 |
| My parental leave is ending and my morning rituals won't be the same. |
It was at 6am when I paused and took stock of
the situation – newborn son strapped to my chest to prevent him from crying
while I baked a batch of healthy oatmeal cookies for my wife as she got a
precious couple of hours of uninterrupted sleep – and thought: this is paternal
leave, this is perfect.
I couldn't tell you what day it was, because
I'd lost track of them. The newborn mother's life revolves around feedings,
while a newborn father's life revolves anything he steps up to: diaper changes,
healthy dinner prep, walks in the park, tea-for-wifey-making, and other tasks
that gobble up the day and makes you focus on what must. Get. Done. Now.
And it's during that hustle and bustle that
I've found time to stop and take it all in. That's when everything else – work,
chores, lack of sleep, the rest of the world – recedes from view and I focus in
on this little man and his mother and enjoy the moment.
It's like a tunnel vision of love.
And I wouldn't have been able to appreciate
those moments, let alone live in those moments, if I wasn't on parental leave.
And that's not just my own selfish reasoning. Helping around the house, taking
care of my wife, bonding with my son, and adjusting to the enormity of
fatherhood are all important benefits of a man’s parental leave.
How does parental leave in Germany work?
New parents in Germany get little over a year
of paid leave that they can share between the two of them. But it gets confusing
from there, since the time is as flexible as putty. I had a colleague who
became a father and took most of the parental leave, while the mother returned
to work shortly after their son’s birth.
The full-time benefit can also get stretched into as much as three years of part-time leave. To figure out our parental leaves, we spent a lot of time on German websites with Google Translate. Then getting confused with the bureaucratic complexity and frustrated the lousy translations.
In the end, someone in HR literally drew Kata
a diagram and we went for the simplest Elternzeit
option. Kata has taken 12 months of leave, and I took the month after our son's
birth and then, because he came at the end of the year, I carried over my
remaining 2018 holidays and tacked it to the rest of my parental leave. So, I
had six glorious weeks with my young family.
What do you do with your parental leave?
Well, it's not fucking holiday. You don't
sleep, you don't get out, and you rarely wear anything other than sweat pants
because when the baby sleeps, you're going to sleep as well.
But you know how people say they grow every
day? This is a chance to watch that happen – almost in real time. He comes home
as a skinny, cute newborn and then things happen. Then his cheeks fill in. His
legs and arms grow longer. Facial expressions are expressed. He gets stronger.
His eyes get focused. You turn around one day and see that he's watching you
(and feel immediately guilty about watching the phone instead of the tiny
person growing beside you).
You're getting to know him. You know the
pillows he likes, the socks he hates, and that he is strangely fascinated with our
couch cushions. You start gabbing at him about anything as you change the
diaper while he screams, then you notice he's stopped crying and is watching
you, getting to know you too.
My parental leave is ending today, and I’m
trying to keep it together. But the journey is just starting, so I'm grateful I
was around for the very beginning, and excited for what comes next.
No comments:
Post a Comment