This is a guest post by Lori K. Mihalich-Levin, author of Back to Work After Baby: How to Plan and Navigate a Mindful Return from Maternity Leave.

Before having my first baby and going back to work, there were many things I enjoyed doing and managed to find time for – including writing poetry.  Then along came my first munchkin.  And most non-essentials came to a standstill.

Now, if writing is what you do for a living, having a baby can’t (realistically) bring it to a full stop. Nor, I suspect, do you want it to.

As a lawyer by day, I write for a living. Not book-writing, of course, but memos, briefs, letters to government agencies, and legal analyses. And as a business-owner, I write for a living – blog posts, articles, curricula for new working moms, and most recently, my first book.

Though your head and heart may be deep in baby-fog-land after giving birth, you’ll need to emerge from it and get back to your laptop eventually. Having gone through the maternity-leave-and-return thing two times, I’m here to offer some advice on how to make that transition back to writing after baby go more smoothly for you and your family.

Give Yourself the Gift of Time

I don’t know about you, but when I was pregnant for the first time and thought about my maternity leave, it seemed like a big, wide-open swath of time, perfect for getting all sorts of things done. 16 weeks with nothing to do? I’ll make a scrapbook! Clean the house! Write a book! Save the world!

If you’ve had a baby, you’re chuckling with the benefit of hindsight. Maternity leave is, to be sure, the furthest thing in the world from a “break” a “vacation” or a “time to get stuff done.” It’s exhausting, if exhilarating. Your body needs time to heal from the big event of giving birth, and your full-time employment is keeping alive a completely helpless little human being.

So my advice here is to remember that transitions take time. Carve out some unplugged weeks for yourself, and commit to giving yourself and the new family you’ve created the time and space to live, love, grow, and heal. If you are self-employed as a writer, read up on how others have navigated carving out this space Both practically and financially. And, most importantly, deeply savor that sweet baby of yours, and trust that your writing skills and career will be there in a few short months when you return. I promise they will.

Strategies to Get Your Focus Back

When your leave is ending or over, you’ll want to be strategic about how you use your work time, given that there is often so little of it. In those early months, exhaustion and focus can seem like swashbuckling enemies of one another. So how to get your head back in the game?

Three techniques worked well for me. First, I found the concept of the Pomodoro technique extremely helpful. The basic idea is that you set a timer (originally, a Pomodoro tomato-shaped kitchen timer, but any timer will do!) for 25 minutes. You turn off all e-mail, social media, etc., during those 25 minutes, and you devote yourself exclusively to the one task that requires your focus. Then, after the timer goes off, you take 5-10 minutes to take a break, stretch, check e-mail, or whatever you need to do. And then go at it again.

Second, I found truly helpful the concept of “curating my days.” Just as an art museum can’t possibly – and quite frankly wouldn’t want to – fill its walls with every single work in its collection, neither should you put on display all possible activities in a given day. Instead, pick the three most important tasks you need to accomplish, and commit to tackling those. In the early days of motherhood, I would start each workday with a yellow sticky note, on which I’d write down my top three priorities, and then I’d put the sticky note on my computer monitor to keep those things top of mind. It’s important to remember that everything on that to-do list does NOT actually have to get done. At least not today.

And third, I learned to build micro-self-care habits into my daily routines. Whether it’s taking a few minutes per day to turn on an app like Insight Timer and meditate, or setting a daily intention in the shower, I am committed to creating some space in my day for myself. This helps me clear my head and be fully present, whether I’m at home or at work.

Don’t Go It Alone, Mama

I’m one of those independent, I-can-do-it-myself types – a trait that can serve me well in some situations, but was entirely unhelpful in new motherhood. Take (and more importantly, ask for) whatever help you can get, mama.

If you work from home, I strongly encourage you not to rely on baby naps as a time to work, and instead to get childcare help. Even though tiny babies sleep so much, there is a fair amount of unpredictability in the sleep hours. And even when baby is on a schedule, it can be hard to focus on work, knowing you are “on” with baby and her potentially 30-minute snooze.

I have also become a deep, deep believer in the power of community and “me too” in motherhood in helping new mamas maintain their sanity. Sign up for a baby-and-me class in your area to meet other parents with babies the same age as yours. Join online communities like Mindful Return, to be part of a peer-mentoring community with other mamas who are returning to work the same time you are. And rely on any friends and family who are willing to be helpful. The richer the village you create for yourself and your little one, the more hands you have to catch you when times get challenging.

End the Unhelpful Comparisons

I couldn’t get away with writing an article about new working parenthood without invoking the “g” word (you know it, mamas: guilt). Perhaps you’re thinking about how many pages you used to be able to crank out in a given amount of time. Or perhaps you’re looking around at your peers, wondering how you’ll “keep up”.

I’m here to remind you that comparison is the thief of joy. As one of the mamas who took my Mindful Return course likes to say, “You do YOU.” The rest really doesn’t matter. If you find yourself feeling “behind,” ask yourself, “behind what”? And if you find yourself comparing yourself to someone who leaves the office 3 hours after you do, ask yourself if there’s someone else you can try comparing yourself to, instead – someone who inspires you on the compassion, or creativity, or confidence front.

I’m also here to remind you that studies have shown that we, working moms, are more productive than our childless counterparts over the course of our careers. Don’t believe it? Read this about the Federal Reserve Bank study that found that “over the course of a 30-year career, mothers outperformed women without children at almost every stage of the game.”  Yes, there can be a productivity drop when the kids are little, but guess what: “when that work is smoothed out over the course of a career… they are more productive on average than their peers.”

Let Your New Life Inspire Your Writing

Many of the moms I work with worry about identity issues. Who am I as an individual? As a professional? As a mom? When will I feel like my “old self” again? Will I ever feel like that “old self”? As a writer, you have at your fingertips such a powerful tool for exploring and processing the new existential questions that inevitably arise when you become a parent. Whether it’s through your writing for public consumption or private journaling, I encourage you to let your new life and new baby inspire the writing you do for yourself and others. There are so many new ways to look at the world when you become a parent; and writing is such a beautiful way to capture and share these new perspectives.

I leave you now with a poem I wrote when I had begun to emerge from the fog of brand-new motherhood. I wish you all the joy and wonder that comes from having brought a new human being into this world and from having the skills as a writer to keep creating for the world.

Baby Pace
 
With baby at home
I don’t find time
anymore
to write poems.
My first pen to paper
these ten months
is to write this lament.

But life with baby
IS poetry.
From the gurgling cadence
of his ba ba babbles
to rhymes and sighs and lullabys…

Fleeting nuzzles
in my neck;
we clap each other’s hands
for patty cake.
Moo ba la la,
the farmer said;
please, please little redhead
let’s go to bed!

So my poems
simply
will have to wait.
Words do no justice
to the angel skin
cuddle roo
magic giggles
or Big Love
anyway.