My latest favourite picture of Gus. It was taken the day before I started work and is currently the desktop background on my computers.

Last week, I went back to work. While everything went as smoothly as can be expected, I am still processing the change from full-time mom to full-time employee, and feeling a bit worn down by the whole thing. I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to stay home with Gus for 8.5 months, as I know that many working moms in other countries (especially in the U.S, but even in many European countries) have much shorter maternity leaves. However, in a Canadian context where many, if not most women take a full year I do feel like I am missing out by going back early.

How ‘Bout that Year of Maternity Leave, Eh?

While we’re on the topic, I may as well explain how the year of maternity leave thing works for those who are unfamiliar with the process. In a nutshell, the government has a program where mothers (who have given birth) are entitled to up to 15 weeks of maternity leave, and parents (mother or father or both combined) are entitled to a further 35 weeks of parental leave (i.e. both parents can take parental leave, but they have to share the benefit). Before you are entitled to claim benefits, you have a 2 week waiting period where you are not paid, which adds up to 52 weeks, and voila there you have it! Assuming you have 600 hours of “insurable earnings” (this is roughly four months of full time work) in the last 52 weeks, you are entitled to the benefit. Something that most people don’t know (sadly, even people who can benefit from it), is that about three years ago, the government introduced a program where even self employed people can receive maternity and parental leave benefits.

The benefit you are entitled to depends on your average weekly earnings over the last 52 weeks – you are entitled to 55% of earnings up to an earnings ceiling of $47,400 (so 55% of 47,400). I was entitled to the maximum benefit and after deductions for tax, I ended up with $1,700 per month in my pocket. Some employers have “top-up” programs where they will top-up what the government pays you to 75% or more of your actual salary, though I believe this is often just for the maternity leave portion of the benefit.

So Why Go Back Early?

There are many reasons why some women go back early – many couples share the parental portion of the benefit, so dad gets to stay home for a few months, other people find their finances too tight to afford a full year, while other women are at a point in their career (or on a certain career track) where being away from work for a year is not a viable option. In my case, unfortunately it’s a career thing. When we first started trying to have a baby, we thought we had all our ducks lined up in a row, and that we would start a family at a point in our life where it worked for us on all levels (emotional, financial, career wise, relationship wise, etc).

Unfortunately, with the whole process taking about 3 years longer than expected, we were in a different place (figuratively and literally – having moved across the country two months before conceiving!) than we’d expected. Before we moved, I felt fortunate to have found what I thought would be a dream job back in Toronto. Unfortunately, it turned out not to be the case, and I quit after about four months, or just after the end of my first trimester. I ended up taking a contract position with a place I used to work years ago, which took me right through to my maternity leave. After the super stressful situation at my previous job, the contract was a dream, however it was a lower level position that what I am qualified for. A low stress job with no responsibility was perfect while pregnant, but it’s not the type of work I want to be doing long term, so I knew that I would have to look for new work after maternity leave.

While I really wanted to take the full year of leave, this would mean that I would be looking for a new job after being out of my field for a year and a half (and actually closer to two years, since I am not putting the failed job where I worked for four months on my resume). This made me really nervous, so before going on leave, I decided that I would start looking for work when Gus was 9 months old, which meant that I was mentally prepared to go back at that point.

In an interesting twist, before I went on maternity leave, I found out that the company where I was doing the contract would soon be looking for a short term replacement for someone going on maternity leave, but in the department which was actually more suited to my skill set than the department I’d been working in. The timing didn’t line up perfectly, but long story short(er), I’m back on contract now, doing a combination role of low level, necessary work for the department I was with last year, and higher level, interesting, looks-good-on-my-resume work for the other department. This should tide me over until the fall, at which point it will be time to make a further move. I have about five more posts worth of thoughts on the whole work thing, but I’ll leave them for another time.

The actual point of this post was to describe our new routine a bit..what has changed and what has stayed the same since I’ve gone back. As my word count is already up, I’ll leave that for part 2.