My Midlife Pivot
When Change Became My New Normal
Who moves, changes jobs, and has a baby at 40? Apparently, me. It was supposed to be a midlife upgrade, but instead it was my midlife meltdown!
My husband and I had been married for seven years, both working full time and raising our two kids. I had many good friends in Houston. We were a tight group of young physicians who worked together. We all got married and had our babies around the same time. We shared our child-rearing struggles, work challenges, and marital issues (like how to get our husbands to help more on the home front). We partied together, with kids, whenever possible, and we appreciated being a support group for one another.
Then at age 40, everything changed. My husband was offered a new job as an academic division chief with a promotion to full professor at a medical school in a small Southern town. At that time in our marriage, his career seemed more important than mine. We agreed this was a great move for him since I was busy being a mom of soon-to-be three and working full-time. My new job would be one of the regular neonatology attending staff. David was seven and Anne was four years old at the time. My third child, Laura, was born in February before we moved in June.
Boy, was I was unprepared for the changes and upheaval that came my way. Our move created a mountain of new tasks for me as a mother—finding a new home, a new school, and a new nanny. Luckily, we located a perfect, larger house with a big backyard. Unfortunately, we cashed out some of our retirement savings to physically enhance the rugged, steep backyard into a level playscape (a bad financial decision). I discovered a small private school in a nearby neighborhood with a good reputation and great teachers.
I lucked out in finding the right nanny, the young wife of a pharmacy student. She had years of babysitting experience and was eager to earn money while her husband was in school. She had a sweet personality and terrific energy, and she worked well for us for three years. In retrospect, she was one point of stability in my new chaos.
I began work just as the children’s school year got underway, when the baby was seven months old, and immediately realized that my new neonatology job was a hot mess. Suffice it to say that my boss was very old-fashioned and inflexible, my new call schedule was horrible, and the two women in my division were unfriendly. Go figure. Another working mom-pathology-resident who had recently moved to town with her husband became my bestie.
One good thing happened. Breastfeeding my third child went flawlessly for one year, despite the prolonged period of pumping breastmilk once back at work. Snide comments about my efforts to pump breastmilk at work were irritating and the NICU provided little privacy for pumping (in a supply closet). But I desperately wanted to continue nursing my youngest, and last child, for as long as possible.
What was worse - the children’s reactions to our move or my job? Anne developed fears of robbers and burglars, and she began to wet the bed. David had trouble at school transitioning from Montessori to traditional classroom teaching. I hated my job and battled against it mentally. So many issues overwhelmed me – getting this one big paper published, starting a new research project, my awful call schedule, being “assigned” a quality improvement initiative to lead, and trying to get promoted.
I was a mess, and I began to both sleep and eat less. I was continually unhappy and sullen, and whined about missing my friends terribly. During and after my phone conversations with one of them, I cried. Some days I yelled at my son and my husband. Most days I complained about how terrible my life was. I constantly worried about Anne’s fears and David’s poor transition. Only breastfeeding the baby may me feel loved and secure.
I became depressed – they called it postpartum depression since Laura was still under one year old. But I think it was my midlife meltdown. Fortunately, medication and psychotherapy helped me immensely, and I began to recover during our second year in this new city.
Two years after our move, I continued to harbor resentments. I was finally promoted to associate professor with tenure, but I felt bitter about not being promoted during my first year there. I perceived the delay in my academic promotion as an insult. My personal work ethic, typical hyper-responsibility, and tendency toward perfectionism, set me up for continuing disappointments in my new job.
I had embraced the chaos of juggling a newborn, a new job, and a new address and come up short. Despite all my husband’s attempts to help me, my early midlife adventure felt like a huge failure.
How was it that my reaction to these major life transitions went so badly? Why did I adjust so poorly rather than adapting? I have thought about these questions and read about midlife transitions quite a lot since then (I was too busy back then), and I have discovered a number of ways to more effectively process our major midlife transitions.
Stay tuned, because Part 2 - scheduled for next week - is how to process your midlife transitions successfully.
You are amazing for navigating all of those big changes and unkind people! What struck me is how people were so rude at a time when a little lovingkindness would have been so helpful to make each day a little brighter. ❤️
As if having a third child wasn't enough...
Now that I have grown kids and I am a retiree, I fully understand how incredible and superheroic is to be a working mother...You have my utmost respect!