Exactly one month, ago I scraped a thick layer of dust off the iron and clattered myself in the shins trying to get the damned ironing board open. Wedding? Funeral? Nope, I was preparing to return to my job here at Stylist at the end of my second maternity leave. And while everything felt very different this time around, I found it much easier to change gears during this second bite of the cherry compared to the wild old ride of my first maternity leave. I definitely felt nervous. Every part of motherhood has been a learning curve for me. The sleep. The unparalleled love. The marital arguments. And despite doing The Big Return once before, my self-doubt-filled inner voice was shouting louder than ever.
So as I ironed the creases out of my freshly washed work wardrobe, I found myself reciting things like my laptop password in my head (note to self: always write that down somewhere before going on a long period of leave) and testing myself on people’s names so I didn’t falter when I had to walk back into the office as the new-not-new girl again.
Did I need to give myself this army sergeant treatment? No. Should I have treated myself with kindness, like I would any friend or colleague in the same position? Yes. But that’s the glory of hindsight isn’t it.
It’s now four weeks since I returned to work. Week one, I felt like Superwoman, with grand hellos and wonderful catch-ups with much-loved colleagues. Week two, my 10-month-old son was sick. Literally and copiously. At soft play, in the car (repeatedly) and, most hideously, over his three-year-old sister.
This meant a 48-hour ban from nursery, so we kept him at home on Monday. That turned into Tuesday… Wednesday… Thursday. Yep, he ended up having the whole week off, with a jigsaw of emergency childcare pieced together at 10pm on Sunday night that involved me, my husband and both grandmothers (very grateful to them both) pitching in. Being up all night with the baby, handing him over to a grandparent in the morning, then logging on for work and trying to do a good job just to return to a crying baby as soon as I logged off was tough, but we survived.
Weeks three and four have been – touch something wooden immediately – much less dramatic, and while the 3am bed hopping has been repetitive, I’m grateful there has been no more illness.
I suppose what I’m trying to say here is that no amount of ironing, password reciting or name recall could have prepared me for the reality of my return. Expecting the unexpected, being honest when things are going a bit wrong and finding the ability to laugh myself out of a crisis cry are the only things I wish I’d remembered. So if you’re about to return to work or you’re on maternity leave now, try to shed any anxiety that’s building up because life will always be the hardest in the moments when you’d like it to be smooth sailing. You’ve got this. And if you think you haven’t, throw on your headphones, put the kids in the Bugaboo/grab the scooters and get outside, because everything feels better after you’ve topped up your vitamin D.
Fliss Thistlethwaite
Digital content director, Stylist
(Mum to Amby, 3, and Frank, 11 months)
P.S. The iron has returned to the cupboard of doom to resume its role as an ornament.
