I’m hoping to find some positive, encouraging stories of mums who’ve absolutely bossed the return to work/baby guilt/financial sh*tshow dilemma. This isn’t a new or profound problem, so I’m trying to get my head around why so many of the core organisations and support systems struggle so much to get it right for mums.
In the last few months I have returned to work on a part-time basis. My son is now 15 months old. I appreciate that I am incredibly lucky to have been able to take 12 months of maternity leave to love and nurture my son, and also to have a relatively senior role in the NHS to return to. However, this is where my appreciative feelings seriously begin to wane.
Before I went on Mat leave I worked full time, across two NHS trusts. One of these extended my contact just to unceremoniously make me redundant as soon as I was due to return to work. The other has just announced that our contract will end in 6 months and won’t be renewed. So within 3 months of returning to work, I’m tasked with searching for a new role. Unsurprisingly, not much is coming up that is commutable distance and allows me to work the part time hours I need to work around childcare. Due to extortionate childcare costs in our area (and not qualifying for SMP or occupational mat pay) in one job, I’ve had to take on some independent work for the past 8 months to make ends meet. I have also decimated my savings. I’m not complaining about this. Our LO was a bit of a surprise and I knew this would be a significant financial burden. What I’m astounded by is the way in which my return to work has been managed by my employers.
(Desperate for the money) I organised 10 x KIT days with my job that still exists . Soon after completing all of them I was told by HR that 4 of them don’t count because they were taken when I was technically on annual leave. So I asked if I could be reimbursed my annual leave days, since I have already worked the days. I am
yet to receive a response to this, which I’m taking to mean a firm ‘no’. I have now officially returned to work 2 x days a week. My entire team, including managers, have changed roles/ left the service and no one is currently working face to face due to there no longer being an office. So I haven’t met any of my team and feel really isolated as a result. My new manager has ordered me a laptop and phone 2 MONTHS AGO and it hasn’t arrived yet. So I am working from home … without a team or equipment. However I still have deadlines I need to meet and expectations on my time. So rather than cancel my (extortionate) childcare I am sitting in a bedroom of my house feeling increasingly stressed about how to professionally action things that are practically impossible, struggling to communicate with a team I don’t know, whilst equally guilty that I am not spending this time with my son.
Last but not least, despite submitting a TONNE of HR paperwork and sending increasingly irate emails, I am yet to be paid for the last 3 months of work. I am now really struggling (like many people at the moment) to pay my bills, put fuel in the car and continue to live day to day. All of this is compounded by the fact that maternity leave was a massive financial hit for me and my partner. I haven’t been paid anything for 6+ months now and my partner is understandably stressed because I’ve been unable
to afford to return to work full time. This has placed a huge strain on him to make up the extra money. The irony is, that even though I can’t afford to work full time, we’ve both had to take on extra hours for an agency which we do on alternate evenings and weekends. At the moment we are like ships passing in the night.
I must admit I’m feeling pretty frustrated and sorry for myself. I worked really hard to obtain my professional qualifications whilst working full-time and being pregnant to plan for baby’s arrival. I was so passionate and dedicated to the work I was doing and excited to return to it after having baby. However I feel wracked with guilt about leaving my son, guilty about the impact of all
this stress on him and exhausted from breastfeeding, night wakings, side hustling, part time work (currently unpaid) and juggling all of the other myriad issues which mums of young kids have to. Now I just feel really demotivated to show up for work. I can’t help but feel this is very poor treatment of someone returning to the workforce at a fragile time. Please give me some hope it gets better?