Why Returning To Work After Maternity Leave Feels So Much Harder Than You Expected

0:02Hello, hello, welcome back to Motherkind. It is me, your host, Zoe. It is half term in the UK. I hope that you are managing to breathe through the intensity of the juggle and everything that comes with time of school. It's a Monday. So this is your chance for a Motherkind moment. And this is a clip from the incredible Joeli Brearley, founder of GrowthSpurt, unbelievable campaigner here in the UK and across the world for parental rights. And in this clip, in this moment, she talks about how difficult she found her maternity leave experience. And I wanted to share this today because I want to normalise that for you.

0:39There is nothing wrong with you if you found that maternity leave difficult. There is nothing wrong with you if you were desperate to get back to work. There's also nothing wrong with you. Absolutely loved it. All experiences are welcome. But this morning, in this clip, Jodie talks about how hard she found it. And I hope that someone needs to hear this this morning. And maybe you take a deep breath and you feel seen and you feel understood and you feel a little bit less alone. Here it is. We talked about this return to work moment. And I really want to dive into that because I think, as you said, you know, it is this moment that's absolutely critical in a mother's kind of path through her matrescence journey.

1:27And yet is pretty underlooked. You know, there's lots of organizations paying lip service, I think, to that return moment. But actually, you know, what does real support look like? And so why is that moment so critical, do you think? And then two follow up questions is what do the organizations who get it right, do right? And what do the organizations who get it wrong, do wrong? okay so um i think it's so important because if you think about having a baby it's you know we know how important that is we talk openly and freely about how what a monumental change to your life it is becoming a mother and we know about the brain changes that happen when you have a baby so your brain completely rewires it's a change that is as significant as puberty which is why we you know matrescence has become a thing uh your gray matter increases your white matter reduces um and it's preparing you for caregiving obviously and your new role as a mother it's worth saying as well these brain changes happen to men if they are deeply involved in caring, which is why it's so important that we extend paternity leave.

2:49And so you spend, you know, on average, women take nine months off when they have a baby and they're in this new, completely new world where you are selflessly giving yourself entirely to this new baby who, let's be honest, is completely useless. And you are there to, you know, give it absolutely everything it needs. And maternity leave is such a weird period of weird. It's so weird. It's so lonely. It's so brutal. I found it so difficult. I really struggled. I didn't enjoy it. I, I've, my both my kids didn't sleep so that I wasn't sleeping I definitely had postnatal depression but didn't identify it they would cry during the day I remember one time just the with a crying baby just putting him in a cot going downstairs cracking open a bottle of wine and the emergency cigarettes and just sitting outside and drinking out of a bottle of wine and chain smoking cigarettes on my own because I just was beside, I couldn't cope.

4:03I had never told anybody what was going on, never spoke a word of it. My partner would come back, how was your day? Yeah, fine. Yeah, no problem. Um, when I was deeply unhappy, um, and then you look to go back to work and I was elated to go back. I know not many women are, but I was really looking forward to it. And despite the fact that I was looking forward to it. When I got back to work, I cried in the toilets every day for three months. And I had a really supportive employer. He was really good and tried his best to help me as much as he could. But it was like everybody was speaking Klingon.

4:42I didn't know what people were saying. I didn't, it was words, didn't make any sense to me. And I was struggling a lot. So if I'm somebody who was desperate to get back and had a supportive employer and had that experience, for the women that don't want to go back and don't have supportive employers, it can be catastrophic that period where you return. And so I did a survey of five and a half thousand parents who returned to work in the last three years. And 89 % of them said returning to work was hard. Three quarters said they didn't get the support they need and one in four, 25%, left their job as a result of a lack of support.

5:24That's devastating. It's devastating for the women because if they had the right support, they could get through that really difficult period and come out the other end. It's devastating for companies because they're losing these brilliant, talented women who, if they got it right, would be way more dedicated and better than they were before. And as you say, it's also seen as a burden. It's seen as a problem. Oh, you've been out of work for a year. God, we're going to have to deal with that. Oh, we're going to have to onboard you again. Oh, what a nightmare. Rather than seeing it as what it really is, is an elite training program for leadership.

6:04The things that you learn when you're on maternity leave are extraordinary. You know, I mean, you learn to multitask like an absolute ninja. You know, you learn how to, you learn the ability to train somebody, you know, and the patience that is required to do that. The skills are just unbelievable. And you do it under the most extreme circumstances. But also, you know, the changes that happen in your brain when you return to work, they affect the areas that are responsible for confidence and social interaction. And I'm not sure many women know that. So I know that when I came back to work, I felt really anxious and I really struggled talking to people and having human interaction.

6:52And I didn't know that that was perfectly normal. That was what the brain changes had done to me. and so inevitably if you go back and you feel really anxious you're really lacking confidence and then your employer is just like all right off you go there's your laptop you're just gonna think this isn't right I don't feel comfortable here I don't feel like I can do my job I feel like a burden I'm gonna have to go back to my baby because my baby needs me and that's so sad isn't it because the vast majority of women do want to have careers they want to have children and careers but we're creating a system where you feel when you return to work that actually that just isn't possible and it is with the right support that was the episode I hoped you loved it if you did please make sure you subscribe and I will see you next time

7:55Thank you.