Riding the wave of maternity leave

5 min read

Countdown - the time has come, I’m diving into another phase of motherhood, about to have my 2nd child.  I am officially on maternity leave (sorry if I have bored you to death with Instagram stories on this point).

The build up to this has been such a different experience, firstly it’s gone by like the speed of light. You would think the pandemic would slow time down, but life has been relentless with a toddler, and a full time job for a global company. I’ve not had much time to think about the new baby, birth and all that it brings but I'm now focusing solely on that. 

What I wanted to address in this blog post is the approach to work, taking maternity leave, what happens to your brain when you go back to work and how you can mitigate some of the pit-falls of being a returning mother.

I didn’t really have a plan about what I was doing after I had my son. I was 5 years into being self employed and I had enjoyed a steady pipeline of work with clients.  I never really had to look for work, and so I thought I would miraculously pick up a part time contract once the baby was born, probably when he was like 6 months old and it would all be sweet and that would be that.  HAHA who am I kidding?!?

It appears on the back of 2019, there weren't many part-time contract roles about.  There also wasn’t much flexibility on remote working.  I hadn’t factored in that I may need some help when I had my son with returning to work, with no support network in place (no family or friends to help) and my husband already commuting and being out the house for 12 hours, 5 days a week and us living an hour and 30 mins from Central London (where most of my clients had previously been) as well as the nurseries not opening before 7.30am, it was impossible for me to get my son to a nursery and be in a London office by 9am (which was my usual standard).

The realisation kicked in that I couldn’t make it work and I suddenly started to feel quite low about it all. I became quite withdrawn and upset at the prospect of never seeing my child in the week and leaving him for long periods. It felt like the only solution was to get a live-in Nanny but I hadn’t had a child to then not see him. 

So on I plodded looking for jobs, whilst I landed a few contracts there was always a caveat with me needing to be in London 5 days a week - I quickly became disheartened especially with bills piling up around us. This went on for months but then out of the blue I was super fortunate that an old boss that I used to work for approached me with a permanent role, which I jumped at the chance. It appeared they were open to remote work, which was a lifeline just at the right time as we were heading towards a dark place financially.  

Then ironically as awful as it was, Covid struck which meant that myself and my husband were both 100% remote, so our whole work/life situation completely changed on its head in a more positive, workable manner.

Had I thought about all of this before I had my son, my struggles might not have been so hard, I've been reflecting on this as having no plan was really naive of me.  I want to share what I learnt along the way. I should caveat, I’m certainly not suggesting that anyone works through their mat leave, or spends the whole time worrying about getting work, but as I was self employed at the time I could have done things differently, that would have helped me had I had a plan of action:- 

Visibility

I chose rather late in my maternity to start a community platform on Instagram - so Keep Good Company was born.  I was incredibly nervous about all this, and didn’t really have a content strategy, but I knew I had to learn about how to market myself and talk about the things I do at work.  I didn’t really have a clue about what I was doing - I have learnt a heap of stuff in the 18 months I have been running this community space, making lots of connections and also having some great opportunities come my way because of it.  People that I have learnt the most from  are Helen Perry, Rebecca from the Social Den, and Holly Tucker.  I think it’s good to keep visible within your industry, whether that's via the gram, twitter, blogging or which ever medium you feel is right for you, writing is something you can do in your own time, with no pressure, and is a valuable skill to have in between the baby feeds. 

Networking

When I first started looking at networking I wanted to approach it as an ex-colleague Sharon O’Dea had with the concept of meeting up with #100people. All the work I had got previously with my business had been through people I had worked with in the past, so I knew it worked. However then Covid hit, and frankly everyone was too busy to do a virtual coffee over Zoom after back to back calls all day.  So again Instagram became my platform of choice to use for networking. I am busting to get back to the good old fashioned ways though, I have a very long list of people to hit up for coffees/lunches and maybe the odd cocktail... - whenever that may be!

Confidence

I wanted to mention confidence as mine took a huge nose-dive after I had my son and after speaking to lots of other friends who had children it seems its a common theme. For me personally, I'm not sure why tbh, there were so many reasons. It may have been the traumatic birth, it may have been that I had no support nearby, it may have been that I felt really isolated, it may have been that I lost friends, it may have been I never saw my husband due to him working/commuting, it also may have been that I got seriously ill 4 times due to breastfeeding (I had mastitis) so it was tough, despite feeling deliriously happy that I had this wonderful baby.

I also think a huge factor was my Mum was slowly dying as soon as I had my son, her health deteriorated quickly and by the time he was 7 months old she had passed away.

With all that was going on, the pressure of no money coming in and no resolution about how I could still provide for my family financially but also come up with a solid plan about how to look after my child in between made it all overwhelming and I felt backed against a wall. 

Which is why I fully support the work of MotherPukka and Pregnant then Screwed, who are campaigning hard for mothers rights when it comes to part-time work/flexible work (which can apply even if you are NOT a parent).  If more roles were available that were part-time/flexible there would not be this horrible choice that women feel they have to make, children or a career. I wanted both, and I certainly didn’t want to take a role much junior to what I had done previously, but there just didn’t seem the options at the time. Things have moved on a lot since then, the business of looking for such roles are changing with companies like That works for me.

I also felt like my brain didn’t work, I forgot so many things all the time, I once forgot my son’s name, it was like my brain had been replaced with mush - I now know it’s a thing but at the time I felt utterly stupid and redundant. Which is why I was overjoyed when I came across the brilliant Confidence course by Upfront’s founder Lauren Currie. I went on her course and it did make me feel 10 inches taller, I gained a perspective of “I can”, which had a domino effect and I haven’t really looked back since.

Up-Skilling

I hate this word, as actually when you go on mat leave you end up gaining so many skills that you didn’t realise you had, which makes you a better employee when returning back to work. However I did go on a mission to learn about lots of new things, not necessarily in Product Management, but I looked at other things that I hadn’t tapped into before, like marketing myself, writing about myself, learning social media skills. I can’t stress enough how this has helped me feel more confident. There has been a surge in online courses too since the pandemic so attending talks, conferences and short courses has helped me to get on the right track with broadening my skills.

Kindness

Looking back I wasn’t very kind to myself. Motherhood is a complete juxtaposition of joy and difficulty and unless you have the right network of people around you it can be hard and super challenging. I’ve learnt over time to be kinder to myself, I'm now actually really proud I survived and kept my baby happy and alive despite all the challenges I faced with everything. Not to mention the whole work dynamic. I'm very lucky that I have a great employer now who has been kind to me when I needed to take time off, work flexibly, start my maternity leave sooner but I realise I am very privileged to have this, especially throughout the pandemic, so many women haven’t had this support.

To summarise, this is a unique time and you want to enjoy every moment with your baby, I hope the above will help you think about how taking the time off and coming back into work can be made a little easier so it's not such a worry for you.

I am certainly going to work on all these things a second time around to make the transition easier.  Will report back how it’s gone.

Take care of you

Carrie

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