Returning to work after maternity leave can be one of the most stressful and challenging times for a mom. Whether you took 6 weeks, 6 months, or 1 year of maternity leave, returning to work is difficult. Besides navigating postpartum and raising a tiny human, your return to work date is a deadline that looms over your entire maternity leave. And depending on your family’s situation, there is a need to find childcare by the time you return to work. Some parents alternate their maternity and paternity leaves to have the baby stay at home longer. Some parents have other family members who can assist with child care. No matter the situation, two working parents have to find childcare before the maternity and paternity leaves end. You can refer to my other blog post Daycares for more information on finding a daycare.
Our goal was to have our daughter start daycare in the new year at 6 months old. We wanted to avoid starting her in daycare in November (when I went back to work) as that was right in the midst of flu season. Given the timing of everything, there was a balancing act that my husband and I had to do in order to make this work. Enter the Accounting Momma with yet another Excel file! I created an Excel file to lay out each week between due date and the end of the year. I then allocated my leave and my husband’s leave in the file so we could figure out which weeks we were both working full time, where we would need to determine additional childcare options. The question of when and how our daughter would arrive also threw the dates off, as leave is determined based on date of birth (and not due date) and disability leave varies for regular delivery vs c-section delivery.
I am very fortunate to work for a company that offers a generous maternity leave program, in addition to offering a flexible return to work policy whereby I was able to slowly transition back to work by working part time (20 hours a week) for four weeks (while still getting full time benefits/ pay). As such, I took the 6 weeks of disability after giving birth plus 12 weeks of bonding leave before returning back to work part time (20 hours/week for 4 weeks) and then full time after that. I returned to work full time during the week of Thanksgiving, which was nice as it was a short and slow week. I was also able to take some PTO before my company’s 2 week shut down between Christmas and New Years, which helped bridge the gap for not needing childcare until January. During the few weeks where I was working full time, my husband took some of his additional paternity leave for part of it, and then we also had grandparents come help watch our daughter at our house (while we worked from home). So honestly, the timing of everything with our leaves worked out well and I am very grateful for that and for our incredible companies that we work for. I understand that not everyone’s maternity leave is like this — I won’t go into a rant about the US healthcare system and lack of maternity leave offered to moms. I was very blessed to be in this position, but it definitely took a lot of planning and coordination with both my employer and my husband’s employer. When I was working part time (20 hours/week for 4 weeks) I would work the afternoons Monday-Friday 1pm-5pm, so my husband (who was working full time during that time) was working his 8 hour days before then (5am-1pm). It was an exhausting 4 weeks, but we knew that it was only temporary, and we made it work.
While I did initially dread going back to work, part of me was very much looking forward to “getting back to the norm” and finding a work routine again. As you know, I am Type A, and I very much enjoy a daily routine, and even though I only went back part time at first, I was still able to find that sense of normality by focusing 4 hours of my day on work. The 4 hours gave me time to focus my attention on something other than my daughter. Returning to work helped give me another purpose in life and allowed me to stimulate my mind more (sorry, tummy time wasn’t cutting it for stimulation). Being a full time mom to a newborn baby (while my husband was working full time) got lonely and boring at times, as I wasn’t having nearly as much adult interaction as I used to when I was working. I was jealous of my husband who was able to interact with adults on a daily basis, meanwhile I was sitting at home doing baby talk. While I stayed in contact with friends and family (via phone), it wasn’t enough stimulation for me, and in hindsight, I think it would have been nice to try to join a mom group in the area to make friends and interact with other moms who are in the same boat as me. Returning to work and talking with adults was a rush — I had to switch off my mom brain for a bit and find my Accounting Momma brain to use while working. It was definitely an adjustment getting back into the swing of things at work. I took it slow, and my team was very supportive and helped slowly transition my tasks back to me while I adjusted from maternity leave to part time work to full time work.
While I am happy that we were able to keep our daughter home for ~2 months longer and delay daycare until the new year when she was 6 months old, I found it difficult to work from home with her in the house. I am a fully remote employee, which does have its perks, but it was a challenge at times knowing that (and hearing) my daughter was downstairs, while I was stuck upstairs in my office working. I had FOMO, as I didn’t want to miss any new thing she learned. Also, as Type A, I am a bit controlling, so it worried me a bit at first when our parents watched her as I wanted to be involved to make sure they were doing things the way I do things. As a new mom, I am slowly learning that I cannot control everything, and that I need to let things go, especially the little things. If my daughter would have been at daycare when I returned to work, or if she was being watched at her grandparents’ house instead of our house, or if I wasn’t a fully remote employee and was going into an office, I think I would have been able to focus more on work. It would have been more of an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mentality (obviously never fully out of mind, as let’s be honest, I think about (and worry about) my daughter most of the day). Again, I am very thankful for the maternity and paternity leave programs my husband and I had through our employers, and I am very thankful for our retired parents who were able to switch off watching our daughter during work hours. But having our daughter home while we also worked from home was a challenge, as I’m sure most parents who have had to work from home with a child can attest to.
One silver lining of having our daughter home while I worked from home was that I was able to continue breastfeeding her. At the time she was breastfeeding 5-7 times a day (~every 2-3 hours during the day) so it was nice that I was able to continue feeding her even while working (I made sure to make the time with my work schedule for those ~2 months). This also helped delay having to pump while I worked (which I’ll have a whole separate blog post on pumping). I prefer to breastfeed, so I was happy to continue to do that for my daughter, even while working full time.
