It’s natural for a woman, a new mother, to have a lot of emotions while returning to work after having a baby. Many a time, these emotions are conflicting. While you may feel sad for leaving your baby at home, you may be glad that the professionals will be in charge of him/her while you return to cater to your professional duties. It’s natural to be anxious when you leave your baby with someone else. You might also get angry that your office does not give you an extended maternity leave to look after your growing baby.
No matter what you are feeling, it completely makes sense for some women, the return to work happens sooner and is sadly harder than they expect.
However, there are a few things you can do to adjust to the difficult changes you might be facing:
Develop A Good Resume:
It’s important that you develop a good and professional resume after you get back to work following maternity leave. There are a few things that you must include while creating your resume. For instance, you need to clearly mention your work gap.
But do not just leave it there. Include a few things that you might have learned during this work gap. This may include community services, freelance work, taking up online courses and such.
Be Logical:
Before you join back to your office, you will have a handful of things to look into. This may include packing your bags, working out on a set of directions for the nanny to follow, jotting down the feeding time, even schlepping your breast pumping for your child if he/she is not yet in daycare.
Though all these might seem very taxing, it’s important that you brainstorm your mind and come up with means to cater to the morning and evening duties. This can be your starter plan, and as the days go on you can keep adding and subtracting more elements.
Think About Working From Home If That Option Is Available:
Many organizations provide this facility to the employees and it works out great for new mothers. If you start working from home, not only will you get the hang of the work, your baby will also get used to your absence for some time. In that light, it’s important that you work in a separate room, away from your baby.
This way he/she will understand that mommy will be unavailable for some time in the day. However, you also have to convince your boss that you will be able to meet the deliverables even if you work from home. Mention that you have childcare facilities at home and that you can focus on your work, set a deadline and include a particular date for the reassessment of your projects.
Your work from home option must not seem like a forever arrangement.
Get In Touch With Working Mothers:
As mentioned earlier feeling anxious about leaving your child back at home with a nanny or caretaker can cause a lot of anxiety to you as a young mother. But definitely, you are not the only one facing these concerns. There must be other working mothers in your office. Have you discussed your issues with them?
It is often said, advice should be taken from experienced people. Definitely, they have faced their own issues and you can ask them for a solution
In that light, consider going out for lunch once every week and start a forum or group where all mothers in the office can get together to discuss concerns, share experiences, seek for advice and such.
Many offices already have such a group at play. You can just join them, or if it’s not there, it’s a good idea to start one of your own. But if that seems a bit too much for you, you can ask these mothers out for a tea break for starters and then work through it.
Work On “I have to quit”
This is something every person goes through. For some women, this feeling can go on for months while for others it just might pop up as a thought on a bad Monday morning.
But for many mothers quitting their job is not an option. Many mothers feel this way during their transition period. The working-mother adjustment is a very difficult stage and one has to stay really strong during this time.
There are few ways through which you can fight this “I must quit’ feeling at work:
It’s important to realize that the transition you are going through is finite in nature.
- Create a list of things, obviously positive things that you get by working at your job.
- Create another list of things you bring to your place of work.
Understand that this is a new learning curve. Yes, of course, you know how to do your job, but now you are learning to do it as a new mother. Trust me, you will see a lot of difference in the work once you get this fact straight.
Try to celebrate small successes. For instance, you can write something in your to-do list and then strike it off once it’s done. This gives one a sense of achievement.
It’s important that you remain calm and patient. Do not make any harsh decisions in the first three months after joining back.
Motherhood is a beautiful experience, but it does not mean that you have to quit being a professional to experience it. You can do both with grace.
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