Prayer of a Working Mom to Be

“So … where do you want to grow this year?”

My manager’s voice beamed enthusiasm through my laptop speakers and into my home office. I studied his face for any trace of irony but found none. “Grow” was evidently not meant as a tongue-in-cheek reference to my pregnancy.

I suppressed a wry grin. As we spoke, tiny limbs shoved against the walls of my expanding belly. At the moment, I was dealing with all the growth I was interested in.

I raised my eyebrows and mirrored back a smile, continuing the conversation about my career development with outward enthusiasm. As I nodded along with his portrait of opportunities in the coming year, a knot of discord twisted my stomach.

Thirty minutes later I clicked out of the video call. Sinking back into my chair, I let out a sigh. Time for a break. I shut my laptop and picked up my wooden rosary — meditating on the events leading up to the Crucifixion always helped put my own trivial worries into perspective.

Thumbing the small cross dangling from one end, I recited the opening prayers. As the Hail Marys flowed rote from my mouth and the beads passed through my fingers, I centered my thoughts on the first event in this version of the rosary. Jesus kneels in the garden to pray, anticipating the coming Crucifixion and feeling the weight of all human suffering.

I’d managed well at work during the first trimester of pregnancy. Knowing the nausea and fatigue were temporary, I powered through without a noticeable dip in productivity. At the start of the second trimester I’d anticipated a resurgence of normalcy, but none came. Hunger still grumbled incoherent complaints. Lingering nausea still spurred bouts of self-pity.

Ten small beads and Hail Marys later, I’d reached the second large bead. Jesus is falsely accused, bound to a pillar and scourged for crimes he didn’t commit.

As more weeks passed, the physical symptoms lessened, but a new set of challenges took their place. At work, I could no longer receive rapid input requests and expect the internal machinery of my mind to smoothly output a plan of action (“Configure requests to use the proxy server” => “Change code, update config files, restart servers”). Instead, I was manually operating each cog and wheel (“Update…something…code?”). Even when the mental machinery moved, a void replaced the surges of satisfaction I used to get from solving these problems.

The third large bead. Jesus is brought before the crowds, a crown of thorns pressed into his skull. He submits to this humiliation as reparation for our pride.

I thought back to the conversation with my manager. I’d swelled with satisfaction while he ticked off my accomplishments from the previous year. But even as pride filled my chest, it seeped out through a hole of doubt. I used to revel in new challenges. But now — with my thoughts and emotions wrapped up in the miniature person inside me — did I still care about tackling those goals? How would I feel once my nights were spent feeding and comforting a newborn, days working with my baby napping in the next room?

I kept my fingers moving as I arrived at the fourth bead. Exhausted, wounded, starving — He carries the cross through the jeering crowds.

Another fluttering kick brought my hand to my stomach — moments like these had become the highlights of my day. I closed my eyes and imagined the weight of my newborn boy in my arms.

“You’re not even born yet,” I whispered, “and already you’re all I want to think about.”

I still cared about doing quality work, wanted to be a good teammate, and believed I’d be able to balance some level of work with motherhood. But the spark that used to propel me through the workday was gone. I was exhausted by the prospect of getting through the rest of this day — let alone working through the rest of the pregnancy and early parenthood.

I arrived at the final large bead. Jesus looks down from the cross at the crowd that demanded his Crucifixion. He says to the Father, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Adjusting the support pillow under the small of my back, I remembered something I’d heard others say about parenthood.

In the process of becoming a parent, part of you is going to die.

I winced at my comparison of Jesus’ agonizing death on a cross and the death of my starry-eyed relationship with work. But in the middle of a self-exasperated sigh, the thought struck from a new angle.

Maybe losing that spark wasn’t the right death to focus on. Maybe what still needed to die was my subconscious belief that the primary purpose of my work was to satisfy me.

As the weight of this thought settled, I felt a surprising lightness.

I’d been struggling to find motivation at work in the embers of professional enthusiasm, but reframing work as a duty that I could still perform out of love for my family gave me a new source of energy. Not the roaring flame of high achievement—no doubt my professional goals would be less lofty this year — but the steady burn of a stovetop with a reliable gas line.

I said the closing prayer and set down my beads. I was still tired, still daunted by the changes to come — acknowledging that life wasn’t all about me anymore was one thing, learning to live that reality was going to be another. But I opened my laptop renewed— by the God who died to show us that not all deaths are a defeat. That sometimes, death is a necessary precursor to resurrection, and the start of a new kind of life.