- You don’t come back to work after 6 months of maternity leave. Turns out you take 12 months maternity leave.
- You have mixed feelings about going back to work, but you could probably guess that. It takes about a week for you to remember how to write a report again.
- It takes almost two years for you to get a place for your daughter at a good daycare centre, bet you never guessed that.
- You go to work in tears for the first couple of weeks, leaving your baby with her grandmothers. A year later when you put your daughter into daycare you go to work in tears again. Dropping her off still fills you with dread. Picking her up still makes your heart beat fast with excitement.
- Work is a breeze compared to being at home with a baby. Getting to work is not. Often the work of getting to work is greater than work itself.
- Hearing about mothers without maternity leave, or without the financial support of partners, or without negotiable employers - without choices, mothers who are forced to return to work long before they or their babies are ready, will bring tears to your eyes with the injustice.
- You don’t care about the office with the good view anymore, you don’t care about petty office politics, and you wonder why anyone else there does. You care about having a reliable income, about being easily contactable for your child’s carers, about whether your child is being emotionally damaged by you working, about keeping your boss on-side in the hope that he won’t pressure you to work full-time, about doing a good enough job that no-one resents you for working part-time, about making sure no-one at work sees when you’re exhausted and distracted and wishing to be out of there.
- Even though you work part-time it will take almost a year before you will feel like you aren’t working one day too many away from your baby.
- For a long time, you’re happy if you can pull this off – holding down a job outside the home, taking good care of your child, and still having a life of your own. One day you want more – you want your job to be challenging, to have opportunities for career progression. But you can’t bear to be apart from your daughter for a full working week and you don’t know when you will be able to bear that situation. And what if you and he decide to have another baby – how many more years of this stale career will that be?
- You know how you read about working mothers and their sacrifices? How they can never have it all? How they always seem to be giving up something? You know how you think right now that somehow you will do it differently to them, that you will pull it off. Well, those sacrifices are yours… now.
10 things I wish I could have told myself when I was wondering about being a working mother
July 1, 2007 by blue milk
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Nicely done. I think all mothers make sacrifices and those sacrifices are worth it.
I just wish this discussion wasn’t still, largely, about mothers and work. It should be about fathers too, and for some fathers it is, but for most fathers having a baby doesn’t make any substantive difference to their working week.
It’s 3am, and I’m awake with a 6 month old, so at this stage I’m wondering how I’ll ever:
a) get enough sleep to get through a day at work
b) get out the door before 9am.
I had a job interview thingy a few weeks ago. Getting out of the house by 7.30am (without the baby, because Nanna came to him) required a military-type operation. It was only for four hours, but the interview was for a full-time job, and at the moment I’m not sure how I’ll be able to do it.
Except that I have to do it. There aren’t that many jobs available in my line, and restricting my choices to part-time means being unemployed until after my savings run out. I need a job with real money and conditions, rather than yet another casual or short term job like all the others I’ve had. I need holidays, and superannuation, and maternity leave in case we decide to have another kid. I need to work full-time so that we don’t raise our son in poverty, so that we have some money spare at the end of the month to have savings, so that one day we can have assets and security.
Sadly, Peter Costello doesn’t get that the Baby Bonus doesn’t make the difference between having a third kid or not. Having a job to go back to, not having to give up every thing that you worked for pre-motherhood, well that just might make a pretty big difference.
I worked for the last 8 years of my 8 1/2 year old daughter. Three weeks ago I gave up work and am now a Stay at Home mother because the guilt of afterschool care and vacation care got too much. I don’t plan on ever going back. I can’t do the Mother guilt anymore.. I’ll take the Career guilt anyday!
The baby went to sleep, so I didn’t add: I’ve been working from home on a consultacy thingo in the last few weeks. Having my Mum around to play with the baby, bring him to me when he needs a breastfeed, and just generally keeping him near but occupied while I earn money & use my brain in a way that I’ve missed, is really really good. This isn’t an option for many people, and in that I’m very very lucky.
everything that’s on my mind right now is on your list.
it’s an interesting way to look at my experience now, as if I’ve already gone through it and I’m looking back at the angst and the searching and the ‘blogging’ at 2 am because of it. oddly helpful to project myself into the future to look back with more wisdom and distance.
I think you are thoughtful enough and aware enough that although you will probably suffer, you’re child won’t. I hope that’s some comfort!
(excuse the spelling mistakes)
[...] Blue Millk. Isn’t that a cool name for a blog? It’s also a great premise about correcting parenting fallacies that will fuck. you. up. No need for that, it’s hard enough as it is. Work is a breeze compared to being at home with a baby. Getting to work is not. Often the work of ge… [...]
Thank you for the comments.
kate – you need a blog! you write so expressively. I really feel for you struggling with the lack of choices in your re-entry to the workforce. I think the kind of flexibility you’re talking about with your baby nearby while you work is the perfect outcome.
I remember prior to returning to work wondering how the hell I would cope with the sleepless nights and this was the major reason behind my night weaning my baby. But babies also change rapidly and a couple of months can make all the difference to them and you sleeping better. Re. getting your baby and yourself ready and out to work in the morning – its fucking hard. I remember wondering what on earth I used to do in the mornings before I had a baby – how could I have possibly found that hectic?
Jo – good for you, life must feel incredibly different for you now.
momomax – thank you for telling me that what I’m writing about is relevant. I wish you luck going through your re-entry to the workforce.
Victoria – thank you for the reassurance, it feels nice to read.