Work life balance

So as you may or may not have noticed it's been a while. There is a good reason for this though, I became a mum.

It has been an incredible journey and also the hardest thing I have done in my life.

What I am interested in professionally is how it is going to impact me as a Social Worker. Am I going to struggle with certain aspects of the job more than I did before? I wonder if I will find it more difficult to focus because I would rather be with my child or am I going to be more focused because I want the time I am spending away from her to mean something.

Work life balance is a tricky thing for everyone regardless of their role but I think when you are in a profession such as Social Work that is so emotive this can bring its own set of challenges. Prior to being a mum I could finish for the day and decompress especially when I'd had a tricky one or something happened that stayed in my head whereas now I finish work and immediately put on my mum hat. I don't have the freedom that I did before and because we are navigating this new way of being for us as a family it will take time. This doesn't make it any easier though when you want to be the best you can be both professionally and in your personal life but don't necessarily have the energy to do both.

This is where the spoon theory explains this well, each person has a limited number of spoons they can use during the day and when they run out they need to recharge before they can do anything else. As a parent you can use all of these before the day has even really begun but you still have to carry on through the day because you don't have a choice. You find that you are pushing through limits you didn't know that you had.

Then you add in working as a Social Worker to that and it is even more overwhelming. I have gone back to work this week and not had system access so it has meant I can't really catch up with anything and this makes me feel like I'm split in half, both back at work and not. I want to read up on all the changes since I went off 13 months ago, catch up with colleagues and get my training up to date so I can start picking up cases but this is not currently an option. This means that I second guess myself and my decision about coming back because I feel like what I am being able to achieve at the moment is not worth leaving my little one for but I know that once I am back properly, picking up cases and making a difference this will change.

I have experienced so many changes this past year and coming back to work feels like the latest in that. The difference now is it doesn't just impact me, there are other people it effects now too. I have a little one getting used to routine changes and being left with other people. This means that she is more tired and clingier than usual but instead of clinging to me as she would have done before she is now clinging more to her dad because he stayed with her that day whilst I went to work. This makes me feel again like I have made the wrong decision and I am ruining my relationship with her but I know that once she's settled and used to it that it won't be that way.

I know that I have come back part time so that I get time with her still and once she realises that, it will make a difference too. I will be back on cases soon and that will mean that my days move faster and when I start getting feedback that things for those people are improving even from something small that I have done it will remind me why I wanted to do this in the first place. It will allow me to find my new roles as both a Social Worker and a parent and how these co-exist but until then it is a roller-coaster of emotions which I am navigating without a map. We will get there but it is a learning curve for us all.