The last weeks …

… of sleeping late-ish (8:30!) and of no schedule, of making plans on the go…

… and of my parental leave.

In Luxembourg you get to choose what type of parental leave you want. Before giving birth, the mother has two months off (calculated based on the due date). After birth, there are three months of maternity leave. Then, it is mandatory that one parent takes parental leave. This can be of different durations: 4 or 6 months full time, 8 or 12 months part time, or another one which I’m not very familiar with (like one day off every week for 20 months or something like this). The other parent can take the parental leave anytime they want, until the child is 6 years old, for the same durations. While it is considered equal, when you’re on parental leave, depending on your earnings, the revenue is capped. So if the father earns more and therefore a bigger cut in the revenue will occur, one will have to think well ahead if the household will “survive” without this money.

Anyway.

I decided on the longest leave because I had nothing to lose and I wanted to offer this time to the little one. It might also be because in my home country you’d get two years off. 9 months are nothing compared to two years. And being almost at the end of my leave, I don’t know how one can hold on for two years and still be mentally sane – my deepest respect to you.

My feelings about starting work and the little one nursery? Very very mixed. I’m happy to go back to my research. And to get preoccupied by something else than sleep schedules, teething, separation anxiety… you name it. But I’m not happy to be separated for so long from someone I spent every moment with for the past 8 months and a bit. To know every breath, burp, hunger / tiredness / poop sign, every move, every smile, every sound… and suddenly you have to be away from them for many hours. Daily.

Of course, it will happen gradually (there are two weeks of accommodation at the nursery and each day you leave them a bit longer, until at the end of the two weeks they’re on full schedule). Of course, it will be nice to be a person again. To see if the clothes still fit. To talk about something else than how long was the last sleep and what was served at the last meal and what’s the general mood of the day.

But then again, my heart breaks and it doesn’t. It’s a new step for both of us. To discover new things, to have fun, to adapt to new situations and then to get back in the arms you know the best, to the smell you adore (I don’t even know who I’m talking about, me or the baby).

The funny thing in this? I will go back as if nothing changed, but everything inside me has changed.