It is amazing how much more understanding your colleagues are to your situation when you get back to work after the loss of someone dear and near to you. In the past year alone I have seen two of my colleagues lose their parent and seen the entire team rally around them to pour in support and help. It was a matter of pride for me that I belonged to one such team that was empathetic and sympathetic to anyone in need- especially after a 'life event' such as bereavement. However I am rudely awakened to realize this doesn't extend to pregnancy or becoming a mother. While everyone is quick to jump on the congratulatory bandwagon, very few if any, actually stop by to enquire after you or how you are coping. Instead it is invariably a game of 'wait n watch' to see if and how you have changed pre- and post-motherhood. In my mind, becoming a parent is also one such event- it is a life event. One that shakes up your core and leaves you panting for every breath of life you must take in order to keep your sense of balance and sense on. As a woman coming back after maternity leave into corporate routines again, let me tell you- child birth is indeed a LIFE EVENT. if you thought just because we live in a nation of 1 billion this whole cycle of events is common place or a matter of everyday happening- gosh then think again!!
When colleagues say "you are not the same as before maternity", maybe you have just changed as a person or your priorities are elsewhere I feel like shouting back a biggg YES!! Would anyone of them think of telling the same thing to a guy who has just lost his parent??? Why is it that in the event of a loss of life we pour in more sympathy than in the event of birth of a life?? If in the former you have to grapple with a sense of loss and emptiness, in the latter what we feel is a sense of excess and feeling overwhelmed. It is a huge onset of responsibilities at a pace you never thought possible and everyday life suddenly turns into a series of unplanned events and 'change of plans' agendas! Couple this with an attempt at two working parents with very little support then undoubtedly this is far bigger than bereavement or any other life event. The apathy with which one looks pityingly upon a fellow colleague who is grappling with this situation is appalling... my own sense of pride in belonging to an empathetic team is slowly evaporating as I see it happening to me. Needless to say work life has become a series of days that I no longer look forward to and one in which every slight mistake is getting thrown back at me as a sense of lack of confidence or oversight on my end. While it is rational to say this is your personal life and at work it is translating into lesser productivity, the same can be said of health issues, bereavement and any other such circumstance. Yet none of these other occurrences lead to the wrath of the corporate leaders like this 'maternity problem' does.
So i decide to take stock and think of how I could have avoided this pitfall and what I need to have done differently and what I now need to do differently? When I look back, I know I gave it my 120% during my pregnancy, now in hind sight i feel I could have stepped off the pedal and taken it easy, it don't matter how much harder I try, an impending maternity leave signifies my career will slacken and ratings will normalize. Prior to heading off on maternity leave I didn't plan on the kind of role I would like to come back to, I should have assigned myself to a mentor to seek guidance on planning my maternity leave better. Maybe I could have had a monthly touch base just to stay appraised of the happenings in my team, maybe I could have regularly checked my emails and ensured I stayed on relevant distribution lists. This would surely have negated my sense of apprehension on feeling disconnected when I get back (and yes this did happen when I got back). Thirdly once I joined back, I should have proactively sought to ensure I get greater visibility into the current happenings within my team. Fourth- I was anyways coming back to a normalized track, I shouldn't have accepted a challenging role, I should have anticipated that I would be judged at every step of the way, there is bound to be pre- and post-maternity comparisons, I need to accept that post maternity things wont be th esame no matter how hard you have thought or mentally how hard you have fought. That acceptance alone can go a mile in ensuring you are biting off what you can chew, while you are proving yourself as a new parent you certainly don't need more points to prove.
