Notes on motherhood (part 2)
As promised a few months ago, this is the second part of my blog on motherhood and it relates to the dilemma known as work-life balance. As for the first post, this was prompted by conversations with friends/colleagues of mine on our group chat. In particular, one of my friends had a gorgeous baby back in October - she was the inspiration for the first post. Now that she is getting to the end of her statutory maternity she informed us on the chat that she had painfully come to the decision to request an unpaid leave of three months to be able to stay with her baby longer and be able to wean him before returning to work. A couple of us in the group were immediately ticked off by the word painfully and asked her for explanations. She told us that her project had several deadlines and she felt guilty (note this important keyword) that her colleagues had to take them on and cover for her, since her organization had not hired a maternity cover. It sounded like she felt it was her fault