Why resetting your expectations is the most overlooked part of returning from maternity leave

It's day three back at work after maternity leave.  Your inbox is still groaning with emails you aren’t sure what to do with.  You've smiled your way through more "welcome back" conversations than you can count. You've said, "it's great to be back" and “I can finally drink a hot cup of tea in peace!” so many times it's started to feel like a script.  You've made notes in meetings, nodded at things that have changed while you were away and desperately tried to remember how to navigate a system you used to know inside out.

And somewhere underneath all of it is a thought you haven't said out loud yet.

Why does this feel so much harder than I expected?

The thing most women do when they return

When we come back from maternity leave, most of us do the same thing.  We jump straight in. We clear the inbox, we chase the catch-ups, we try to be visible, we work hard to signal that nothing has changed.  We tell ourselves that if we just fake it until we make it, confidence will follow.

But when it doesn't come (or much more slowly than we hoped) we assume the problem is us. That we've lost something.  That we're behind in a way that might take a long time to fix, if at all.

I thought, as many women do, that it’s all about capability.  But it’s not.  It's about expectations.  Specifically, the gap between what we expect of ourselves, what we believe others expect of us, and what is realistic given everything that has changed.

You have changed. That isn't a problem, but it does matter.

In our society, we tend to view maternity leave as a brief hiatus and then we go back to normal.  I thought my maternity leave was a temporary step away from real life.  A chance for slow mornings and getting off the hamster wheel for a year.  I was fortunate because in many ways it was, but it was also a period in which something significant has happened to me.

When you return to work after maternity leave, your priorities have shifted.  Your sense of what matters has changed.   The way you measure a good day is different. The person who walked out of that office before your leave began is not quite the same person who has just walked back in.

That isn't a weakness.  It isn't something to manage around or apologise for.  But it does need to be recognised for what it is and accommodated accordingly.

This is one of the only major life transitions that carries no expectation of adjustment.   When you start a new job, everyone accepts there will be a learning curve. Move to a new city and disorientation is expected and forgiven.  But return from maternity leave and the assumption from colleagues, from managers and most harshly from ourselves is that we simply resume.

On paper, you're back. So why doesn't it feel that way?

Here’s what I think is actually happening.  We’re not starting somewhere completely new.  You know this place, these people, this work.  You were good at this.  So, the unfamiliarity feels personal.  The slower thinking, the struggle to recall names and the moments of doubt that wouldn't have been there before feel like evidence that something is wrong.  But really they are a completely normal response to an extended period away from a particular rhythm and context.

So, you are holding yourself to a set of expectations (both your own and the ones you believe others have of you) that don't reflect where you actually are.  The expectations haven't been reset and you feel like you are falling short, even when you're doing remarkably well given the circumstances.

Resetting expectations isn't lowering your standards

One of the foundations for a successful return after maternity leave is resetting your expectations and that doesn’t mean accepting less in terms of your capability or your ambition.

It means starting from where you actually are..

It means asking what has actually changed, what is still true about your capability and what you are assuming about other people's expectations that may have no basis in fact at all.

It means recognising that the women who settle back into work most steadily aren't the ones who push hardest in those first weeks.  They're the ones who take the time to understand where they actually are before deciding where they need to get to.

That clarity, which sounds simple and is so rarely given airtime, is what changes everything.