Well, well, well... I'm back from my working holiday, and it's safe to say that reality has hit me like a ton of bricks. As soon as I stepped through the door, the suitcases exploded a mountain of clothes and souvenirs so the house looked like a bomb had gone off, and my husband was inundated with work deadlines that saw him working through the night. To top it all off, my daughter's school uniforms seemed to have shrunk while we were away, the kids are missing their Granny, and we're now in desperate need of a funeral for our pet mouse who unfortunately passed while we were gone.
Returning to work as a new mother can be emotionally challenging. After spending months taking care of your baby, adjusting to a new routine and separating from your little one can be tough. It's important to take care of yourself and give yourself time to adjust. Here are some practical steps to help you deal with the emotional struggle of returning to work as a new mother.
Returning to your original role with reduced hours can seem like the perfect solution when coming back from maternity leave. Make it work for you with these guidlelines.
The judging eyes. As parents, we’ve all felt them. Our kids are too loud, they’re crying in the supermarket, they’re bottle fed, they’re breastfed, they’re using a device of some description, or they watched seven and half minutes of In The Night Garden because you were simultaneously trying to unpack lunchboxes, make dinner, respond to an urgent work email while reciting Llama Llama Red Pyjama from memory, and something had to give.
Returning to work from maternity leave can be a huge adjustment. For so long our day to day lives have revolved around the minutiae of keeping a small human alive, fed, clean, socialised and generally content but for many the return to work is an inevitable hurdle on the parenting journey. To ease the transition, it can be helpful to understand your family’s pain points and put some plans in place to make life a little less frantic.
