Because apparently four and a half months is enough time for both a human to learn to smile and for the entire tech industry to be rebuilt from scratch.
So here I am. Back at my desk. This is my second rodeo with the “returning from maternity leave” saga, and let me tell you round two hits different.
Two Kids Is Not Just “One Plus One”
Everyone warns you that going from one kid to two isn’t additive, it’s exponential. They were right, and frankly, they undersold it.
With baby #1, I was one Chrome tab short of overwhelmed. With baby #2, I’m running a full distributed system with zero documentation, half the team in a permanent state of meltdown, and no rollback plan. My toddler has decided this is the perfect time to test every boundary known to man, right as the baby has decided that sleep is a “nice to have,” not a requirement. There is no version of “getting ahead of it”, there is only triage.
The mental load alone could power a small data center. Snacks, naps, school drop-offs, pediatrician appointments, the toddler’s sudden and passionate hatred of socks and somewhere in there, I’m also expected to remember my own meetings exist.
I Left for 4.5 Months. AI Rebuilt Civilization.
Here’s the part nobody prepares you for: going on leave in tech right now is like stepping away from your laptop for “just a second” and coming back to find your OS has been completely reimagined.
I left when AI tools were impressive. I came back and it felt like every tool, workflow, and conversation had been AI-ified while I was elbow-deep in diapers. New models, new agents, new “you have to try this” tools flooding every group chat. My own team’s workflows had shifted. The vocabulary had shifted. Even the pace of shipping had shifted.
It wasn’t just “catching up on emails” anymore — it was catching up on an entire industry-wide plot twist. Cue the imposter syndrome creeping in: did I just become obsolete during my leave? (Spoiler: no. But it sure felt that way at 8:58am before my first standup back.)
The Struggles Nobody Puts on the Baby Registry
A few more things that have made this return… let’s call it “character building”:
- Context-switching whiplash. Going from “no, we don’t throw food at the dog” to “let’s discuss our Q3 roadmap” in the space of forty-five minutes is not a skill they teach in any bootcamp.
- The confidence-vs-bandwidth paradox. With kid #2, I know what I’m doing as a mom. I have zero doubts there. What I don’t have is the actual time or energy to use that confidence. Competence without capacity is its own special kind of frustrating.
- Re-establishing your presence. Being “out” for months means gently re-inserting yourself into decisions, threads, and projects that moved on without you without steamrolling the people who kept things running.
- Guilt, the never-ending background process. Guilt about not being with the baby enough. Guilt about not being “on” enough at work. Guilt about not answering that Hangouts message fast enough. It just runs quietly in the background, eating up CPU you didn’t know you had to spare.
- The “brain fog meets acronym soup” combo. Sleep-deprived brain plus a brand new stack of AI tooling acronyms is a genuinely unfair fight.
So How Am I Actually Getting Through It?
Slowly. Imperfectly. And with a lot less pressure on myself than round one.
This time, I’m not trying to “catch up” on everything at once — I’m prioritizing ruthlessly, the same way I’d triage a production incident: what’s actually urgent, what can wait, and what can just… be a known issue for now. I’m leaning on my team more, asking more “dumb questions” without shame, and reminding myself that being behind on the latest AI tool for two weeks isn’t a career-ending event, even if my group chats suggest otherwise.
Mostly, I’m giving myself the same grace I’d give a teammate coming back from leave — the benefit of the doubt, some ramp-up time, and permission to not have everything memorized by day one.
If you’re a fellow tech mom navigating this exact chaos, juggling two tiny humans and a rapidly-evolving industry, just know: you’re not behind, you’re rebooting. And reboots take a minute. That’s normal. That’s expected. That’s just how the system works.
Now if you’ll excuse me, someone just woke up from their nap, and my standup starts in six minutes.
