Question: How do you eat an elephant?
Answer: One bite at a time.
This little riddle couldn’t be more true as I make my transition back to work after maternity leave. There are so many questions floating around in my head. And I have so much anxiety about how I’m going to make this all work again.
How on Earth am I going to go back to being a working mom after having a fourth child? How am I going to get myself out of bed after yet another sleepless night? How am I going to manage to get three kids ready for daycare while nursing the fourth? Will I be able to remember all the things that I need for the day? How will I feel about having to stop working every three hours to pump? How will I function at work on little sleep again? Will I be able to hold myself together? Will I miss my baby more this time that the previous three times I’ve been on maternity leave?
There are so many questions, that my head just spins thinking about it all. The only thing I know to do is to take it one step at a time. This concept is great in theory, but I’m horrible at putting it into practice. As I lay in bed at night my mind races. Before I know it I’m down the rabbit hole thinking about all the things I need to get done during the morning hustle and bustle. By the time I’ve settled my brain and closed my eyes the newborn is crying to be fed.
In case you didn’t catch on already, I’m definitely a type A personality. I like knowing what’s coming next, planning out every last detail, and charting all the progress. Unfortunately, kids (and life) don’t work that way.
You can plan to get up early, but you can’t plan for the baby to sleep consistently. You can plan to help each child get dressed, but you can’t plan when they had an accident overnight and you have to give them a bath before school. You can plan for your kids’ check-ups and dentist appointments, but you can’t plan for an ear infection or pink eye. In some ways, all this planning is what I thrive on. I plan out my conferences and events to the last detail, but I can never plan for a speaker to have car trouble or a fire alarm to be pulled during a session.
Returning to work evokes so many emotions (obviously anxiety is one of those). It’s bittersweet to be back. I’m happy to be back at work. I’m looking forward to feeling extra productive again at a job that I’m good at (or at least I hope I’m still good at it). I’m excited to be back working with amazing people. I’ve missed them these last few weeks while I’ve been out. I’m dreading having to stop my daily work progress every three hours to hook up my leaking breasts to a pump to have enough milk to feed the baby I left at home. I’m pretty sure no one likes this part of working motherhood. I’m overwhelmed at the thought of the number of emails I’m coming back to and the ones that will start to hit my inbox again. I’m eager to be able to troubleshoot various issues with my colleagues that arise on a regular basis.
At the same time, I’m sad about having to walk out the door each morning (in a rush) leaving behind my new baby and frantically dropping the other three off at daycare. I’m also relieved to drop them off at daycare too, because let’s face it kids can make you crazy and mine are no exception.
I’m anxious about how my performance at work will be, now that I have four kids at home that are on my mind. I’m fearful about whether or not I’ll be able to get things done as efficiently as I used to. I’m cautiously optimistic about the hand off of projects that I relinquished to my co-workers before I departed.
Thinking about all these things at once seems like the tasks are insurmountable and the to-do list is endless. I’m excited for the challenge, and I’m terrified to have to tackle it all. I’m hopeful that I can make this transition smoothly, and deathly afraid that I’ll fail miserably at it. I’ve always been known to make difficult things look easy. I’m curious to see how I’ll feel if failure comes to fruition.
What I know is that there is a mighty big elephant standing in front of me. So I’ll just start by taking one bite at a time.