Maternity Leave #2 – Reflections on a big year!

Wow, where has the time gone?! It’s my last couple days of maternity leave, and even after extending to 13.5 months, it really flew by.

Sierra is starting gradual entry at daycare this week, and it’s such a bittersweet moment. On the one hand, it’s a relief to feel the sense of support that daycare immediately provides. But on the other, it’s hard to give her away in the mornings, and I resist the urge to look at the daycare’s live camera obsessively throughout the day.

Maternity leave 2 versus 1

With Luc, I was an anxious Mom, always worried about nap schedules, about how much he was eating, and simultaneously, about myself. I was obsessed with optimization: maximizing sleep, and my own postpartum athletic and career goals. I did get a lot of sleep and I did achieve a lot of my goals athletically and in terms of career, but I wasn’t really present through the maternity leave. I was scared about the impacts that my new identity would make to my career and my lifestyle, and I was actively fighting back.

With Sierra, I knew I wanted to approach it differently. Could I hold my goals a bit more loosely, and hold more space for this fleeting moment with my new child? I had the benefit of experience, and having done it all once made the whole process feel way less scary. I wasn’t worried about a year off my career, wasn’t worried about how the pregnancy or the baby would affect my athletic abilities. (This didn’t mean it was easier, or that the road was smooth, far from it. I just didn’t carry extra worry or stress around it than necessary.) I actively let go of things: I paused my coaching business, deleted my work Slack from my phone, and focused on fun. I hired a babysitter for regular 2 hour chunks 3 days a week to go trail running, and spent the rest of my energy on Sierra.

Fun challenges

This doesn’t mean I didn’t challenge myself. Far from it! I actually did a ton of fun races and adventures this year… I just approached them with the mindset that they were fun, and not to take myself too seriously. Here are some of my highlights!

• Skimo race – Cypress Skimo Festival vertical – so fun! This was my first-ever skimo race, and it also happened to be my first race postpartum, around 6.5 months after Sierra. I did pretty poorly on the icy part of the course which required actual skill, and for some reason I was omitted from the results so I can’t look up how I did, lol.
  
• 50km trail race – Mesquite Canyon 50k in Arizona, by Aravaipa Running – what a great day! This was around 8 months postpartum, and I had so much fun. Managed to come first female too!
  
• 18km trail race – 5Peaks Alice Lake in Squamish – my first short race in a long time, and right out my back door too! I was able to come first female in this one too, but it showed me that I wasn’t yet ready for fast running postpartum (my left hip got so tight during that I had to slow down)
  
• RunUphill Queen / King of the Hill – our local hill-climbing competition by RunUphill in Squamish… tournament-style, we get paired against a new opponent to go up a new peak each week, and the winner moves on! I was able to eek my way into the finals, but – damn was I rusty! It took me until week 3 (of 4) to remember how to red-line, and then once I had that figured out again, I got lost on the last week, and unfortunately didn’t have time to go back and repeat the effort. Still, it was great training for the next event…
  
• Grouse Mountain Multigrind – in June, Grouse Mountain has a really fun event where they let you ascend the Grind uphill trail all day from 4am until 10pm, taking the gondola down between each lap. My goal was to do an Everest (11 laps) but I had so much fun that I kept going for 15 laps. 4th female, 11 months postpartum.
  
• Whistler by UTMB 100k – my grand maternity leave finale was a mountainous 100k with 5,000m of vert just up the road! Due to some random pelvic floor dysfunction that cropped up in June + July seemingly out of nowhere, I had unusual training heading in, with much lower run mileage, and a lot of uncertainty about whether I could race. I’m so happy I was able to work through the issues just in time, and was able to get this done without any issues! 6th female, 13 months postpartum.

Through it all, I have to say… my favourite memory is actually just all the hikes I did with Sierra on my back, up the Chief and the Gondola, especially when friends joined!

Travels

We also did some really fun trips during this maternity leave year!

• Phoenix + Sedona to run Mesquite Canyon (Phoenix) and then do a family vacation with kid adventures (Sedona)!
• Gold Coast, Australia to visit Auntie Lisa, Uncle Sean, and all the cousins! Sierra was only 4 months old… note to self, this was a bit heinous at such a young age, as she was still doing usually two night feedings :p
• Edmonton to visit the grandparents
• Nanoose Bay, Vancouver Island to visit the grandparents
• Camping at Miracle Beach on Vancouver Island, and Birkenhead Lake near Pemberton (We DNF’d the Birkenhead Lake trip and came home after one night, as no one slept :p Still so fun and beautiful, and I’ glad we got the day there!)
• Solo date trip (work trip) to Palo Alto with Julien
• Solo date trip to Canmore with Julien
• Solo girls’ trip to Auburn California with Tory and Tara for a running race (I ended up crewing!)

What’s next?

As I transition back to full-time product manager work (starting in 5 days) with the 2 kids, I know it will take some time to feel like we’re all thriving. Gradual entry at daycare is for the parents more than anything… I miss Sierra and her cute playful chaos! The house feels too clean without her re-organizing all the kitchen cupboards and removing all her books from the shelf, and Bart seems too sleepy without the threat of getting chased by her.

I want to prioritize quality time with them on the weekends, so I think it’s time for early o’clock alarms, and marathon training! Most people would laugh, but as an ultra runner, marathon training feels way less time-consuming than training for a mountain ultra. If all goes well, I hope to be out running around 6am on Sundays, home by 9 to spend the rest of the day together. How will friends fit in, I’m not sure yet… that’s a problem to tackle at a later date!