During maternity leave whilst I loved being at home and spending time with my baby, I was looking forward to going back to work to get a little bit of me back. I saw going back to work as also a means of having a break from mum life (unbelievable...no…I can assure you many mums relate). As a career driven women I did not want motherhood to stop me from achieving my career goals. When it got close to my return to work, I felt an overwhelming amount off sadness, as a lockdown mum and being with my son all the time I struggled to see how I would cope leaving my baby to go to work. Thinking of all the things I would miss. I wasn’t aware or prepared for all these feelings, it consumed me at times.
The real emotional battle started with the settling in day at nursery before returning to work. I only left my then 10-month-old for 1 hour but cried my eyes out because I just couldn’t believe how fast he was growing and how I would cope going to work if I was struggling to leave him for an hour. I spoke about how I was feeling with my close family but never felt I had the ability to speak about the anxiety I felt about coming back to work with my employer. Not even during my keeping in touch calls before my return. I think this was because the nature of the keeping in touch calls were really work focused and with not much discussion into personal matters.
When I started my first day at work from maternity leave, I remember walking to work with tears pouring down my eyes. My son had just cried his eyes out when I left him at nursery, and I felt so much mum guilt leaving him to come to work. I questioned whether it was too early for me to come back work after 10 months, it almost felt unnatural leaving my son. When I got into work I pulled myself together to show I was ready to come back and get stuck into work. On my first day I had a catch up with my manager, my expectation was that we were going to speak about how I felt coming back to work, whether I needed any support and bring me up to speed with what has been happening at work. However, the focus of the conversation was more again was specific to work, not really considering that I had been out of work for 10 months and especially in lockdown and the challenges that came with.
I was still breastfeeding and had informed my manager that this was the case before my return. The response I had was to reach out to another team member myself to sort this out. While pumping my milk at work there was no designated room or fridge to store my milk. I had to pump in a prayer and first aid room and store my milk in the communal fridge kitchen that everyone used.
In addition to the mum guilt, anxiety and breastfeeding at work I also had a lot of brain fog. At times I would just completely blank out when doing a piece of work. My baby was often falling ill and then passing it to me (a normal part of being at nursery they say), all of these made the transition back to work harder than I anticipated.
Balancing work, childcare, family and also looking after myself is something that still overwhelms me every day. There is an expectation that women just crack on with work when they return from maternity leave….not recognising the fact they have been out of work for a duration of time and need support to excel on their return. Many companies have great onboarding programs for new employees, but research reveals that almost none give that the same level of attention to employees returning from parental leave. More needs to be done to support women returning from work after maternity leave and have provided some considerations below:
· Have a plan to reintegrate the new mothers in your company.
· Prior to their leave, establish a plan of gradual reintegration into their role, and begin to have check-in conversations with the mother as their leave comes to a close.
· Conduct an employee orientation geared towards returning mothers. Provide an overview of the company and organization updates that unfolded during their absence.
· Provide adequate pumping space and ensure mothers are aware of this.
· During catch ups, have a wellbeing check ins to provide a space for parents to vocalise anything they may be going through. To support or signpost if needed.
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