Back to work, back to reality

Runninglikeagirl - 26 Jun 16

This is the third and probably (never say never) final time of going back to work after a period of maternity leave.

My first son was born in 2009 and during the pregnancy we made an idyllic retreat from London to live near my parents and enjoyed my new found maternity leave embracing my hidden hippy, wearing him in a sling and enjoying lots of home cooked food, not necessarily cooked in my home (thanks mum), but home cooked.

I could probably write a whole blog on that maternity leave and the decision making process about not to return to my post in London. But one of my A-level English set texts, The Go-Between, By L.P. Hartley helped me come to my decision, with the opening line of the text ‘The past is like a foreign country, they do things differently there’

After my first son, when thinking about work, I knew I was no longer who they wanted me to be. My old job and London life felt like a lovely holiday or a formative memory, like my time travelling. I enjoyed it, but the lifestyle was no longer sustainable and more importantly I did not want to go back.
Although I still had the desire to be recognized and desire for affiliation and appreciation, I found the answer in a two pronged approach: one for the mind and one for the hormones, enrolling in a university course and working at the uni one day a week and by falling pregnant with my second child…

So by the time my first was 14 months old, number two was on the way, maternity leave rolled on, not always blissfully but working life as I knew it slipped further into the distance.

When number two was just three months old, my husband took a new job that would mean all of us moving to a new area, we knew no-one in the new county, it was two hours from my parents and the NCT group I had clung to during the firstborn’s baby and toddler years.

Suddenly work seemed like a good idea, so desperately seeking company I went back to work when my youngest had just turned one. We employed a nanny and I liked it, I liked work, I liked the fact the children were in their PJ’s when I got in, I liked the fact that I could walk out during the battles over the wrong bowl.

As nursery and school become a more viable option the nanny went, as uniforms and independence became the norm, my desire to have another baby grew and another period of time away from work started.

Yet in what seems like a blink of an eye, it is Sunday night on the eve of my first week back at work, albeit part-time.

This is the shortest maternity leave I have had, but I have enjoyed it immensely, I enjoyed it all because I knew I was returning to work: I was not in angst about who I am, or who I am meant to be, three children down and I know I am a mother, my job no-longer defines me.

On my return this time, I know it is not about trying to be someone I was, it is about being comfortable being the person the children have allowed me to become. A confident, working mother.

Runninglikeagirl

...trying to navigate the roadmap of life as a female, as a mother, as a wife, as a sister, as a daughter, and as a friend. A guidebook would have helped, yet some wisdom appearing with age. Three children & a husband are travelling along with me.

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