Anyone who has been ill for a week or so knows that the return back to work can be unsettling.  The feelings of the first day back at school for the new school year come flooding back – “What has changed?  Will I be teased? What will people say”?

It is hardly surprising then that returning to work after the extended 3, 6 or even 12 months of maternity leave is, for many women, traumatic.  Not only do you have to face the fear of the unknown, there is the emotional upheaval of leaving your baby, the adjustment to your new role as mother, the organisation required to even get out of the house and the worry (“will he be ok without me?”), the guilt (“am I a dreadful mother for leaving her?”).  You also have to deal with the process of ramping up to work mode and adjusting your brain to accommodate both the feed/sleep/change cycle and the adult intellectual challenge of work.  The inventory of stress factors could go on, and I am amazed that this major period of readjustment is not amongst the “top causes of stress” along with divorce and moving house.

You’re not alone: Most mums are anxious about returning to work (69% in a recent Coaching Mums survey said they felt anxious).  Just knowing that this is a normal reaction that you share with many others can help.

Dip your toe in the water… What ways can you think of to refamiliarise yourself with work before your 1^st day?   Ask your manager or a colleague to email you meeting minutes a couple of weeks before or copy you in on memos –anything that gently increases your awareness of what is going on.

Visualise yourself walking into work looking confident, smiling and radiant and practise holding this visualisation several times a day until you can just summon the vision and the accompanying confident feelings at a moment’s notice. 

Whatever happens – you’ll handle it.  Remember, you have got through childbirth and the difficult early months of motherhood – you can handle anything!

The Oxygen Mask

When coaching my clients, to illustrate the importance of attending to their own needs as a mother, I often use the analogy of the safety demonstration on board an aeroplane.  You know when you are instructed to put on your own oxygen mask before assisting a child?  Well, the obvious reason for this is that, if you pass out, then you can’t help the child.  Remember this analogy before you shout out “there’s no time for me”.  If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for your baby.  I’ve seen working mums burnout time and again because they didn’t attend to their own needs.  You MUST look after yourself if you want to fulfil all your different roles as mother, wife, worker etc to the best of your ability. 

It’s ok to be average.  Lower your expectations for a while and accept that good enough is good enough.   You’ve had a baby and you’re about to return to work – those are two big achievements without you needing to excel at anything else right now.  So settle for “OK” for now and cut yourself some slack!