“I genuinely felt funny” Carrie Bickmore’s relatable return-to-work dilemma
Carrie Bickmore gave birth to her third child – a little girl she and partner Chris Walker named Adelaide – back in December. The little girl – who they call Addie – joined big brother Ollie and big sister Evie.
“I genuinely felt funny”
Since Addie’s birth, Carrie’s been sharing her thoughts on parenting three children and how it feels to revisit that new baby bubble all over again.
Tales of sleeplessness and exhaustion filtered through via Carrie’s Instagram account, as she admitted that baby number three was not the easy-breezy experience she’d been told it would be!
With her recent return to work, she’s now sharing some thoughts on the highs and lows of maternity leave, noting that she’s been lucky enough to have a fairly long break … but at the same time it’s sparked mixed feelings.
“Maternity leave is such a strange period in a woman’s life,” Carrie wrote in her regular column for Stellar magazine.
“I recently started back at work after bub number three and I genuinely felt funny in the tummy (as I would say to my four-year-old Evie).”
The mum bubble
It’s a feeling that will strike a chord with many other mums, as Carrie noted that the pull to spend more time with her kids was contrasted with the stark realities of being home all the time … and away from a job she loved.
“When I’m at the office my heart aches to be back home, but when I’m at home I look forward to drinking a coffee while chatting to workmates about something other than the animation Bluey (which is brilliant, by the way),” Carrie explained.
She also noted that it’s easy to let insecurity creep in when you’re peeling upturned Vegemite VitaWeets off the couch and spending the wee hours of the morning feeding a new baby.
“When it comes to your replacement, you hope someone decent fills your shoes so that you don’t walk back into more work than you left, but that they are not so good that your workplace thinks: ‘Can we keep her instead?!'” she wrote.
It’s a situation lots of mums will be familiar with, as the parent identity jostles with the professional one.
“While we fear the things about our work that have changed while we’ve been away, we forget that the thing that has probably changed the most is us,” Carrie confirms.
There’s so much truth in that.
