18/04/2026
Nobody tells you what going back to work after maternity leave actually feels like...
Going on maternity leave is a strange, singular moment.
You leave in the last weeks of pregnancy, heavier, exhausted, desperate to lie on your stomach again. Excited to meet your baby, but quietly anxious about the sleep deprivation, the feeding schedule, the building project you've somehow taken on at the worst possible time (we were doing the loft, the ongoing suspense of whether the builders would show up was its own adventure).
You hand everything over, tie up loose ends, make sure clients know who to call. Then you step away from a career you've been charging at and suddenly you have time, for the first time in years, to actually look back at it. That pause is rare and it can be quietly powerful.
I remember the strangeness of being in my neighbourhood mid-week, mid-morning, seeing a whole world of people I'd never noticed before, the bustle of Northcote Road at 11am. Those few weeks of rest before everything changes are precious, even when you don't realise it at the time.
Because then everything does change.
You're responsible for someone else now. You can't sleep until they sleep. You can't leave unless they're cared for. The person you were before is still you, but changed, permanently, with new priorities layered on top of everything else.
Good friends on mat leave with you can make an enormous difference, especially when you miss your colleagues and the rhythm of an office.
And then comes the return.
Can you even remember your passwords?
What's changed while you were gone?
What are you going to wear?
How do you walk back in, after everything that's happened, and pretend nothing has?
The confidence knock is real as is the guilt of leaving your baby behind. But so is the quiet thrill of using your brain again, of being purposeful, efficient, intentional in a way you never quite were before.
You find yourself unwilling to waste time on things that don't matter. You have a sharper sense of what you want your career to look like and how you're going to go after it differently this time.
But for some people, it doesn't feel that clean.
It can feel like you don't quite belong. Like people are watching, expecting you to be tired, expecting you to need to prove yourself. The throwaway comments about "proving yourself now you're back" land harder than they should. Things that never used to bother you suddenly do. You feel like you're under a magnifying glass.
Often it's about getting perspective, rebuilding confidence, finding your footing in a life that looks genuinely different from the one you left.
That's exactly what I work on with people in my back to work coaching sessions.
One thing many returners don't realise is you can often ask your employer to fund it. Many managers have a personal development budget that quietly goes unused and coaching sits squarely within it.
So if you're heading back after mat leave and navigating that strange in-between, the new juggle, the knock to your confidence, the question of what you actually want now, I can help.
Drop me a message or comment below.
