Being a new mother is never easy — add a global pandemic, limited maternity leave and a lack of access to child care, and the stress becomes overwhelming, if not mentally debilitating.
For Emily Hulthen, these factors, partnered with an apathetic workplace, made a
“I just had all of this built-up stress, anger and sadness,” says Hulthen. “It took me a long time to be honest with myself. It’s something that's hard to admit and see in yourself.”
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Feelings of sadness, anxiety and irritability are common after having a child. According to the American Psychiatric Association, up to 70% of all new mothers experience “baby blues,” characterized as short-term feelings of sadness after giving birth. But up to 20% of women will experience postpartum depression, which is a much more serious decline in mental health.
Mothers who suffer from PPD can experience severe mood swings, overwhelming fatigue, reduced pleasure in their usual interests, isolating behavior, lost appetite, feelings of worthlessness and guilt, difficulty bonding with their baby and thoughts of harming themselves or their baby.
“We look back at pictures during so much of that year, and my son is happy and smiling, but I just remember so much sadness,” says Hulthen. “It makes me feel guilty that I couldn't enjoy those moments with him. And I feel angry that those experiences were taken away from me.”
Hulthen pinpoints the start of her PPD at three months after giving birth. Up until then, Hulthen had been using her employer’s eight-week maternity leave and three weeks of PTO to stay home with her newborn. She was set on being a working mom and splitting child care responsibilities with her husband, who planned to take paternity leave after she returned to work.
“I’ve always known that I wanted to work,” says Hulthen. “I know I can be a better mom if I have that piece of independence. Staying home wouldn’t have made me happy.”
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While Hulthen felt like she and her husband had a set-up that would work for them, the reality was far from ideal. As director of account management, Hulthen had plenty of responsibilities to juggle when she went back to work in June of 2020. To make matters worse, she found that other leaders at the company did not seem to empathize with her circumstances. She recalls how senior leadership had been pushing to return to the office just a few months after the start of the pandemic, despite the possible health risks.
“I felt like I was the only one on my side,” she says. “Everybody else either had spouses at home to take care of their kids or had older kids, and were 20 years older than me. If they had just put themselves in somebody else's shoes, that would've helped me.”
While Hulthen attempted to work through these challenges, many other women have been forced to leave the workforce altogether, with twice as many women leaving than men during the pandemic alone. Thousands of daycares permanently closed across the country, and the cost of child care centers rose by 41% in 2022, according to online marketplace LendingTree.
Hulthen’s husband ultimately was unable to take his paternity leave all at once — the couple decided it was safer to divvy up his six weeks over the course of the year so they could fill in the gaps left by limited child care accessibility. Luckily, Hulthen’s mom was also able to help out twice a week.
But that limited support wasn’t enough: Hulthen was a new mother, faced with leading a company through a pandemic while providing for her baby physically, emotionally and financially. She remembers how her son would wake up every 45 minutes, and how she had to start work at 4:30 a.m. to try to get ahead on work before her son was up for the day. Eventually, everything Hulthen had endured in the past year after giving birth bubbled to the surface.
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“When I got into a minor car accident, it triggered something inside of me,” she says. “My husband and I were up at my parent’s house after the accident, and I remember just snapping at them. I had reached my boiling point.”
Hulthen’s parents and her husband recognized that Hulthen was suffering from more than just stress or irritation; they pushed her to go to therapy, where it became clear that Hulthen was suffering from PPD.
“I don’t know if I would have ever recognized that in myself if someone else had not recognized it in me,” says Hulthen. “When you have your first child, you’re excited to have normal milestones and this great relationship, but the pandemic really took a lot of that away from us.”
Hulthen has reflected on the immense guilt she feels, knowing that she couldn’t always be emotionally present for her son in those early months. She says she has concerns that her son’s development will be impacted by her experience with PPD.
“I wanted him to be a part of a happy, comforting and safe environment, not have a mom who had so many gut reactions because I didn't know what was going on in my head,” says Hulthen. “It’s got to impact him in some way, but I try to remind myself that kids are resilient.”
A study in Jama Psychiatry did find that persistent and severe PPD could cause children to be seven times more likely to suffer from depression at 18 years of age. Researchers also found that these mothers were more likely to struggle with depression 11 years later. But Hulthen is determined not to repeat history. After eight months of therapy, Hulthen began to feel like herself again, finding clarity on not only her own feelings, but what was standing in the way of healing.
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“I realized I needed to be in a supportive work environment — I don't want my kid to ever sit in a job and be unhappy,” says Hulthen. “So I needed to model that behavior.”
Hulthen eventually left her employer (though not before ensuring that their maternity leave was increased to 12 weeks), and became a senior account manager at Ovia Health, a family health benefits platform. Hulthen says she was convinced from the interview process alone and her experience using the app personally that she was in the right place — and they haven’t proved her wrong.
“When my son tested positive for COVID in February, I remember freaking out because of past experiences with my previous workplaces,” she says. “But everyone I talked to asked, ‘How are you doing, how is your husband and how can we support you?’ They never asked me about work. It was such a sense of relief.”
Hulthen underlines how empathetic communication made the difference between a healthy and toxic workplace. She plans to rely on that, along with Ovia’s generous 18-week maternity leave policy, since she’s expecting her second child at the end of August.
For other employers looking to support their working mothers, Hulthen advises that leaders strive for flexibility and empathy in their interactions with workers as well as in their company policies. This may mean allowing moms to slowly transition back to full-time work, encouraging remote work as an option and giving adequate maternity and paternity leave — UNICEF recommends 24 weeks.
“As first-time parents, you will not always know what you need until you're in that moment. [Employers] have to give a lot of grace,” says Hulthen. “Now I’m allowed to be human, have a family and a career. I just feel like I've got all these people hugging me all the time.”
