The Pelican's Fiat

Just a few days after Valentine’s Day in 2023 - following a weekend of 3-hour naps and unexplained light-headedness -  I decided to take a pregnancy test.

Those two pink lines thrust me into a season of soul-searching and decision making that, as a newly-married 30-year-old with a career, I’d anticipated for many years prior.

8 weeks later, as my husband and I began sharing the news with family, friends, and colleagues, the questions poured in: will you quit your job? Will you keep working? What will you do about childcare? How will you fill your time?

I was indignant. Working in the pro-life movement, one of my primary talking points for years in presentations and media interviews had been that “women can do both”. Women can work and be mom. We don’t need abortion – heck, we don’t even need childcare.

We can literally do it all.

For nine months, this was the Great Plan that I preached. My husband, who – thanks be to God – had wonderful paternity leave through his job, would be able to stay home with our son one day a week and that would be the day I’d go into the office. The rest of the week, I’d be working and mom-ing from home full-time.

Doing both.

Doing it all.

How hard could it be?

Women in all corners of my life cast glances of doubt in my direction when I told of this Great Plan, and, if I’m honest, it made me feel ashamed. They’d say things like, “you’ll leave as soon as you meet that baby” and “most women quit after those first few weeks.” I thought of the women I’d met over the years who had run pregnancy centers, lobbied state legislatures, marched on Washington… all while having and raising babies. Surely, I’ll be one of those women, I thought to myself. I doubled down on my conviction that I could do both.

And yet, a lingering thought in the back of my mind (I trust others recognize that familiar gentle voice) tugged constantly at the thread of my plan to be supermom. Little by little, I allowed my plans to unravel in my mind – creating “plan B” and even “plan C” if “plan A” proved to be impossible. But I held these admissions close to the vest – unwilling to admit to others that I might not actually want to do both.

The shame of desiring to just be “mom” was palpable and pervasive.

Fast forward to that moment – no, not the one you’re thinking of. It wasn’t the moment I held my son in my arms for the first time or when we brought him home from the hospital. It wasn’t the hour he latched onto my breast in an ethereal moment of maternal bliss or when the touch of my own skin quelled his little cries.

Actually, it was 3 or 4 weeks into my maternity leave. I was run ragged by the challenges of breastfeeding and exhausted from lack of sleep and feeling stuck in my own body. A problem at my job made its way into my purview.

“Maybe I should come back to work early,” I heard myself say to my boss.

And just then, I looked down at my son. My heart swelled at his helplessness. And I recognized with remarkable, impossible clarity exactly what I was doing.

I was running.

For Christmas, my husband gave me a necklace with a pelican etched into the pendant. Those who are familiar with the symbolism of the pelican know that legend says she’ll pierce her own breast and spill her blood to feed her young in times of scarcity. This kind of self-sacrifice is a choice – and, what’s more, I believe with my whole heart that it’s a choice hard-fought.

It is not natural to simply walk away from a career one has built for more than a decade. It is not natural to shift gears on your life in such a significant way overnight. It’s not easy to accept the reality - the beautiful, hard, transcendent reality – that you are now wholly responsible for keeping alive this little body.

For keeping alive this little soul.

In those first few weeks, I thought I might buckle under the pressure of the realization that never again, for the rest of my life, would I be unattached to this baby - who, I’ll be honest, felt like a stranger at times. But, in that moment, I saw with total clarity that pursuing my Great Plan would mean running away from my vocation.

I’d be running away from my sacrifice.

 And so, I said ‘no’ to an early return to my job. A few weeks later, I said ‘no’ to my job.

In and through my ‘no’, I said YES. I said ‘yes’ to being my son’s primary caretaker. I said ‘yes’ to running my husband’s household. I said a resounding YES to prioritizing my family and my home over work that – while important – is not my Vocation.

Because this is the truth of what I discovered while I was on maternity leave after giving birth to my son: women simply cannot do both.

We cannot do it all.

Inevitably, something will be outsourced. So, the question becomes: what in my life is so important that I cannot – will not – allow someone else to do it?