MY NEW LOOK ON MOM RETURNING TO WORK AFTER MATERNITY

I love being on teams with working mothers. They are the highest functioning messes I know.”
-MARICAR SANTOS-

When you read this, some of you will be outraged by my comments, and others will laugh. I know this because I’ve shared my opinions on returning to work, its pros and cons, more than once in a group of mothers. Just as each of us has a different approach to raising children, each of us grapples with the decision to return to work.

https://littlepuzzlesandme.com/the-ugly-truth-about-working-mothers-sacrifice/

I didn’t wait long with my first child, just like with my second, and after 10 months, when my maternity leave ended, I returned to work. There were difficult days and easy days. Days full of drama at home and days full of joy at work. I’m not talking about the truly bad, depressing first few days back at work. For now, I’ll focus on discussing the pros and cons of mothers returning to work.

Dear Moms, I hope you’ll laugh while reading my experiences with motherhood.

Is my warm coffee back?

When I started a new job after 10 months of maternity leave, and my boss was a woman with two children, we started the day with coffee. At 7 a.m., regardless of whether there were goods to unload or a queue, I would brew strong, organic coffee. The aroma of my coffee delighted our customers and introduced me to a world of long-forgotten, lost coffee. With two children, you have two options: iced or two-day-old. Warm, fresh coffee is a thing of the past. However, I was lucky because my boss at work was also a busy mother of two and a coffee lover. I shouldn’t say it out loud, but I had more freedom at work than at home.

My boss has the same story every day:

• cold coffee at home, warmth at work,
• nice atmosphere at work
• normal conversation at work,
• no talking at home just listening
• lots of singing, rhymes, arguments over toys,
• and most annoying – for the thousandth time, using the word “mom” for no reason.

And what other freedom do I owe to going to work?

Can you talk without being interrupted?

When I start a conversation with my husband about something unrelated to the kids, my son immediately jumps in with some distracting task like: change the story, add juice, peel an apple, and my daughter needs to pee. Even when we wanted to return to the interrupted conversation, after all the tasks we’d completed in the meantime, we couldn’t remember what we were talking about. Sometimes it took us three days to finish the conversation.

At work. I have really interesting, intelligent conversations with appropriate endings. My boss and I talk about everything except the baby’s poop, lack of appetite, or incidents at Nursery. No one interrupts us, no one fights in the other room over a toy, no one yells.

Does loneliness in the toilet exist?

Privacy in my home has vanished because whether Mom says; “I need to pee, I will go take a shower, or I will call to work”, my older son will need to pee at the same time, and my little one will be hungry or thirsty. You spend as much time as you want in the staff restroom, in absolute silence. I even have time to check text messages and online messages. And now my friends reading this know the answer: Why is it more difficult to contact me by phone than the president?

https://littlepuzzlesandme.com/mens-zone-and-their-life-stories/

There is lunchtime – are you sure?

For the first time after maternity leave, at my new job, when my boss gave me a discount card to the restaurant next door for lunch and even told me to go there, I thought I’d cry with joy. I was sitting with warm, aromatic toast, tomato, and mozzarella, surrounded by people who had simply come to eat, not to complain and shout. It was an oasis of peace with delicious food and great company.

What does my lunch look like at home with two children?

It didn’t really exist for me. For the kids, yes. They had a selection of food like it was on a restaurant menu. Mom had tons of leftovers. And the worst came when I cut the toast, sausage, or avocado wrong, and a huge, uncontrollable drama would break out. https://littlepuzzlesandme.com/the-specialist-in-childrens-morning-dramas-wanted-immediately/

Forget about sitting down to dinner with the kids because something was always wrong, like running out of water or ketchup. During lunch, on your break from work, they bring you water and coffee, and you don’t move a second.

I love coming home and spending afternoons with my children, playing and cuddling. I love singing and watching cartoons with them. At work, I can indulge in a warm cup of coffee and a woman’s conversation. It’s an ugly truth that you work and mentally rest as a Mom. But I have to maintain this division into two worlds: family time and work time, otherwise my brain would burn out.