I Had a Baby to Stop Being a Workaholic

by Chaunie Brusie

My rainbow baby was the lesson in slowing down that I so desperately needed and now? Both business and I are better off for it. 

Trigger Warning: This story discusses pregnancy loss.

The year I welcomed my fourth baby within six years—meaning I had four kids aged six and under—was also the same year that I first hit six figures in my business. 

I’d like to say that I reached that elusive business milestone because of a dedicated system of delegating, outsourcing, and smart decision making, but the truth is, I only got there because of one thing and one thing only: working myself until I was literally sick. 

I was unhealthy in every way possible, but I had dreamed of becoming a successful writer for so long that reaching that point felt like something I couldn’t turn away from. My life became consumed with work and I didn’t know how to stop the train once it had started. I convinced myself that all I had to do was work harder, hustle more, and get up earlier to get it all done. 

I was a cliched oldest daughter overachiever with undiagnosed anxiety, a millennial mother who bought into the toxic hustle culture that convinced me I could do it all without help and there was only one way out: I had another baby. 

Changing direction

All right, so it wasn’t that simple, but after I stumbled into career success, I lost my way for many years. My work became all-consuming, my health started suffering, and I had two back-to-back miscarriages that were very difficult experiences. 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I fell into postpartum depression as a result of my first miscarriage and then, when the second one happened, it felt like any light that had been flickering in my soul was just swept away. I had allowed myself to hope when I saw those first beats of my baby’s ultrasound screen and when my midwife broke the news to me that, unfortunately, the heart was beating too slowly, it felt like my own heart stopped too. I went home that day and had to wait for my baby to die inside of me. I felt like the only way to protect my heart was to harden it, and so that’s exactly what I did—I threw myself into working like I had never worked before.

Instead of dealing with the hurt my losses caused me, I tried to work my way away from them. 

I’m ashamed to admit this now, but I even hosted and ran a writing class while I was actively miscarrying. Guiding my students on the ins and outs of the freelancing writing world was 1000% times easier than sitting in the darkness of my broken heart. I was afraid that if I stopped—even for one minute to peer into the depths of the hurt and grief inside—that I may never resurface. 

I was afraid that if I stopped—even for one minute to peer into the depths of the hurt and grief inside—that I may never resurface.

It took me a full year after my second loss before I felt ready to try again for another baby, and when I did get pregnant, I was an anxious, fear-filled mess of a person. I was bedridden for weeks in my first trimester with both debilitating morning sickness and an unspoken fear that if I so much as breathed wrong, I would miscarry again. Moving into the second and third trimesters did nothing to abate my fears; every night, I would have vivid, terrifying nightmares that I lost my baby in a horrific, unimaginable way. I’d wake up, sobbing, drenched in sweat and tears, certain the loss had really happened before I realized it was another dream. 

Through it all, if you guessed that I took on more and more work instead of dealing with my (undoubtedly logical) fears and anxieties, you’d be right. In addition to the full-time income I was already making as a freelancer, I accepted my first full-time “real” job as an assistant editor as well. I doubled my income and worked furiously, setting arbitrary goals each month to keep me going: first, a family camper; then, a new hot tub.  

I told myself that I would slow down after I had the baby and until then, it was full-speed ahead. 

And then, one night at 35 weeks pregnant, on the day my midwife left for an Alaskan cruise, I woke up bleeding. It felt like my nightmare was now a reality. 

After the storm, comes a rainbow

Fortunately, despite my fears, my daughter was born healthy and after spending a week in the NICU, she was able to come home with us. 

But the experience changed me forever. It took me sitting in the NICU parent room (an actual closet that my husband and I fondly dubbed “the dungeon room”) emailing editors and stressing over missed deadlines—one editor refused to let me extend my deadline by even a week and I was crushed when I missed out on a $500 assignment—to realize that something drastic needed to change in my life. 

I had faced my biggest fear in potentially losing my baby again and now, nothing else mattered. I knew that I couldn’t run myself ragged anymore. I had to finally face what I had been running from for so long and become a healthier version of myself for both me and my family. 

And it definitely wasn’t easy, because only a year later, the pandemic would hit, but it did feel like almost overnight, my rainbow baby empowered me to change. I quit my full-time job, I took an actual “real” maternity leave and lived off the money I had been saving from freelancing, and I even enrolled in therapy for the first time. When I talked about my miscarriages for the first time, I burst into tears. 

Resetting my priorities

The hardest part was the fact that I had to physically retrain my body on what it felt like to sit and rest instead of work 24/7. Truthfully, this is something I will probably always struggle with, but I started simple: forcing myself to join the family at movie night and just enjoy the snuggles of a child on my lap; putting my phone and computer out of sight when I wasn’t working (easier said than done!), and even–gasp!–making a concerted effort to watch TV now and then without working, just for the fun of it. If you’re a freelancer used to working 24/7, you’ll know exactly how hard it is to do that and once you realize you’ve reached a point in your life when you have to force yourself to watch TV just for pleasure, you realize how bad it’s gotten. 

I was someone who filed an article while in labor; someone who could not physically sit through a movie without working because she felt guilty for ‘wasting time’…

But the truth is, I quite literally did not know how to not work at every moment of the day or night. I was someone who filed an article while in labor; someone who could not physically sit through a movie without working because she felt guilty for “wasting time;” someone who sighed with irritation anytime a child walked into her office; someone whose other children no longer clamored to sit by her on the couch because the space on her lap was always occupied with a computer instead. In my mind, “just” sitting was laziness and if I could be making money, why wouldn’t I? 

Now, with my arms full of the baby my heart longed for, I finally gave myself permission to rest. 

I rediscovered the joy of what it meant to do nothing but sit and hold a baby all day. I played with my kids again. I watched actual movies without (gasp!) working during them. I grieved the loss of the other pregnancies I had lost when my daughter’s birth brought up years of unresolved emotions. I acknowledged that the pace I had been keeping—and the hustle culture that promoted it—was toxic. I was worthy, with or without my work. 

For me, my baby was the great reset that I needed. I fully admit that might sound downright backwards, for me, it’s the truth—my baby was the catalyst that finally stopped me in my workaholic tracks. 

I’m happy to report that now my daughter is two years old and I’m back to working a successful pace again. Ironically, taking the break I needed to deal with my emotions and healing and allowing myself to “just” be a mom also led me to find better balance in my career again. 

I’ll probably never stop loving my job or the thrill of the freelance hunt, but this time, I’m doing things differently. Because I’ve finally learned that if I’m lucky enough to have a child in my lap, you had better believe I won’t be kicking them out for my computer. 

Read More:

I’m a Better Mom When I’m Working—Here’s How I Found Acceptance

Chaunie Brusie is a mom of five, a native Michigander, and a Registered Nurse turned writer and editor. Her work has appeared everywhere from The New York Times to Glamour to Parents magazine.