Maternity Leave

Five months into motherhood, Brittani Sonnenberg was exhausted. After four days at a plush Mexican beach resort, she felt reborn.

- Brittani Sonnenberg

BOARDING THE FLIGHT to Cabo with my husband, Alejandro, my arms felt unnervingly light. It was our first trip without Ona, our five-month-old daughter. “She’ll be fine,” my mother-in-law had reassured me the night before, as I stroked Ona’s sandy hair.

Still, my heart felt a little hollow as the plane took off and Austin disappeared beneath the clouds. Would I be able to enjoy the next four days on the Baja Peninsula? Or would I spend our romantic vacation weeping into the massage pillow and, on the beach, seeing Ona’s face when I looked up from my book, instead of the crashing surf?

Ona, if you’re reading this years from now, forgive me for saying that these anxieties—and all the other incessant motherly panics about bottles, diapers, and naps—had melted away by sunset, when I sat on the terrace of our suite at Rosewood’s Las Ventanas al Paraíso (doubles from $1,656), gazing at the Sea of Cortés.

I hadn’t realized, as the one doing so much soothing over the past five months, how badly I needed to be soothed myself. I had grown skilled at reading Ona’s cues—but what about my own? The sea held my gaze, lulling my frazzled nervous system (as did the perfect Mexican margarita, putting Texan versions to shame). I rested my head on Alejandro’s shoulder. Explosions of carmine bougainvillea and slate-green spikes of agave studded the desert landscape. I felt, in a rush, how very tired I was. But here, unlike at home, I could rest.