For the past 11 months I’ve not been at work. Instead, I’ve been looking after a brand new little human.
by Meg Rowley
And now I’m back in the adult world again. With lunch breaks and hot cups of tea and Microsoft Teams. Where stand-ups are not just the best way to negotiate a nappy change and slide requests have nothing to do with play parks. I work in a national NHS tech organisation, so it’s important stuff.
It’s good to be back, but it’s also a little bit daunting. It’s not my first maternity leave, but that tiny voice in my head saying ‘what if I can’t do my job anymore?’ doesn’t go away.
It appears I’m not alone in this. A survey by TENA found that out of 1,000 working mums, 27% were excited about going back to work, 52% were worried and 27% were dreading it. 31% found it harder than they expected when they returned. It’s not good, but it’s sort of darkly reassuring.
Now life’s thrown a serious amount of stuff at me, as it does at everyone. Perhaps it’s because of this, or the fact I’m (ahem) a little older, but this time around I’m determined to take that little voice and give it a bit of a talking to.
You don’t often hear parental or carers leave described as professional development, but here’s the thing – that’s exactly what it is. So before I get lost in the day job, here’s my key learnings from my year off, which I hope will make me a better manager and person to work with.
If you’re returning to work yourself, welcoming a colleague back, or just curious, have a read. Some of it might resonate.
1. Good is sometimes just good enough
At work, I’ve always strived to do a blooming great job. And it turns out this filtered down into my personal life too.
I had every intention of being ‘really good’ at being a mum this time around. I would not make the mistakes I made before. I would glide through this with the ease of a seasoned professional. I would only buy second-hand clothes and use disposable nappies, blitz up organic purees whilst doing yoga and I certainly wouldn’t ever resort to googling ‘why doesn’t a 6 month old sleep?’ in the middle of the night. I would be zen-like in my approach and embrace the earth mother I always knew I was.
But stuff doesn’t go according to plan. In life and in work you have to expect the unexpected (which is easier said than done on very little sleep). When they’re screaming in the middle of a baby group and you end up leaving, red-faced and flustered, losing your wallet and keys in the process and feeding them a fruit pouch on a park bench, you can’t help but feel like a bit of a failure.
But quite often our expectations are set too high. Or at least mine were. Most of the time no-one is marking you – at work and at home. It’s not an exam. Sometimes it’s ok to simply show up and do your best.
2. There’s more than one way to achieve the same goal
When you’re on mat leave you meet a lot of mums. Or at least I have. Dads too, but more mums, because I guess that’s still the way the cookie crumbles. It’s networking on steroids, and you have to get quite good at it. For the most part I found my tribe and gravitated towards the people that did things the way I do them, and who parented like me.
But one day I found myself chatting to a mum who did things the opposite way. Whereas we went out all day every day, she mostly stayed in. We had no routine for naps and feeds, she had a military schedule. I mostly acted on instinct whereas she freely admitted parenting by numbers for the sake of her sanity. Was her baby any less content? It didn’t appear so. Was she any more happy or any less tired? Hard to tell, but who can really measure that on any given day? You see, we were both working to the same goal, even if our ways of getting there were very different. And it was sort of irrelevant, as long as it worked for us.
Think about that next time someone suggests something you immediately think is nonsensical or illogical. Is it really, or just not the way you would do it? And if the desired outcome is the same, does it matter what path you take to get there?
3. Know what you need and don’t apologise for it
There are good days and bad days. And it’s all completely out of your control.
On mat leave, I quickly realised on the bad days that what I needed was to be outside - space and air and trees and hills. I’d pack a rucksack and bob the baby in the sling and off we went to walk on the moors. Sometimes for hours. It may have been a bit nutty, but it kept me sane.
Now we work from home, we talk a lot about self-care, getting away from our desks and walking meetings. For me it’s not just lip service. This stuff is non-negotiable. Being outside grounds and revives me. And if I want to be my best self at work, or as a parent, I need to make time for that. I’ve vowed to keep activity and fresh air built into my daily routine, even if it means saying no to meetings or leaving something to come back to later. So far, it’s working.
4. It’s all about the long game
With a baby, a lot of the time, nothing much is achieved in a day. Or a week. Or a month. I sort of forgot how difficult this was for me, someone who likes results and moving things to the ‘done’ board on Trello.
But looking after a small human is never ‘done’. Most of the time all I achieved was getting us both to the end of a day where nothing was broken and there were minimal meltdowns. Sometimes the achievement was simply getting through the meltdown.
This is all a lot like the workplace, particularly in my job as a communications manager. Avoiding crisis and averting disasters is the name of the game. You can feel frustrated at times and insignificant at others. But it’s only when you look back that you realise the difference you’ve made.
As an organisation we are entering a tricky and complex merger, where the future looks more than a little unclear. The long game may be unknown, but panicking or being reactionary is definitely not helpful. As our boss very wisely said recently, just stay focused on ‘doing the right thing’.
So I’m now focusing on celebrating the small (and not so small) wins, at home and at work. The first smiles, the unexpected laughs and the tiny steps towards greatness. After all, it’s a toddle, not a sprint.
Meg Rowley is a communications manager at NHS Digital. You can say hello on Twitter at @CommsMeg
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Pic via Dan Smedley on Unsplash
