Being a parent and balancing work with life can be a precarious tango of emotions. Especially when leave is involved. Maternity leave is often limited to a certain amount of time you can take before you need to return to work or make other arrangements.

For Rachel Larsen, when she had her first child she was back to work after 8 weeks. As she shared with Bored Panda, at the time it was the right move for her.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

She wanted to have that break from “the grueling work of caring for a newborn who wants to eat every two hours and cries non-stop.”

However, when it came around for her to have her second child, she actually took 12 weeks off on maternity leave before she had to go back to work. However, unlike with her first, this maternity leave was different for her.

By the time it was up, she wasn’t ready to return to work. Even though she enjoys her job, she just felt like this go-around, she needed more time at home.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

At the time, of returning to her office, she took a picture. And while she is visibly distraught, fighting to hold back tears, she didn’t post it to social media. At least not until four years later, when she shared it and her story to LinkedIn.

In her post, Larsen explained that while she was aware she was “extremely privileged” for having her maternity leave paid for, she still felt “shame around raising a family and working full-time.” Larsen added that the reason she went back after the 12 weeks was because her family was depending on her income, saying, “As a majority income source for our family, I was forced to suck it up, put on a smile, and get back to work.”

Check out her full post below:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6770481169738928128/

While this may have happened a few years ago, Larsen’s recent post was something that many fellow parents on LinkedIn could identify with. Many other moms knew exactly what she was feeling, as many of them had to return to work before they felt ready.

As one fellow mom, Katarina P., commented, “I was ‘lucky’ to have 3 months maternity leave with my last 2, but really, who are we kidding? At 3 months old, babies are just barely starting to learn to sleep through the night, which means a mother is returning to work sleep-deprived. Not just ‘didn’t sleep well’; I mean where you maybe got a few hours of sleep (interrupted sleep) every night for the past not just 3 months, but also, who sleeps through the night in the latter half of their pregnancy? To put another perspective: Sleep deprivation is also a torture-tactic in some military settings. Yet we expect mothers to return—sleep-deprived— ready to pull up their sleeves & bounce back & be like ‘normal’ when nothing about their experience there is normal.”

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Another mom, Marta Tubielewicz (Nestorowska), wrote, “Maternity leave in US was one of the greatest cultural shocks I had to deal with. When I was pregnant with my first child, being here in US, in Poland the new maternity law was just established giving women 8 months to 2 year paid time with their children. Fathers were also given paternity leave. I didn’t take a picture on my first day back to work after maternity leave, but it was one of the hardest days in my life…without any exaggeration! Thank you for sharing!”

It is true, the US maternity leave system isn’t as forgiving as those of some other countries, so it often does require parents to return to work before they’re ready, or force them to go without a paycheck if they choose to take some more time off.