A simple guide to helping you offboard from work in preparation for your parental leave.

If you’re about to go on maternity leave, you’re probably focusing on tying up all the loose ends at your office. Making sure all your jobs are covered, and that someone will take care of them until you get back. But what you might not be thinking about is how different your working life will look when you return.

Being a parent means late night and early morning working habits will have to be suspended, at least for a few years. Meetings will need to be more flexible; so will days you spend in the office. If you work a lot of hours right now, it might be hard to imagine. And indeed, for some offices, it’s a difficult adjustment when an employee has a child. Where once the most important thing in your life was your job, now it’s something else. Something outside of work that cannot be controlled in the same way.

If you take some time now, before the baby comes, to set yourself up with a work lifestyle that works for a parent with kids, you may find yourself in a better position when you come back. For instance…

1. Ask yourself: What is currently making your life harder than it has to be? Whatever that thing is, now is the time to figure out how to resolve it. Maybe it’s going to the post office to mail contracts three times a week. Can those contracts be delivered virtually in the future? Or maybe there’s a day when you have to be in the office earlier than everyone else. Perhaps you can take that early morning meeting from your home office. If you can address your biggest hassle in the workplace now, you will be much better off when you come back.

2. Talk to your employer / boss about changes in your relationship. If they like to call you late at night, or early in the morning, you can say, “Look, let’s set up a new schedule for calls now so when I get back, we have less to adjust.” Some employers are more amenable to change than others; that’s why it’s a good idea to do it now, before there’s a baby in the works. It means you’ll have more time to set up a process, and more patience when it takes time to iron out details. 

3. Think about what might create the most stress for you when you come back. Will it be taking phone calls with the baby crying in the background? Consider sound-proofing your home office. Or are you concerned that your colleagues might see you differently? Maybe talk to them about it now so they can understand your perspective. Anything you can front-load will be a big win for you in a few months.

4. Give yourself the space to change. When you come back to the office, you might be different. You’ll still be you, but you might not have the same priorities or the same time or energy to dedicate to your work (at least, not at first). Give yourself the space to grieve that loss. If you like your job, it can be really difficult to imagine how dramatically your life might be altered until after the baby comes. But you are still a worthy employee if you can’t sacrifice everything for work. You are still important and smart, and well-worth having at your job.

5. Carve out a schedule that sets you up for success and let the rest of the workplace adjust around you. In our experience, even employers with children may not be as thoughtful as you might expect about the changes you are about to experience. So make sure you take the time to reimagine how you want your life to look. 

Think about the hours you imagine you will want to spend with your child during the work week. Perhaps you will want to suspend calls before work, and take more meetings in the evening. Or maybe dinnertime is family time for you, and the mornings are easier for calls.Think about when it will be easier to have meetings. Be clear about expectations regarding before and after work email and phone replies. Before you know it, you’ll have a plan that works for all of you.

6. Don’t feel like you have to have everything figured out right now. Having a baby means big changes for you, and for your family life. It can be really difficult to picture what that might look like before it happens. So give yourself the space for flexibility. Remind your employer and your teammates that you aren’t sure how things are going to go. Make plans, but build in the space to change your mind.

And enjoy those baby snuggles. You deserve them!