BIG day tomorrow! After 14 months of blissful maternity leave I am heading back to work.
My feelings are a tangle of nervousness, excitement, sadness and anticipation – a mix felt by most of the millions of mums returning to work I imagine. It has been a bit of a rollercoaster to get here- a year ago I looked towards this day with a pragmatic sense of “it’ll be fine”, then I swerved into panic; “I can not leave her!” (and spent hours writing business plans and creating logos for a career that I could do with Ramona slung on my back. Trust me breastmilk ice cream is not the weirdest thing a mumpreuneur could come up with) now fortunately I have arrived at a more balanced place of “It will be hard but also fun and fulfilling.” *Smiles cheesily and poses for the government’s “Back to Work Mums!” pamphlet*
I am fortunate in that I don’t HAVE to work my two and a half days a week, it would be so hard to have this choice out of your hands for financial reasons. And for Ramona to be with my husband for half the week- what a balanced young women this will make her! It’s pretty jammy that we get to practice a parenting/ working model split exactly down the middle (don’t you just love how I am using the word Work as if parenting ISN’T up there with the hardest work evs!)
I have thought for the last few months that my primary reason for going back is because I didn’t want my career to halt, and to then have to start from scratch post offspringing. But today I feel that my reasons for returning are deeper than that – it is because I am passionate about making the world a bit of a brighter place and my work gives me a different way to do this. (With parenting being one of the fundamental way of doing it, of course.) I have found this last joyous year of motherhood to be one of the least cynical and least disenchanted times of my life and I hope I can take that into my nine to five. To see my job as a vocation, and to see the eradication of extreme global poverty as totally doable. (Extreme Global Poverty? Meh! One time I got out the house with a baby with two matching socks, a picnic, my phone AND my oyster card AND made my train!)
But still…
My heart just about leaps out of my mouth when I imagine going a day without her little cheeky face within kissing distance.
