I felt like I was neglecting my baby by going to the office every day. I quit a job I loved and felt better almost immediately.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sarah Hollingsworth. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I was living in San Antonio, working for an IT company, and leading their global trade show teams. I had two promotions in four years and got to travel the world. I loved my job so much.

Then I got pregnant with my first baby.

By May 2019, I gave birth to my first daughter, AJ. Just after she was born, my husband got a job that relocated our family to Austin, a little over an hour away from the city I had lived in for nine years.

I thought I would intrinsically know what to do with a baby, but it wasn’t like that. I quickly discovered there were so many things I wasn’t prepared for. Like when I brought AJ home for the first time, I was frantically crying and hysterical because I didn’t have any newborn clothes. I didn’t even know they existed.

I want back to work after 3 months of maternity leave

My husband took paternity leave, and my mother came to town to help me with the baby, but I was still struggling. Breastfeeding was very painful, and AJ was a horrible sleeper. My hormones were out of whack, my world had shifted, I was isolated in a new city, and small things would set me over the edge. Everything scared me. I don’t remember feeling any joy as a new mom until AJ was 1.

At the time, I convinced myself that how I was feeling was normal, but looking back, I was depressed.

Looking back, I wish I had done this to identify that something was wrong. I wasn’t even meeting my own self-care and basic needs. I had literally stopped brushing my teeth — that wasn’t normal; it was a red flag.

After three months of maternity leave, I went back to work. Remote working wasn’t a thing at the time. I was expected to work from the office in San Antonio.

I would wake up at 6 a.m. to get on the road by 7 a.m. in order to be at the shuttle stop by 7:35 a.m. I’d be at the office from 8:30 a.m., working all day until 3 p.m. I often pumped breast milk on the shuttle and at work. On the way home, I collected my daughter from day care and would have 30 minutes with her before putting her to sleep.

I felt like I was neglecting my kid.

I was afraid to tell people how I was feeling

My body started to show signs of stress. I broke out in bumps and blisters all over my hands, melasma, and had severe Perioral Dermatitis on my face. It was humiliating to go to work.

At my lowest point, in January 2020, I remember driving to work, because I had missed the shuttle, wondering what would happen if I hit the car in front of me. I didn’t necessarily want to die, but I couldn’t see a way out of the situation I was in. I felt desperate.

No one at work knew what I was going through. One of my bosses didn’t have kids, and my other boss had kids in high school. I had no idea how to broach that topic with either of them.

I was afraid to tell my husband, friends, and family how I felt. I didn’t want people to distrust me when I was around AJ.

But after a week, I found the courage to tell my husband. His initial reaction was: “How can I help?”

He found me a therapist, and we started having discussions about continuing to work in the corporate world. I literally felt like I was dying, going back and forth to the office every day.

At the end of January 2020, I quit my job. Within three weeks, all of my postpartum symptoms and depression were alleviated.

As I started to get better, I imagined a business I’d like to run — a baby registry complemented by content to support new mothers. When you’re not in a good head space after having a baby, this platform could be a simplified destination where you could find information about preparing your mind and body to welcome a new baby into the house. I wanted to help women avoid getting caught off guard like I was. I desperately needed something like this, so I wanted to see if I could create it. I went on to create Poppylist.

As much as I loved my corporate job, it just wasn’t sustainable as a new mother. I wanted to have it all, but I came to realize I couldn’t, not all at once.

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