As mentioned in my previous blog, the Austrian maternity leave system is generous. So I opted to go back to work for two months while hubby stayed home with Sam. During this time I also took all the holidays owed to me, so the end result was a brief five week stint of work for me.
I’m not sure how ideal it is for businesses – to gain an employee back for such a limited amount of time, or to lose one, but it did me a whole lot of good, and in the end, that’s the most important thing.
I remember the first day; waking up, feeding Sam and then handing him off and being free to brush my hair, wash my face, apply make up and get dressed, without having to simultaneously care for a child. I sailed out the door and spent the next 50 minutes alone in the car singing all the good songs to my heart’s content.
I have to admit, going to work felt a bit like a holiday in the beginning. It was almost the same, but also very different. There was the familiar landscape of the office, and yet someone else was doing my job. And while it felt to me like time had stood still, it actually hadn’t… so some of the people I’d worked with had moved on, with new faces replacing them.
Still, there was lunch in a canteen, instead of a hastily grabbed sandwich. I could go and have a cup of tea whenever I wanted, and drink it in peace. I could talk to other adults. I could pretend that work was important.
I mostly worked from home. If I lived closer I would have loved to go to the office more often, but with almost an hour commute it was barely possible to fit in a full day of work and get home in time to put Sam to sleep. Losing that two hours is big when you have a child and you don’t get so much time to yourself.
A lot of people asked me if I missed not being with Sam all day… and if he missed me. Well, I have to admit, not at first. At first I just wanted the hell out of there. And when I was working from home, I tried to maintain my distance, because I know how disruptive it is to have a work from home parent randomly popping in for a cuddle. I don’t know if it is because I knew Sam was safe with his dad, and Sam knew this too, or if I just really needed a break, but I think he only benefited from me having some time off.
But now my working holiday has come to an end. Back to the monotony… oh I mean the joy of being home with my son. I’ll return to work in August 2024 and I’m sure everything will be completely different then too.
an aussie in austria 