A few thoughts on returning to work after my third baby & maternity leave

My stream of consciousness (and very conflicted feelings) on all things going back to work after my third maternity leave.

It hit me today that I’ll be returning to work in exactly two weeks, and let’s just say my emotions are all over the place. To be frank, this maternity leave and postpartum time has been by far my smoothest. With my first two maternity leaves, I was self-employed, so even though I still took 3 months “off” from work, it meant I had to crunch in a ton of work to get ahead before my leave, manage contractors who were helping my clients while I was on leave, and take a significant pay cut during my 3 months off work, since I was paying contractors to do the minimal client work I did have going on during that time. I was stressed about returning to work for entirely different reasons than this time around: would my clients still want to work with me? Would I be able to perform and crank out the same amount of work as I had pre-baby? Most importantly, would I still get quality time with my baby outside of my sporadic working hours?

It turned out, many clients did abandon ship (for a number of reasons), and I wasn’t able to do as much as I could pre-baby, and I did feel like I got way less time with my baby after going back to work. So much of the “freedom” of freelance writing that had attracted me to that career trajectory no longer felt freeing; it felt stiflingly stressful trying to keep up with my child-free pace when I suddenly had even more important (and way cuter) responsibilities at home.

So much of this mental tug-of-war — combined with a great job opportunity — led me to take on a full-time job earlier this year. It felt so good to have some consistency in both my income and my schedule for the first time in years… not to mention, I love the projects I get to work on and the people I work with.

So, heading into welcoming baby #3 and, now, wrapping up my 3+ months of (paid!) maternity leave, I feel incredibly lucky in so many ways. I don’t have to worry about client retention or unpredictable workloads anymore — for the most part, I know what to expect with my job, and what is expected of me when I return. I also don’t have to worry about going out and seeking out a bunch of big projects after not really getting paid for 3 months like the last 2 times. And, I feel incredibly, insanely, wildly thankful that my job is letting me return to work fully remote at first. There are SO many amazing aspects of my job and my company’s willingness to work with my personal demands right now.

Yet… I still carry with me this deep sadness about returning to work. It’s not that I don’t want to work — I really enjoy having a career (and I need to have some income for our family to live where we do and reach our financial goals). At the same time, my heart aches when I think of not spending my full days with Scarlett. She’s just 3 months old — it feels so young to be handing her off to someone else while I tap away on my keyboard all day. Even with the literal BEST nanny on planet earth who’s been with us now for 3+ years, I feel this way. I’ll thankfully be able to nurse Scarlett and help get her down for naps some throughout the day, but I still hold this deep, achey melancholy. On the one hand, I recognize how immensely privileged I am to be able to work from home and have magnificent childcare to care for my kids, but on the other hand it feels somewhat unnatural to hand off a tiny 3-month-old to someone else to care for when I feel like it should be me with her.

(Again, I can’t overstate how amazing our nanny is — it isn’t about that at all, and it’s not that I think I give some kind of “better” care… it just feels strange to think about being away from my young infant more hours a day than I’m with her.)

I think part of the reason I didn’t have this feeling the last 2 times post-maternity-leave is that I wasn’t returning to a full-time job. I worked for myself and could work whenever I wanted. While the stress and unpredictability of my income as a freelancer is what pushed me away from it, I also had a much more balanced home/work schedule. I worked part time (probably 15-30 hours, depending on the week) and could be with my kids, run errands, and take care of household stuff the rest of the time. This time, even though my job is flexible, it’s still full-time employment for a company that has (rightful) expectations of me and my time. As much as I’m so thankful that I’ll be able to feed and see Scarlett (and my boys) throughout the day, I also know there will be a part of me thinking about the work and messages and deadlines I need to get back to as quickly as possible.

As much as I want to stay present, I think the bleeding over of wanting to be with your family while working from home and wanting to do a good job at work is impossibly demanding and contradictory. I want to do all my tasks well at work, but I also know I’ll want to be the one helping Scarlett if she’s fussy or sick or only having short naps. Don’t even get me started on potentially missing her sweet, fun, important moments, either… I could genuinely cry just thinking about it.

On top of that, I don’t know where families find the time to do normal life maintenance when you have three kids not yet in school and two full-time working parents?! Meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking meals, packing lunches, cleaning house, exercise, the never-ending LAUNDRY… how do parents do it? I sincerely would love to know. We already outsource some of it (grocery delivery) and plan to get a housekeeper to come every 2-3 weeks, but still… the amount to do on top of wanting to spend quality time with our kids and each other, plus show up for our jobs. It feels insurmountable? Anyone else???

I share all of this with no true solutions, but genuine hopefulness that things will go smoother in my return to work than I’ve been anticipating. I also hope that other moms and parents know that their conflicting feelings about returning to work after having a baby are completely valid and very, very normal. While I feel sad in this phase and know it will be a crazy balancing act for a while, I also try to remember that I get to spend the rest of my life loving all of my kids, spending time with them, and making memories together as a family. While my one-on-one time with Scarlett is going to be shifting, my love for her never will, and I’ll work hard every single day to make sure she knows that.