Returning to Work After 6 Months of Parental Leave
December 2021
Hannah was born shortly before the end of spring term, which meant that I used a few weeks of short term disability until my contract ended for the school year in June.
Because I'm not on contract during the summer I didn’t need to use any leave from mid-June through mid-September. These months, like usual, were all unpaid and our expenses were covered with funds that I'd put into savings during the school year.
Because of the timing, I was able to save the bulk of my leave (i.e., sick time) for fall term, returning to work in mid-December.
Having ~6.5 months off from work to recuperate from pregnancy/childbirth and bond with Hannah has been amazing and I’m grateful that:
a) I was in a position where I could actually take that much time off (it's not lost on me that parental leave in the US is a mess and my experiences are far from the norm), and
b) the timing worked out so that summer break extended my leave by 3 months. Had she been born at any other point in the year my leave would likely have been cut in half.
Now that I'm officially back to work, I thought I'd share some thoughts on the process of returning, similar to my ‘advice to my past self’ posts. If I was going to go through the parental leave process again, here’s what I’d tell myself...
Return to work at the very beginning of a long break (if you can, obviously you can’t decide when baby will arrive!).
My first day back to work was the last day of our finals week for fall term. While everyone was wrapping up and winding down, I was jumping back in. This meant that I got a (relatively) quiet 3 weeks to prep for the upcoming term. Granted, it was also holiday time for us, but we weren’t traveling or having visitors so things were pretty low key. In any event, the timing of my return felt like one of the few instances (minus returning on/around summer break) where I could save prep until I was actually back at work and not need to prep during leave.
Whatever amount of time you have off, it will not feel like enough.
Even though I'm still working from home, having to switch back into work mode has felt particularly painful as Hannah gets more and more interactive.
Don't ignore your feelings.
Returning to work after giving birth is a big deal and some big feelings are probably going to come up. Don’t shove them all to the side and pretend they don’t exist (like me...). Feel them!
Make a clean break from work while you’re on leave.
I had these grand plans to get all of my winter course prep done before I was back at work, and then I was like, why? What's the point? Either do it now or do it later, it’ll get done just the same. So... I did a little bit of work early on during my leave as I had some course development things I needed to finish up and wanted them out of the way. After that, the most I did was occasionally look at (and file away) my emails. I didn't do any prep for winter or working on research or anything else. I know this isn't a luxury everyone has, but I did, so I took full advantage.
Throw all the emails you receive during leave into a folder and then set aside ~20-30 minutes a day to go through them once you’re back.
I put all the emails that came in to my inbox from May through early December into a folder and set them aside for review once I was back to work. I tackled the ones that looked like they were time sensitive first (letters of recommendation, questions about winter teaching, etc.) and then have been going through the rest from earliest to most recent. I'm almost through them all and its been a relatively easy task to ease myself back into work.
Review meeting minutes/recordings from your leave shortly after you’re back.
Though I don’t think this is 100% necessary, I did find this to be helpful in making me feel like I understood the big things that happened while I was away. Plus, like with the emails, this was another easy task I could do while warming up my brain.
Create a plan for returning before you actually return.
I didn't outline the specific work that I'd do, I just figured out the major things I'd likely need to remember to do to get ready for winter term (e.g., reviewing where I left off on projects, course prep, emails, etc.), listed them all out in Notion, and added them to my calendar so that when day 1 hit I could just follow the plan and not have to think much about what I should be doing.
Don’t teach anything new (or at all) if you can swing it.
Unfortunately, I did not manage to return to an empty teaching load for winter term. Instead I’ll be teaching 3 classes... However, 2 of these classes are 2 sections of the same course, which is one that I’ve taught many times before. And the 3rd class is one that I helped revamp so I have some familiarity with it. Returning to work with no teaching would have been fabulous, especially with picking back up with research projects, but the stars did not align this time.
Take things slow, keep expectations low, and remind others that you have a new baby.
I know the remainder of this school year will likely be rougher than most, and that’s okay. If people get pushy with wanting to add more things to my plate or involve me in new and exciting projects (that I have no interest in) I plan on kindly reminding them that I’m taking things slow as I readjust to work life post-birth.
A strict schedule may not be helpful right now.
This will certainly be influenced by your child care situation, but if baby will be at home with you for any amount of time while you’re working, you’re likely going to still be very much on their schedule. And with a baby you need flexibility (especially if you’re having any issues with naps, feeding, multiple blowouts a day..., etc.). Pre-baby I’d assign work to my calendar; however, right now my calendar is only for meetings. My to do list tells me what needs to happen and I draw from that throughout the week without assigning work to specific time slots.
Break down work into the smallest tasks possible.
Again, if baby is going to be home with you at all while you’re working your time will likely be pretty fragmented. One thing that’s been helpful for working with fragmented time has been to break down all my tasks into the tiniest bite sized pieces (i.e., something that can be accomplished in under 5 minutes). That way when somebody finally goes down for a nap, and sleeps for all of 10 minutes, I can pick something small to do and feel like I’m making some sort of progress.
Put nursing/pumping and nap time on the calendar to help with scheduling.
Yes, flexibility is necessary with babies. And, they often follow some sort of general schedule (especially by ~6 months, which is when I returned). Having Hannah’s feeding/sleeping schedule in the calendar on a daily basis has been helpful for scheduling meetings and work around her needs. When she inevitably wakes up from a nap earlier than I’d hoped, I just go in and adjust everything in the calendar so I can better see the open blocks on my schedule.
Get sleep figured out before you’re back to work.
This is SO MUCH easier said than done. AND... sleep deprivation makes everything SO MUCH worse. We were going through a rough patch with sleep shortly before I was supposed to start back at work, so at the end of November we finally decided to do some sleep training because I knew I wasn't going to be able to function. By day 1 back at work Hannah was sleeping ~11 hours at night. Naps were still super terrible, but at least we had some night time sleep. Not every night is perfect but it’s definitely better than before.
Do whatever you need to do to make life feel as easy as possible while you adjust.
For us, that’s meant finding easier options for meals, like meal delivery services, doing takeout more often, and cooking simple meals. That’s also meant saying no to anything extraneous that feels hard and using screen time more often with Ellie when we have zero energy for 5-year old play time.