The Comeback: Returning to Paid Work After Parental Leave

How to fill your cup and break your heart all at once

Mar 04, 2025

It’s here. The day has officially come when I return to full-time work after almost five glorious months of maternity leave with sweet baby girl. It’s hard to believe the time has passed already, but girlfriend’s bursting giggles, sumptuous wrist and thigh rolls, and enthusiastic attempts to sit up on her own are proof that is has.

The late Winter / early Spring days are beginning to stretch out, the pre-pregnancy wardrobe mostly fits, and my hair…well, it’s still falling out of my head at an alarming pace.

So much has changed. And yet, vestiges of her newborn days remain.

Baby girl still wakes up lots in the night, still exclusively nurses (bottles are a struggle), and still mostly takes contact naps. Thankfully, my husband is back on leave and I work from home, so we can delay the need to consistently bottle feed and crib-nap-tize our sweet love a bit longer, until daycare D-day is imminent.

As for my own transition back into work, this marks my second return to the same company after a parental leave of absence; I should theoretically know what to expect. But, if you have ever transitioned back into your career as a new parent after a longer leave of absence, you know these days don’t come easy and transitions can feel nebulous for quite some time. As I’ve written about before, in a macro sense the world feels so different than when I went out on leave. And on a more personal level, I don’t feel stable in my job, despite having a full-time position with a company at which I’ve worked for 4+ years. Suffice to say, uncertainty abounds. Maybe you can relate.

And while I’ll be seeking answers to my own employment questions post haste, I wanted to share a bit more about how it feels to essentially arrive at the end of a long marathon of baby care.

[I don’t know how to describe that this 10-yr-old Temper Trap music video is exactly how my Millennial brain feels at the end of parental leave.]

Returning to paid work is not just a new beginning, its also a bitter(sweet) end of a beautiful and brief moment in motherhood - that little bubble of time and space where baby girl and I operated as a dyad and were each other’s everything. Returning to work represents perhaps the core duality that us moms feel between ourselves and our little humans.

Despite despair over losing the precious daytime cuddles and mini-milestones with that sweet new baby, returning to work also feels good. Its allowed to feel good. Despite my absolute adoration for my baby, maternity leave was hard. It’s allowed to feel hard.

In the academic field of Positive Organizational Scholarship, the idea of holding space for simultaneous and integrated identities in the workplace, such as being a career-oriented person and a devoted mother, lends us greater meaning, belonging, and all those good gooey things we care about at work.1 Being a working mom should make you feel tension, but it can also bring multiple important facets of your personhood to light. There is space for both elements to bloom.

a black and white photo of a man in a suit and tie saying i 'm sexy and chubby . — Jack Black’s character gives us a nice example of integrated identities in this all time great line from *The School of Rock*

In some ways, today is a celebration of what I accomplished during that brief window of being the only full-time caregiver for our little baby. Eight weeks of contact naps and the rise and fall of our bellies touching. Eight weeks of rocking and soothing and singing and shh-ing. Eight weeks of burps and spit-ups and fresh sweatshirts and onesies. Eight weeks of giggles and smiles and chats, just between us ladies. Eight weeks of the busiest hands imaginable - needed on a basic human level during every waking minute and overnight, too.

She’s bursting with the love and secure attachment we built.

Now, I get to experience a different kind of love, as I listening to her dad gently calm her to sleep through the late afternoon angst she gets (don’t we all?). I hear him read her a story and turn on the dancing crab. My arms feel weightless and unburdened as I type a Substack post for the first time on desktop. Two hands, instead of my thumbs on an iPhone, held in the wrong hand. I have a renewed appreciation for desktop apps and keyboards. Renewed gratitude for my legs able to curl up into my abdomen with no baby on my lap. A sense of ease in being able to pick up the phone and talk on speaker.

This maternity leave was beautiful and messy. Defeating and uplifting. Deafeningly quiet. Overflowing and loud. It was blissful and infuriating, painful and numbing. Heartbreaking and soul filling.

Moms know. It can be both.

I’m not the first to say it, but let me boldly remind us all:

There’s so much that full-time parents forego. Being a full-time mom is exhausting.
Maternity leave is not a vacation.
Returning to paid work looks and feels different for every parent. You are allowed to grieve and/or celebrate accordingly.
You are not selfish or wrong for making the parenting and work choices you make.

Anything to add?

Motherloud

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