because we had been living however we wanted for so long - traveling, late work dinners, buying anything, eating whatever whenever, spur of the moment decisions daily - that when we had to slow down and start to consider another life before we made even the most basic decision like going to the bathroom (is the baby in a safe place?), we just completely broke down. But as the months went on, we quickly adjusted to our new lives as parents and have never looked back.

Our second child is who helped me (us really) fully lean into parenthood as a core part of our identity. It's so easy to cling to your old identity with a single child - you can ALMOST do everything you did without children, especially as they get older. But once #2 comes, all bets are off. There is no "going back" anymore, only going forward for us. My mindset going into this "difficult" newborn phase was forever changed - I get to experience all of this again. I get to slow down and take a breath instead of rushing. I get to cuddle my newborn and imprint her smell in my mind. And I did just that.

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The difficult moments flew by. We let go of the schedules and the trainings we had been so rigorous with with our first (probably why she still isn't a great sleeper). We just let ourselves be fully present, even in the hard moments. With your second, you can't stay cooped up at the house so we got her out and about from birth (probably why she has FOMO at home now). We traveled Europe with both kids for a month and opened their world daily to new scenery, foods, languages and cultures.

I had a reverse culture shock when we got back to the US as I so greatly missed who our family had become those 3.5 weeks - loosened control, adventure-seeking, open-minded. I had about one month to soak up the last days with both kids before returning to work and you better believe I soaked up every second. I leaned into cooking new meals for my family, library trips, clothing/home storage and organization, lingering at playtime, meeting up with neighbors in the middle of the day, and was thriving. When my coworkers would ask if I was ready to return to work, I genuinely was not. Why would I want to return to work when I'm getting paid my full salary to be a mom right now? I was living my best life and my marriage was also thriving.

But I returned back to work because the paid leave time was up. It was time to enter into this new phase of working mom of 2 and figure it out.

Series to be continued...