This is quite a difficult post to write. I’ve been struggling with my career path for the past months, and I think it was related to my maternity leave and new motherhood status. Fortunately, as I’m making some changes to my career (I recently transitioned to a different role within the same company), I’m feeling a lot more refreshed and hope to share some lessons learned along the way.
My own journey
I’ve been very comfortable with my job. It’s a high-stress but exciting position. In the past few years, I established myself within the team and the company. Therefore, when I found out I was pregnant, even though I was starting to desire making some changes to my job, I decided to stay put since I thought I was good at my job and it would be good to come back to the same job along with the pregnancy and after coming back from giving birth to the baby.
I was very wrong. I came back from the maternity leave, and even though I really longed for “intelligent work”, I was overwhelmed by having a lot to catch up on - learning new processes that my team had changed, having to re-establish myself, and having to prove my own worth again. All these were not hard to do, given my previous experience in the team; but I wasn’t motivated at all. It was because I was already stagnant in my career, and coming back from maternity leave only made it less motivating and not more.
I’ve been giving this advice to my friends who are either expecting or trying to conceive. Many of them go through the thought process about whether they should make changes to their careers with consideration of the upcoming/possible family changes. After going through it myself, I feel very strongly that everyone who is considering a change in career should try to do it before they get pregnant or before they give birth. Or rather, just do it and don’t wait for anything.
The ugly reality: just by you being away from work, it affects your career.
This was a hard reality to swallow, especially when I was torn between a newborn at home, spending a lot of time on producing breastmilk (this is like a part time job), a job that I loved but seemingly couldn’t stand anymore, and feeling undervalued and having to prove my worth from ground up.
I talked to a few friends, and they all felt for me. They responded that a lot of women experience this and a lot of them quit their jobs, or switch careers, or switch teams, after they come back from maternity leave. They feel like they couldn’t catch up with their peers, or feeling behind, after being away from work.
How come we didn’t know this before? I guess we never talked about it?
It’s more common than you think - people quitting their jobs after having kid(s). It’s not that hard to come back since you’ve worked so hard before, it’s just that you’re shocked by the unexpected changes.
Suggestion 1: If you’re already thinking about a career change, plan for it, start some ground work. Don’t wait.
If you’re thinking about a career change, it’s actually a very good time to work on switching things up before or even during your pregnancy. Even though pregnancy is itself a challenge for most people, it’s still good to at least think about what kind of change you’d like to bring into your professional life. Job transitions can take months to build up - you need to talk to different people, sending and analyzing signals of different opportunities in your network, and maybe actually work on refreshing your resume. So it’s always good to start early and make the change before pregnancy, before childbirth, or even after childbirth. Just remember, that job search is only going to be less pleasant when you’re extremely unhappy about your job and having a newborn that you have to care for. So starting it earlier is always better than later.
Suggestion 2: If you’re happy where you are, great! Please embrace the fact that your work and progress will be stalled when you are away. Try to make the best out of it and catch up quickly.
I believe there are people who are perfectly happy with where they are in their career pre-, during- and post-pregnancy. That is so great!! You’re already where you want to be, and all you need to do is to work hard and do your job well. But do remember, if you are away for a while, someone will have to pick up your workload, and they do deserve the credit for their hard work while they cover for you. Also, depending on how long you’re gone, things might change, and you might find it a shock when you come back to work that some process that you always followed had dramatically changed. When this happens, please remember the big picture - you like this job, and you had done well in the past, so this is only temporarily shocking - you will bounce back very quickly. Just take it one day at a time.
In the meantime, try to look on the bright side, are there any new ideas you have since you’ve been away for a while? Can you add some documentations to the new processes? All these little things could be your “small wins” and helps you feel more settled coming back to work. You might actually gain some new insights about work since you have the fresh eyes coming back from leave!
A transition both for your personal life and work life
In hindsight, it feels like the pregnancy/childbirth gave me an excuse/opportunity to reset and restart my career. It forced me to take a painful look at my job and make those changes that I didn’t dare to make. After all these months, I believe the outcome is the best for me, even though I had to go through some emotional ups-and-downs.
It did shock me, since I was expecting there to be no impact whatsoever regarding my maternity leave, but there definitely was. In a way, I am extremely thankful for my experience going through this - I think it made me a more resilient person and more capable of dealing with uncertainties.
If you’re reading this and in the process of transitioning, big hugs to you, and I hope you can learn something from my experience.