Catherine Reitman can still recall how "high stakes" it felt to be in the writer's room for Season One of her hit CBC comedy series “Workin’ Moms."
"The day we sold (the show) was one day after I discovered I was pregnant with my second child," Reitman tells TODAY.com. "I ran a writer's room and these stories — not to be incredibly corny — grew out of me at the same pace that this child was literally growing inside of me."
Five weeks after Reitman's second child, Liam, was born, Reitman, her husband, her two children and their two dogs moved to Canada to start shooting the first season of "Workin' Moms." During production, Reitman says she would work upwards of 17 hours a day.
"There were a lot of consequences of that, hormonally on the body," Reitman says. "My milk production stopped. My mind...I was (running on) pure adrenaline and fear and hope — hope that this show wasn't a fever dream; that it would mean something to somebody."
Seven successful seasons later, and Reitman now finds herself facing another "high stakes" moment — the final season of "Workin' Moms" and the reality that she will have to let her show go.
A feeling, Reitman says, that once again mirrors motherhood.
"My kid got in trouble at school, so he wrote a letter to apologize to his class. I asked if he wanted me to walk him to the door (the next day), and he said: 'No, I'm good,'" she says. "I cried all the way back to my car because he was so brave and he seemed older to me, and it broke my heart but I was so proud of him.
"There are similarities in finishing a show like this after seven years," Reitman adds. "I feel like now she is going to live her own life, exist on her own and doesn't require my constant editing, and there's a pride and a freedom to that — like when I dropped my kid off this morning."
'I didn't see my reflection anywhere else'
Reitman created "Workin' Moms" shortly after giving birth to her first son, Jackson, in 2013.
After she says she went "back to work too early" and experienced postpartum depression, Reitman says her husband told her she should "write your experience down, because I haven't seen that on TV."
The show follows four moms — Kate Foster (Reitman), Anne Carlson (Dani Kind), Frankie Coyne (Juno Rinaldi) and Jenny Matthews (Jessalyn Wanlim) — as they attempt to balance motherhood with work, romance and friendships.
The four women were written, Reitman says, as four different parts of her postpartum self: Anger, vanity, ambition and depression.
"I didn't see my reflection anywhere else," Reitman says. "I was unapologetically ambitious, like Kate. I was vain, like Jenny. I was lost and knew that this baby would come and I would end up in a blur, and of course that's Frankie. I felt like my dreams were over and my development was over and that made me really angry, (like Anne)."
The relationships the women share — both the highs and the lows — also represent something Reitman says she "didn't have the real estate for" as a working mother herself.
"Giving yourself the space, time and vulnerability to make female connection after you become a working mother is hard," she says. "I didn't have the time and space, or even the mental capacity to give what I knew was required of me to be a proper female friend.
"For me, the real fantasy was the connection Kate had with Anne," she continues. "To have just a completely unapologetic friendship where you can see each other's biggest flaws and still be each other's biggest cheerleader."
What to expect on the final season of 'Workin' Moms'
Reitman says the final season of the show will certainly be a "continuation of the women going after what they're entitled to, following their dreams and sometimes failing and sometimes succeeding."
"And when they succeed," she adds, "it feels so f****** good."
Season 7 will also, as Reitman says the show always has, "mirror the world that we're living in, and the challenges that we're facing us as women and as mothers."
"This season we tackled male birth control, and what if it was on men's shoulders to decide whether or not we were going to have children — because that is what's happening," Reitman says, referring to the overturning of Roe v Wade and the number of anti-abortion laws and bans in the United States.
"Is that something that men could handle if they had to make the hormonal sacrifices and the many discomforts that come along with taking an oral contraceptive every day?" Reitman asks. "That is a direct reflection of what's happening."
The final season also tackles the question Reitman says many mothers face as both their children and their own parents grow older and as they face the inevitability of their own mortality.
Reitman lost her father, legendary filmmaker Ivan Reitman, two months before production began on the final season. She says the loss of a parent creates a "shift inside of you."
"You go: 'OK, what am I doing? I'm not 20, I'm not 70 and I'm put on this earth for only so long. So what do I want to accomplish? Because I did it: I became a mom. Now my kids are in school and I now have to carve out meaning for myself," Reitman says. "In this final season, we see Kate recapture the magic that she believed in when she was in school — when your whole life was only designed to discover what you're good at and go after that. Then, somewhere along the way, we get pregnant, we get responsibilities and we start being 'selfless' even though that's not naturally what we've been trained to do up to that point.
"Seven 7 is about exploring that magic and who we are and claiming that," she adds.
'I have to be the three-dimensional, flawed woman that I am'
While the end of "Workin' Moms" means the show will no longer grow as Reitman and her family grow, she knows there will come a day when her two sons rediscover their mom in the characters she created.
"I'm certainly nervous," Reitman says of that day, adding that while "Workin' Moms" is based off her life it is certainly not 100% accurate.
"My husband never cheated on me," she points out. "There's plenty of things that happened over the seven years that were not a direct rip out of my lifestyle."
But Reitman says she "didn't create the show fearing that other women would go: 'That's not my experience, how dare you!?', just like she didn't fear that her children would one day say: "No no no, you're my 'saintly mother.'"
"I have to be the three-dimensional, flawed woman that I am to make the show work, and accept all the consequences," she says. "And of course, benefits that come along with it."
The seventh and final season of 'Working Moms' was released Netflix on April 26.
