This is my first post, so pardon me if my writing is a little rusty … bear with me as I’m sure I’ll get the hang of this in a few weeks or so.

So, I’m on a maternity leave again after 5 years.  My daughter was born in mid-September.

This time around, I decided to take more time off from work and will be home on leave until the end of February.

There’s quite a few articles published about how working mothers have a hard time “disconnecting” from the office when the day ends and then being present for their family once they return home.  I believe it, as I was a great example of that.  No matter how much I told myself that “work will be there tomorrow” it followed me home and I had a hard time transitioning from my “work self” to “mommy”.

But, the nice thing that’s happened is that I’ve been able to fully make that transition during my leave.  I only wound up being home on leave for one day before my daughter was born; after that, it was like a switch was flipped and I became fully comfortable with the fact that my job for the next 22 weeks was just to be a mom.  That’s not a thought I’d really ever been comfortable with before.  While I am not defined by my work, the fact that I do choose to work while raising a family is a big part of who I am.  I am proud of it as is my husband.  However, it nice to let that go for a little while and just focus on living. 

It’s also nice to be able to focus more on my son- I’ve been trying to get out and do activities he enjoys as well such as apple picking or going to the movies.  We’ve been able to use the time so far not just to focus on the baby but the entire family.

It’s also allowed me to focus a bit more on myself without feeling guilty.   I’ve found the time to get out and do things for myself.  Little things like going shopping or to lunch with my friends- I would do these things before but I always felt like I had to rush home.  Given I worked all day, I felt like evenings and weekends had to be spent completely with my son.  I take a little more time now and try not to just always rush home- as the time I have for myself will become less and less pretty soon.

What the transition back to working full time will be like remains to be seen- in the meantime, I’m just going to focus on enjoying the holidays!

Until next time!