Now going forward here is what I plan to do- take a step back and look at how I can ensure I accept work that is only ten hours of work every week day, there is no point in trying to measure up to everyone else's yardstick. Setting some work schedule boundaries and sticking to it so that i can ensure i get my daily quota of six hours of sleep everyday (Yes I am behind on this quota by like some 8 months). Pause and ask others who are back from maternity leave around me if they are struggling too and offer any tips I can to help :) (Thats a biggg to-do in my list going forward). In some sense, maternity does set you back a bit, after all your baby has really roughed you up before coming out and softened your edges once she is out. There is invariable change in me, all the more enraging when others point it out. But I think at the end of it all, I need to accept I have changed and move on, remember that this is a life event i am dealing with (just like when I lost my mom or my gran). I need to back off on myself and stop trying to prove so hard that I haven't changed..... there you go- I said it. Yes i have changed, I have some distance to go to catch up work wise..but am I any less productive- god no! Only I know how much more i m cramming into my 24 hours, I cn truthfully say I have NEVER done so much before! Only now have I realized what it means to rise from the ashes... I look in the mirror and doubt not that I am a phoenix in the making..... :)
When colleagues say "you are not the same as before maternity", maybe you have just changed as a person or your priorities are elsewhere I feel like shouting back a biggg YES!! Would anyone of them think of telling the same thing to a guy who has just lost his parent??? Why is it that in the event of a loss of life we pour in more sympathy than in the event of birth of a life?? If in the former you have to grapple with a sense of loss and emptiness, in the latter what we feel is a sense of excess and feeling overwhelmed. It is a huge onset of responsibilities at a pace you never thought possible and everyday life suddenly turns into a series of unplanned events and 'change of plans' agendas! Couple this with an attempt at two working parents with very little support then undoubtedly this is far bigger than bereavement or any other life event. The apathy with which one looks pityingly upon a fellow colleague who is grappling with this situation is appalling... my own sense of pride in belonging to an empathetic team is slowly evaporating as I see it happening to me. Needless to say work life has become a series of days that I no longer look forward to and one in which every slight mistake is getting thrown back at me as a sense of lack of confidence or oversight on my end. While it is rational to say this is your personal life and at work it is translating into lesser productivity, the same can be said of health issues, bereavement and any other such circumstance. Yet none of these other occurrences lead to the wrath of the corporate leaders like this 'maternity problem' does.
So i decide to take stock and think of how I could have avoided this pitfall and what I need to have done differently and what I now need to do differently? When I look back, I know I gave it my 120% during my pregnancy, now in hind sight i feel I could have stepped off the pedal and taken it easy, it don't matter how much harder I try, an impending maternity leave signifies my career will slacken and ratings will normalize. Prior to heading off on maternity leave I didn't plan on the kind of role I would like to come back to, I should have assigned myself to a mentor to seek guidance on planning my maternity leave better. Maybe I could have had a monthly touch base just to stay appraised of the happenings in my team, maybe I could have regularly checked my emails and ensured I stayed on relevant distribution lists. This would surely have negated my sense of apprehension on feeling disconnected when I get back (and yes this did happen when I got back). Thirdly once I joined back, I should have proactively sought to ensure I get greater visibility into the current happenings within my team. Fourth- I was anyways coming back to a normalized track, I shouldn't have accepted a challenging role, I should have anticipated that I would be judged at every step of the way, there is bound to be pre- and post-maternity comparisons, I need to accept that post maternity things wont be th esame no matter how hard you have thought or mentally how hard you have fought. That acceptance alone can go a mile in ensuring you are biting off what you can chew, while you are proving yourself as a new parent you certainly don't need more points to prove.
Now going forward here is what I plan to do- take a step back and look at how I can ensure I accept work that is only ten hours of work every week day, there is no point in trying to measure up to everyone else's yardstick. Setting some work schedule boundaries and sticking to it so that i can ensure i get my daily quota of six hours of sleep everyday (Yes I am behind on this quota by like some 8 months). Pause and ask others who are back from maternity leave around me if they are struggling too and offer any tips I can to help :) (Thats a biggg to-do in my list going forward). In some sense, maternity does set you back a bit, after all your baby has really roughed you up before coming out and softened your edges once she is out. There is invariable change in me, all the more enraging when others point it out. But I think at the end of it all, I need to accept I have changed and move on, remember that this is a life event i am dealing with (just like when I lost my mom or my gran). I need to back off on myself and stop trying to prove so hard that I haven't changed..... there you go- I said it. Yes i have changed, I have some distance to go to catch up work wise..but am I any less productive- god no! Only I know how much more i m cramming into my 24 hours, I cn truthfully say I have NEVER done so much before! Only now have I realized what it means to rise from the ashes... I look in the mirror and doubt not that I am a phoenix in the making..... :)