I think most women return to work at the same time their kids go to daycare (or other childcare is introduced), which makes the transition even harder for moms as it’s a bigger adjustment. I’m thankful that I was able to transition one milestone at a time—returning to work first, and then 2 months later having my daughter start daycare. I raise this point, as I truly started to feel postpartum depression and anxiety when my daughter started daycare (and not as much when I returned to work, which I think is in large part because my daughter was still home with me). Some moms may feel postpartum depression and/or anxiety earlier on, but I know a lot of moms who feel it around the time they return to work. I know that everybody’s situation is different, and I’m not trying to dictate how (or when) postpartum depression and/or anxiety should be. I’m just here to share my experience with it.
I mentioned this in my Daycare blog post, but my daughter transitioned to daycare so seamlessly—she didn’t even cry when we dropped her off. I was the one who was tearing up on the drive over. Part of me was offended that she was not more upset for my husband and I to be leaving her, but the other part of me was proud of her for tackling this new stage of independence with confidence. That first day was really tough for me, as it was my first day without her at home. I had basically spent the last 6 months with her *almost* 24/7, and now I was leaving her at a daycare for 8ish hours a day. Every break I had in my workday, all I wanted was for my daughter to be downstairs so I could go say hi and get a snuggle (I know I just complained about not being able to work as well from home while my daughter was being cared for in the same house, but it was really nice being able to see her throughout my day).
Again, being Type A, I was a bit controlling for the daycare teachers —I would message them at least once a day on the app. In the Infant class at daycare, they go off of our schedule at home (so we tell them when to bottle feed, when to nap, etc. – while they also go off of her cues). Our daughter typically napped very well at home, but napping at daycare was a struggle, so that would usually throw off her standard routine anyways. The daycare teachers will update the app with her feeding time, nap time, etc., so I would constantly be checking to make sure they were feeding our daughter at the time I told them (or within 30 mins of it), and if not, I would send them a message to check in. I was very polite in my messages, and I would even apologize to them for sending them messages every day (they claimed they didn’t mind and understood, which was very sweet). After a month or so, I did finally calm down and learn to let the controlling go, as we put our trust in this daycare provider to care for our daughter, and they see her day in and day out 5 days a week, so they will learn her cues and they will feed/ nap her as our daughter wants. But to say it stressed me out was an understatement, as I really needed to work on my controlling behavior and desire for our daughter to stick to a schedule. Again, I think it improved after a month or so, but I did struggle with the anxiety of daycare and lack of control.
Another factor of my postpartum depression and anxiety was pumping. I consider pumping to be one of the worst parts about being a working mom with a breastfed baby. I will go into more detail about pumping in general in a separate blog post, but needing to pump 3x during the day was more than just an inconvenience, it was mentally draining. I would schedule out my pumping sessions to try to align with when my daughter was getting her bottles at daycare, but obviously as a working mom, pumping sessions would conflict with meeting times occasionally. While I did use the wearable breast pumps, which did allow me to work while I pumped, I tried to limit using them during meetings due to the sound and feeling uncomfortable if I was on camera. I started to worry that I wasn’t producing enough milk, as I was trying to produce 6oz each pumping session (to match the 3 6oz bottles my daughter was getting at daycare during the day). This just caused more stress for me, as I wouldn’t always be able to make up the same number of ounces. And one way to improve milk supply is to pump more, which I did not want to do. Another piece of advice for improving milk supply is to focus on your baby while you pump (look at photos, watch videos, etc.), but since I worked full time, I would pump while working (and focus on work, not my daughter, while I pumped). Besides the constant worry of if I’m producing enough milk, there was also the maintenance of the breast pump parts and making sure they were clean so I could re-use them throughout the day. After each pumping session, I would rinse out each breast pump part (and there’s multiple pieces per pump), dry off each piece with a towel, place into a re-usable zip lock bag, and then put into the fridge (to limit bacteria growth). With the 25 minute pumping session, plus the milk storage and cleaning of the breast pump parts, it was about a 40-45 minute endeavor, which I had to do 3 times a day! The only convenience was that I was working from home, so I could actually work and pump (pros and cons to this though), and I was able to clean my breast pump parts in my own space. When I went into the office, the pumping while working became almost unbearable. As I was not able to pump AND work at the same time at the office — I had a Mother’s Room where I would pump. This meant I was losing ~2 hours of work time during the day (40 minutes x3 pumping sessions), which was hard for me to comprehend at the time. I was able to get all of my work done, but it was very stressful calculating pumping and working.
The silver lining of my daughter starting daycare in January was that it was the new year, and my work did start to pick up more during this time as we approached year end. Work helped to keep my mind off of my daughter, especially if it was an extremely busy time and I needed to focus on my tasks at hand. I liked putting my brain to use – there’s always data and analysis in accounting, so I was getting the work stimulation that I was previously missing during my maternity leave.
With all of these factors (no longer having my baby with me daily, feeling uneasy about the lack of control with my daughter’s schedule at daycare, and having to pump while working), I was definitely going through some postpartum depression and anxiety. My husband helped me through this time, and I had even reached out to my doctor. I knew that I wasn’t alone in feeling like this, as postpartum depression and anxiety is very common and very normal for moms. And there are resources out there to help all the mommas who are going through this <3 Don’t dismiss postpartum depression or anxiety, as it is very important to address your feelings. Again, you are not alone in the way you’re feeling and if you want to talk, my inbox is always open – just head over to my Contact page and I’ll be there!
My main piece of advice for when you return to work after maternity leave – give yourself grace and take your time. Be patient jumping back into work, and don’t bite off more than you can chew. You’re human, and this is a major transition period. Don’t let work dictate how you should be feeling, and speak up if you aren’t comfortable with the workload assigned to you. You’ve got this momma!!