Back To Work
Today is my first day back to work from maternity leave, and A's first day at daycare. I posted this on my company's intranet as a way to share what their awesome maternity leave afforded me, and thought I'd share it here too:
Now might not seem like the right time to share a return-from-maternity-leave story, or maybe it’s exactly the right time.
Either way, today is my first day back to work from a 12-week leave. It’s a weird time to be “back”, as I’m working from home for the foreseeable future, but I’m back nonetheless.
In the spirit of my return, here’s a look at what the last 12 weeks have been like for my family.
My second son, Adrian, surprised us when he arrived almost four weeks ahead of his due date on December 21. Thankfully he was healthy and strong, and when we were discharged from the hospital the only lingering health concern for him was a touch of jaundice.
For the first two weeks we juggled family visiting for the holidays with daily doctor appointments to check on Adrian’s bilirubin levels. To help lower the bilirubin, he spent almost 24 hours a day on a blue light blanket.
In weeks 2-4, our families had left and my husband remained home finishing out his paternity leave. This was such valuable time as we finally got Adrian’s bilirubin levels under control and could finally truly bond with him without an electric light pad between us.
At the 6 week mark of my leave, when many employers require their employees to return to work, Adrian finally started to “wake up”. Because he was born so early he had spent the majority of his life so far asleep. We hardly saw his eyes until early February! I would have been heartbroken if my return to work date came at a time when I had hardly had any waking time with my sweet son.
I don’t think “maternity leave” is associated with a lot of administrative tasks, but having the away-from-work mental space to tackle this was extremely helpful. Hospital bills, finding an interim daycare to bridge the 4-week gap between my return to work date and his original daycare start date, mountains of daycare paperwork, tons of forms from doctor’s offices, setting up social security, requesting a birth certificate, setting up a college fund—I spent lots of nap times working on these projects!
Around week 8 I discovered Adrian lovesss hearing me sing. It’s one of a few tricks I can count on to calm him down, which makes me feel so needed. This is also the time when I realized he’s incredibly kind-hearted and encouraging because his mama is not a good singer.
Close to week 10 I figured out a new tummy time trick he’d tolerate which gets him lifting his head to strengthen his neck more.
And this morning, at 12-weeks old, when I dropped him off at daycare for the first time, he looked up at me, smiled and looked around at his surroundings smiling with eyes wide in awe as if to say “I got this, mama, and so do you.”
Now might not seem like the right time to share a return-from-maternity-leave story, or maybe it’s exactly the right time.
Either way, today is my first day back to work from a 12-week leave. It’s a weird time to be “back”, as I’m working from home for the foreseeable future, but I’m back nonetheless.
In the spirit of my return, here’s a look at what the last 12 weeks have been like for my family.
My second son, Adrian, surprised us when he arrived almost four weeks ahead of his due date on December 21. Thankfully he was healthy and strong, and when we were discharged from the hospital the only lingering health concern for him was a touch of jaundice.
For the first two weeks we juggled family visiting for the holidays with daily doctor appointments to check on Adrian’s bilirubin levels. To help lower the bilirubin, he spent almost 24 hours a day on a blue light blanket.
In weeks 2-4, our families had left and my husband remained home finishing out his paternity leave. This was such valuable time as we finally got Adrian’s bilirubin levels under control and could finally truly bond with him without an electric light pad between us.
At the 6 week mark of my leave, when many employers require their employees to return to work, Adrian finally started to “wake up”. Because he was born so early he had spent the majority of his life so far asleep. We hardly saw his eyes until early February! I would have been heartbroken if my return to work date came at a time when I had hardly had any waking time with my sweet son.
I don’t think “maternity leave” is associated with a lot of administrative tasks, but having the away-from-work mental space to tackle this was extremely helpful. Hospital bills, finding an interim daycare to bridge the 4-week gap between my return to work date and his original daycare start date, mountains of daycare paperwork, tons of forms from doctor’s offices, setting up social security, requesting a birth certificate, setting up a college fund—I spent lots of nap times working on these projects!
Around week 8 I discovered Adrian lovesss hearing me sing. It’s one of a few tricks I can count on to calm him down, which makes me feel so needed. This is also the time when I realized he’s incredibly kind-hearted and encouraging because his mama is not a good singer.
Close to week 10 I figured out a new tummy time trick he’d tolerate which gets him lifting his head to strengthen his neck more.
And this morning, at 12-weeks old, when I dropped him off at daycare for the first time, he looked up at me, smiled and looked around at his surroundings smiling with eyes wide in awe as if to say “I got this, mama, and so do you.”