My story of returning to work as a full time mum.

With the theme of International Women’s Day this Friday being “inspire inclusion”, I feel like it was pertinent to discuss my own experiences of inclusion, or in fact, exclusion from the workplace.

Let’s set the scene. So since I was 15 I have been in paid employment. I’ve been a diligent student and achieved relatively good grades to ensure I got into uni. The first in my family to go to uni, might I add. I struggled at uni for various reasons - mainly distractions, feeling like I didn’t belong and having other focuses. But I thrived at work and doing things. If I was shown something, I could do it and excel at it. It’s well known that this is how Aborginal people learn by modeling behaviour. I wasn’t really aware of this at the time but it makes sense because that’s our traditional ways playing out in a modern society.

Anyway fast forward to probably my third role in my professional career as a therapist. We were trying to get pregnant for sometime and then with the help of numerous rounds of ovulation induction medication we found out we were pregnant. I had no idea what to plan for or what to expect in terms of pregnancy and managing my workload. I didn’t know how to manage the first trimester and being sick and trying to show up for my clients. I was still doing home visits throughout, sometimes by myself until my very last shift at 36 weeks pregnant.

I didn’t know I should be planning for childcare from the moment of conception so I had that in place for when I wanted to return to work. I didn’t talk more about my expectations with my husband. I didn’t even know when I was going to return to work or how I would afford to take a year off with only government parental payments. I took 2 weeks off before I gave birth and thought that was a holiday and didn’t even plan anything then to prepare myself either. I was the waddling definition of “going with the flow”. Much was to my own detriment.

I have blocked out a lot of how I was feeling at the time but from memory I knew I was physically and mentally struggling and my obstetrician caught on too - despite my brave face and putting on a front for everyone to not appear difficult. So my OB suggested induction at 39 weeks and I was all in, because I was so over being pregnant. I just wanted my baby Earthside and in my arms. There were complications and I ended up having an emergency C-section. Again, something I wasn’t really prepared for and had not done any research on.

After 5 days in hospital and then 2 days at home I told my husband I think I would be more useful going back to work. We were living off our savings waiting for parental payments to come through to support us. I wasn’t able to successfully breastfeed, despite all my efforts. Thankfully my husband talked me out of it and I stayed home until our baby was 3 months old, but we couldn’t afford for me to stay home anymore, so I needed to go back to work. I was happy to have a piece of me back, but at the same time I still had the pull to be close to my baby, so I was experiencing a lot of guilt.

While I felt like my workplace was overall supportive of what I wanted to do and they encouraged me to come back for one day a week to see how I would go. During this time someone had started working in my maternity position as I’d originally agreed to six months off. I must have had two shifts back, wasn’t seeing clients, but just already felt so out of place. I wasn’t the same. My clothes didn’t fit. I was glued to my phone incase someone needed me. I couldn’t get out of my head. How was I going to be present and supportive for my clients again?

It must have been my second shift where this worker who was filling in for me and seeing my clients, turned to me and asked, “isn’t it illegal for you to be returning to work before the end of your maternity leave?” I just looked at him and froze. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to be here? Maybe I should find another job?

I had lost my fight because internally I was already fighting with myself and telling myself I was a bad mother. However, I pushed on and showed him that I could do whatever I wanted. I came back full time for the next two months before finding another job with more flexibility and the option to work from home to be with my baby.

Slowly I started to feel more like myself. The juggle was really hard and all of the milestones took adjusting as often someone else was with my baby, but I cherished every single minute with her. I even let her co-sleep with us every night because I missed her so much and probably because I felt guilty.

The reason I’m sharing this is because at the time I felt so alone and had minimal support. A study by FlexCareers demonstrated that more than half of mums returning to the workplace are discriminated against and this is just wrong. As a modern society we need to be more inclusive every day of the year.

It is so important that workplaces include mums in their workplace because they bring a set of skills like no one else. We are the proven multi-taskers. We are highly organized and accountable because another human life depends on us. Being at work is often more about gaining a sense of our identity back and not just about the money so this means we can be more productive and loyal to our workplace (if treated correctly).

So I will leave you with these final thoughts on what workplaces can do to support mums:

1. Increase flexible working options;

2. Provide support and touch points when a mum returns to work;

3. Train managers so they’re confident and capable of leading a flexible workforce and providing support;

4. Increase effective communication between companies and employees on what flexible work options are available before mum goes on maternity leave.

This is the just beginning of inspiring inclusion for mums but it is necessary. Motherhood can be an isolating experience as it is. Do we really want working mums to feel isolated in the workplace as well?