Returning to Work

This year in the early Summer, we welcomed our son into the world. He was born happy and healthy, and we were very fortunate and grateful. We'd spent the last few months reading up as much as we could and trying to prepare ourselves for how our lives would change, but nothing could prepare us for what that entailed. Everyone tells you this but I don't think it's possible to experience it until you go through it yourselves: suddenly your priorities are completely different.

The first two weeks were an absolute blur of day and night feeding, and trying to keep each other sane while we make sure the baby is fed, changed and sleeping enough. It takes a while until you fall into a semblance of a routine, and after two weeks you just aren't there. For a lot of new dads, that's all the paternity they get. At this point, I went back to work for a while so that my wife could look after our son during her leave as we would be taking turns. I'm not ashamed to say that it was incredibly difficult to concentrate and disconnect from my home life during that period. Luckily, I had a very focused set of goals to accomplish at work before my extended leave.

After six weeks, I handed everything over, and my wife passed my son to me to become his primary carer during the working week.

Five Months

At this point, he wasn't even 2 months old and we were still figuring things out (in fairness, we still are, and I suspect we will be right up until he turns 18). I was a little terrified of looking after him on my own, and still had thoughts of work and what I would do when I return in my head with some of the precious spare time I had.

It didn't last long.

I soon found myself completely disconnected from work, and embraced the time I was able to spend with my son. Over the next five months I saw him grow extremely quickly: he started smiling, babbling, lying on his tummy, stretching around, rolling over and by the end starting to sit up with support. He was now able to use his hands to grip, and was even starting to try solid foods. I can't explain how quickly the time went because even as I look back now, it feels like a complete blur, but it was one of the happiest times of my life.

As the Christmas and New Year period approached, I became more and more apprehensive about starting work again. Although I'd spent a bit of time during my parental leave building some side projects and trying to keep my skills fresh, it certainly wasn't my priority. What I had started to realise was that I was losing my own identity in the process, and that as much as I was a little worried, I had to go back to work for everyone's sakes.

Day Job

In my day job, I'm a principal software engineer at Booking.com, working in developer experience. I work to remove the barriers that stop engineers from being effective by building platforms, tools and an ecosystem that makes it easier for them to build out new products and services for our end-customers. I get to balance using my remaining technical skills with writing out proposals, reviewing our engineering vision and advising on projects and initiatives across the company. It can be a very demanding role, but because it's so different day-to-day I absolutely love it and relish the challenge.

As soon as I turned on my work laptop, logged into Slack and started to get involved in what had happened while I was away, I quickly started to reboot the parts of my brain that had been in a deep sleep for the last few months. It's taken a couple of weeks for me to get used to being cognitively engaged over an 8 hour day again, but I certainly feel like I'm getting there. Now I'm even back to travelling for work so I can visit my colleagues in our larger offices and work closely in workshops and deeper discussions.

So now I'm trying to strike a balance, one I suspect that everyone struggles to achieve: continuing to love my day job and work to grow my career and provide for my family, while spending time with my wife and son whenever I can, still trying every now and then to carve out a bit of downtime where I can work on side projects, or even just enjoy some of my own hobbies. I'll have some good weeks and some bad weeks, but there are a few things I do to keep myself in check:

• Journal regularly: I wrote a Journal in Go some time ago that I host privately, and write my thoughts and feelings in there each day so I can keep a handle on my longer-term well-being
• Keep to a routine: when I'm at home I take my son to nursery each day, pick him up and spend some time with him before his bedtime. Then I'm able to wind down with my wife or grab some personal time for a project or an Xbox session
• Be kind and forgiving: neither I or anyone else are always going to get it right. I continue to approach each situation I face with kindness and empathy to ensure I'm able to be a better all-round human, hoping that others show me the same consideration for my own failings

I won't ever get the few months back that I spent with my son, and it's given me memories and experiences I'll treasure for the rest of my life.