Life After Parental Leave: Reflections on My First Year as a Working Parent

Today marks a special day for me. It marks exactly one year since I returned to work from a generous 6 months of parental leave. As the saying goes, the days truly are long and the years (in this case just my first year) are short. Reflecting back on my first year as a working parent, of identical twin boys, I felt inspired to share my top 3 insights from the past year. 

One: Just like becoming a parent you are never truly ready for the return to work. 

When you are getting ready to have a baby you get all sorts of advice from what swaddle to use to what bottles are the best. Then of course there is my personal favorite that caused my blood pressure to rise every time I heard it…”sleep when the baby sleeps.” Before I returned to work I also sought out advice from those that had blazed the path before me. Most of the advice I got was around the difficulty of balancing your work life and your new personal life. While I conceptually understood the advice I was being given, it didn’t really truly sink in until after I returned to work and realized I was nowhere near as productive as I had been before kids. While I did get 6 months of leave, which is an amazing amount of leave for US standards, my first three months back I felt like a foggy version of myself. I felt myself getting frustrated that I wasn’t as sharp as I had once been. Which is no surprise as I was living off of about 4 hours of sleep a night at that point. As the year progressed I found the fog began to lift. At some point I felt as if I had rebooted my brain and much of that knowledge that had been pushed into storage began to resurface. My advice for other parents out there is to keep going. It does get better and you do get your brain power back, at least most of it. 

Two: Sometimes how you prioritize your day is out of your control. 

I am one of those people who like to go into the day knowing what I want to get done and find blissful fulfillment crossing something off my list. It didn’t take me long to realize I was no longer totally in control of how I spent my day. My twins were born close to 2 months early which meant a few extra challenges along the way including each needing surgery in the first three months. On top of that we had two additional ER visits and numerous days where someone was sick. That someone could be one or both of my twins or our childcare provider.These sick days turned into a mad scramble in reorganizing the day. This usually meant a frenzied huddle with  my husband trying to figure out what shifts we could take. This also meant there were inevitable conflicts and debates over who had the more important meeting that couldn’t be missed. At the end of, insert time period of sickness here, both my husband and I would be completely exhausted and feeling like we somehow both did more than 50% of the work. My advice is good luck, hold on for the ride, and call in all the friends and family who at some point, even if they didn’t really mean it,  offered to help.  

Three: Balancing your work identity and your parental identity is a job in itself.

It wasn’t until becoming a parent that I realized how much of my identity I had wrapped up in working. I’ve had a corporate role and have always been working for the next big thing for almost 20 years! Before I went out on leave I had concerns about what would happen while I was gone and how I would continue to make my mark when I got back. As I was trying to learn this new way of working I was also trying to figure out how to be a parent for the first time. I of course had no idea what I was doing as a first time parent because no one gave me any training or any kind of instruction manual (rude).  Over the past year I have had to come to terms with not succeeding at everything and allowing myself some grace. This past year has taught me that I think we truly are our biggest critics and that employers, friends, family, etc. are often much more impressed with us than we are with ourselves. My advice is if you have figured out how to be the best parent 100% of the time and the best employee 100% of the time please let me know (but first you should probably patent it). 

I love my boys more than anything and I love my career. Every day, every struggle, every roadblock, and every celebration has been worth it. I hope I can continue to successfully navigate my way through this working parent adventure. I also hope my insights have helped you. Or at least made you feel a little less alone in your own journey. 

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