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Monday 14 August 2017

Maternity Leavers Limbo - A Book Review

It's now been 15 months since I had started my maternity leave and I was fortunate enough to stay off work for 10 months, however since going back I really do hate it!

Don't get me wrong I am fortunate to have a job, not only a job but a job that is pretty flexible and I do only work 15 hours, it's not a job I enjoy being honest but it's pretty much stress free and fits around my home life.

If like me, most women that go on maternity leave count down to when it begins and then spend the majority of their leave avoiding talking about going back and trying to find ways to return to work, when I had my son I was doing a different job, I felt I had a career, I worked in travel and well I do still miss it. I enjoyed talking to people and sharing knowledge and experiences. Now I spend most of my days wading through rubbish that's been dumped in the supermarket and replenishing shelves.

So what do I do? What do I want to do? Being in work gives me a break from being a mum, I talk to people of all ages and backgrounds but when I am not in work I spend all of my time thinking about being in work.

I was recently given the opportunity to read a new book by Dux Publishing, called 'Maternity Leavers' written by Soozi Baggs.
Although I am no longer on Maternity Leave and considering returning to work, I am kind of in a rut and thought it would be beneficial for me to still read this book.

A few pages into the book and I smile, all those things that I think about and feel Soozi has written about, it's so easy to relate to what she says and very quickly I found it difficult to put the book down.

Soozi hits on many things that I have felt or still feel. All of those things I worried about before becoming pregnant, maternity pay, having enough time off, returning to work and balancing child care and could we afford to have a child.

Chapter 4 really hit home with me as she discusses 'Being a Full-Time Mum' as I have mentioned I do work 15 hours so I suppose I class myself as a working mum and a full time mum as I work in the evenings. This is the choice I made, but reading this chapter, many of the things Soozi says I could really relate to and even now find my husband and I battling each other for who is more worthy of going to sleep first and who has to stay up looking after the baby, the general household responsibilities always fall to me, washing, cooking, cleaning up, shopping and ironing among many others and I often feel guilty for wanting 1-2 hours a week to go and continue with my exercise classes which I participated in before baby no.2 arrived.

In reading this chapter, I realised I was not the only one to have these feelings, so if we have these feelings why are they never talked about?
Only 4 chapters in and I start to feel a bit better about myself, I stop feeling guilty about wanting to spend money on things other than food shopping and to even, dare I say it, spend some on myself.

So if you are currently on maternity leave or are about to go on maternity leave this is a good book to read.