Stop Believing What You Think About Working Mothers

By Irena Ioannou — GAZE

Raising children is an uphill battle but the first months of a parent’s life are mostly magical. You still can’t believe how blessed you are — to have created new life — and your child has become your only focus, everything else fading in the background. Until you have to get back to work.

Five kids equal five pregnancies and therefore five times I’ve had to return to work with existential doubts in mind. And it’s the same now: the last maternity leave has run out in the blink of an eye and I’m heading alarmingly fast to a 9–5 workday and a consecutive second-shift motherhood.

You can imagine the thoughts creeping into my mind: How will the kids cope with my absence? What will my husband think about my priorities when I have to work late? And have my colleagues outperformed me already?

These are just fears of course, projected to me by others’ misguided stereotypes, but it took me five pregnancies to reach this realization. When it comes to the thoughts that poison mothers, the old saying is true: ‘Don’t believe everything you think’.

Everyone has moved on while I’m falling behind.

A pervasive thought even for women who do not suffer from post-partum depression. But just because someone has held a post for…