Day 1, back to work after maternity leave

By
Notes
– February 1, 2011Posted in: ... being a mother, ... being a working woman, ... returning to work after maternity leave

Day 1 down, it went well. I arrived at work at 8.40am and sat down to a beautiful calm. CTRL, ALT, DELETE and we were back. No banners, balloons or party poppers, I just logged on, put my head down and just got on – as it should be. OK, I went in last Thursday for a full debrief from a stakeholder/supplier. The result of this brief was a big headache, an inability to see straight, and that I had said most of my hellos. This morning, I just went to work and started work – just like I never left.

My day went like this:
9am – 10am: Ruthlessly got rid of 6,000 emails. Hang on, that is 200 – 250 emails a week when I am not even there!
10am – 2pm: Started work on industry technical strategy paper (I have 4 days to produce an industry ready 1st draft).
2pm: A quick meeting with the regulator, I am reminded that the last time most people saw me I had a bump, a very large bump.
2.30pm – 4pm: Continued technical strategy, sketching out plan options for next 5 years – project planning seems like advanced colouring in (it is not really).
4.15pm – 4.45pm: Meet stakeholder T for a quick coffee and a rather manic catch up, the excitement I am back is great.
5pm: I leave to meet hubbie for nursery pick up.

It is a very calm day at work but what strikes me is the length of the day, the single period to focus on 1 thing. After days in a sleep, play, eat hourly cycle the day seems long. Not drawn out but lengthy in a luxurious way – a calm, pleasure. I do know in my job, the calm will be very short lived. To my surprise, I answered some pretty detailed, technical questions from my team. Fortunately, it would seem that this stuff is etched onto my brain. Here’s to baby brain being usurped by TV-techy brain. What is strange and will take some getting used to is that operationally we are 7 months on, the specific operations are as planned, to the processes I designed but the detail I have no idea about … but that is someone else’s job now :-) .

How I look? Well, I have realised that whilst I may know I have a stone to lose everyone else seems to think – or is being very kind – that I am at pre-baby weight. Our receptionist loved my eye make-up (smokey Claudia), my hair, my boots (see blog header), and declared I was “still rockin.”

Reality has bitten and I am back at work – feels good.

To quote my boss this afternoon “Who knows what is the reality? Was it the last 7 months or today Notes?”

And, on that note, I shall bid you good-night for today.

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