Juggle Struggle blog

I think it’s pretty normal to find it a bit overwhelming when you go back to work after having a baby. 

You transition from having just one job to do during maternity leave (make sure the baby is ok!) to still doing that job, plus your actual job, on top of that, handling the added logistics of getting to your job, plus anything else that life wants to throw at you. 

It’s a lot.

In some cases it’s not a nice slow runway into handling everything; unless you have a particularly empathetic employer, they’ll probably want you back up to speed pretty quickly. I’ve also found that once you do become a working mum, there’s a weird expectation that you’ll just get into the swing of everything quickly, and be able to suddenly cope with all of life happening, not just your job. 

For me there was also a strange muscle memory about being back at work which made me feel like I should be on top of all the same stuff I prioritised before I had kids, as well as being on top of the new stuff I had to prioritise now that the kid was here. Are you ready for the spoiler alert? Priorities change. 

It took me forever to figure out that the smart ones who are nailing the juggle struggle are doing it by dropping some of their balls on purpose.   

Yep, that’s right. This works because if you intentionally let some balls drop, you can put more focus on keeping the others in the air, and they’re less likely to ALL come tumbling down at once. 

I fell into the trap of thinking I had to be on top of All The Things when I went back to work after maternity leave. I expected life would feel busy, and I was busy all the time, but was I busy doing the right things? Or was I just busy because I was letting my task list swallow me whole?

I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was so busy doing and whether those things actually served me in any way, or just exhausted me.  

I tried letting go of a couple of the juggle struggle ‘balls’ I was trying to keep in the air – just small ones at first – and it was so liberating that I now routinely ask myself “What else can I drop?” or “What won’t I do?” 

Here are some examples of what I dropped: 

• Cleaning the house on a set schedule. I’m a person who does love a routine, but I realised that holding myself accountable to a pre-child cleaning routine was not sustainable. Instead, I tried just cleaning a room when it felt like it might need cleaning, and it was so great not to have ‘the cleaning schedule’ hanging over my head. 
• Sending birthday cards. Sorry loved ones, but I realised that trying to send birthday cards on time was an additional stress I didn’t need. I also realised that failing to send them on time was an additional way to beat myself up and tell myself I was somehow a bad person that I also didn’t need. 

These may sound like small things but they were pretty game-changing for me. Dropping those 2 things made me realise that the world wasn’t going to implode if I said no to some things.

This meant that I was able to say no to more things, bigger things – like: 

• People-pleasing. I now turn down invites to plans that I know aren’t for me, when previously I would have gone along regardless.  
• A fairly chunky personal project that I had spent a lot of time on, but didn’t need to hang on to. 

Figuring out what to drop is the real art of the juggle struggle I think. There is so much of life these days that as working parents we are all going to drop some balls at some point. Wouldn’t it be better to be intentional about what we drop, rather than accidentally dropping the ones that we care about? 

Have a look at your to-do list today, this week, or this month. Which of your juggle struggle balls are you going to drop, on purpose? Which ones are no longer helpful? 

As always I’d love to hear what you thought of this blog in the comments.