How to Prepare Yourself for Joining Work After Having a Baby
You may not say this out loud, but being a mom is the most difficult thing you might have ever done. I know it has been for me.
But, nothing else has made me go ‘touch wood’ so many times in the day that I sometimes start to find it silly myself. I have felt my eyes well-up the first time my baby made eye contact with me while babbling something, or the time he complained why I said “love you’ only to daddy and not him, or the time he showed me the dance moves he learnt at his daycare (when neither I or my husband can dance if our lives depended on it!).
As someone with a ‘suffersome’ need to rationalize things, I find myself thinking about situations to find the reason in them. You can see why this is ‘suffersome’ as there is no way to rationalize why a toddler is wailing, asking me to pour the spilled milk back into his bottle. Anyway, in a wave of curiosity for preparing for how life changes after becoming a mom, I spent a great amount of time researching. Thanks to the ‘biased research’ I did, I thought the following school of thought applies fairly to a mom returning to work, just as it does to other life situations: each one of us is different and by a very basic right, are free to choose what we think is right. Clearly, I was oversimplifying life!
Dressed up in dark colors to cover the pregnancy weight and the sudden urge of the body to express milk when it shouldn’t, I walked into the office feeling like I never left. I remember I had called my husband to check-in on our five-month-old two hours into the office. Starved for sleep due to a very ill-timed ‘night-out’ chosen by my little one, I heard my baby squeal in the background and for a micro-second, I really wondered, “ what, who, whose is this baby!”. This is possibly not my proudest mommy moment, but perhaps I was just beginning to realize the strains of making yourself ‘in-charge’ of too many things at the same time.
Anyways, the experiences I write below are situations I strongly think I could have dealt better with, in hindsight. So, what can you do, to have yourself ready for all of these perspectives, judgments, and scrutiny you come under when you step into that office again. Is it 21st century yet?
Have your middle finger always up in your head
In the first meeting I attended after joining back, a dad of two himself asked me about how old my baby is. When I answered, I received a look loaded with surprise, judgment and perplexity from this stranger who had joined while I was away. On the impulse of a guilty mom, I guess, I explained: he is with his grandma right now who is taking great care of him and in fact, when I go back home, he will hardly even notice I was gone. To this, he said, “It seems you were too eager to come back and you are justifying it so.”! I am sure I was put in a box labeled ‘ambitious, most likely heartless climber’ and shelved away. I smiled it off, for the lack of options.
Many of us perhaps have read the article where the first woman MD of IMF, Christine Lagarde’s references how women need to be thick-skinned like crocodiles to get to the top. I would have loved to handle the situation suitably. But I think that would have required an unrealistic combination of being the thick-skinned crocodile, and having your middle finger up in your head, always. In this case, though I am happy I said nothing, because this person later apologized, confessed to being vastly known as a foot-in-mouth sort of a person and is a good friend now.
Quip, like its no-one’s business
One thing that I got asked by almost everyone, with unabashed surprise, in my first few days was, “Oh you are back. Who is taking care of the baby!?” How many times I have fought the urge to answer this with: “Oh he is fine. I have kept bottles of milk around the house, taught him how to change his diaper and have handed him the TV remote so he can keep himself entertained till I come back. That’s how good a mom I am!”. I never said this (more for the lack of presence of mind, less for the lack of intent), but I love imagining people’s contorted faces if I did.
Be ready for comparison with every other mom
Another one of senior colleagues preached to me about how his subordinate who he found to be a very competent and dedicated employee took two years off from work when she had her first baby. And then he went on to tell me that he greatly appreciates the fact that she focused on work when she was working and when she became a mom, she decided to focus only on being a mom. My answer to him, of course, in my head, two days after the incident: “Well, it’s her choice. I am happy she figured what works best for her, just like I know what’s best for my baby and me. I am not, and I am sure, neither is she fighting for the “world’s best mom” award from you!
Take everything positively, no matter what
In the first few weeks, I was attending a leadership training for women growing into managerial positions and I was in a group of about 12 women, mostly mothers themselves. Right at the introduction, we had to share our family background and when I said my son is about six months, the instructor encouraged the group to applaud me! I still think of the ‘scene’, standing in the middle of a group with these competent, ambitious women applauding me about coming back to work when my baby is five months. Confused at first, I looked at some of their faces to read whether they mean to be encouraging or sarcastic and if they were being encouraging towards me, were they not being discouraging of the women who chose to stay at home to participate in the beautiful growing journey of their babies every minute of the day? Anyways, I decided to shrug, with a broad smile and said ‘thank you!’
Everything wrong is because you are a working mom
Of course moms are the best caregivers because we can exhibit paranoid of the highest degree about every single thing that goes in our baby’s stomach, every speck of dust they touch, but to consider the absence of the mother for a few hours a day as the cause for every time your baby falls sick, well, get used to it. Even your own mom could be quick to remark that your baby is looking weak ever since you started working.
I think being a parent gives you a great amount of strength to make your choices while not being deterred with what the others think of you. You use this character to give your best to your baby every day. But no matter how ready you think you feel, you have to gather supernatural degrees of strength to jump over these walls of judgment, of expectations to fall into a mould someone created for us at the beginning of the civilization.
(This post was first published on momspresso.com)
