Before I became a mother, I knew exactly what ambition looked like to me. It meant working hard, taking on the difficult assignment and making a good impression.
I wanted to keep learning and be ready when the next opportunity—or promotion—came along. I was career-oriented and competitive with myself, always looking for the next thing I could do better. I was also fortunate enough to see some of that ambition turn into reality.
I was promoted to manager when I was three months pregnant. Pregnancy didn’t make me feel like I needed to slow down. I continued working, taking ownership and building my career. Because pregnancy hadn’t set my career back, I assumed I would return from maternity leave ready to pick up where I’d left off.
What I didn’t know was that the harder part would begin when I returned.
Returning to work after maternity leave
When my maternity leave ended, I would often ask my manager if there was a project that would allow me to work from home. I got what I asked for.
At first, it seemed perfect: I could work and still be close to my baby. What I hadn’t considered was how difficult it would feel to join a new project without being physically there.
Before motherhood, getting to know a team happened naturally. I’d walk up to people at the office, introduce myself and have conversations between meetings. Over time, those people became friends, and I felt like part of the team without having to think too much about it. Now, I was joining a new project through a screen.
I remember worrying about my first meeting with a new manager. It was the kind of situation I would have walked into without thinking twice before I had a baby. Now, I was thinking about how to make a good impression while figuring out a working routine I hadn’t quite settled into yet.
I worked incredibly hard during that first month. I learned the project, understood the work and gradually took ownership. At the end of that month, my manager praised me in front of the wider team for gaining the knowledge and taking ownership of the project so quickly.
I was proud of that recognition. I also knew how much work had gone into it that nobody on the team had seen.
The work that happened after 10 p.m.
Once my baby went to sleep around 10 p.m., I could finally work without interruption. I would open my laptop again and spend the next two hours finishing what I hadn’t been able to get through during the day.
Those hours didn’t appear on a meeting invite or my calendar, but they were often how I managed to get everything done. And somewhere between those late nights and early mornings, I started noticing that I was changing.
Before motherhood, I could wake up around 8, get ready, reach the office by 10 and go to bed around 10:30. Now my day starts around 6, when I try to get a few things done for myself before my baby wakes up. After that, I’m feeding him, preparing his food and getting him ready before my own workday properly begins. My meetings have gradually started fitting into the spaces where his routine allows them to.
One day, I was giving a demo during an important client meeting when my baby started crying. I could hear him while I was trying to focus on the client, and I felt completely helpless. Even afterward, I struggled to concentrate on anything.
And I remember thinking: How did our mothers do this?
I couldn’t keep expecting myself to work exactly as I had before. Something about the way I organized my day had to change.
I started planning the next day in advance and scheduling important meetings during my baby’s nap whenever I could. I also had to get more honest with myself about what needed my attention immediately and what could wait. I was still doing the work, but I needed a different way to get through it.
I still wanted a career. I also needed flexibility.
The biggest realization came during my appraisal discussion. I thought about how I would have approached that conversation before motherhood. I’d always been ready to volunteer for something new or take on another challenge, and the next promotion would have been on my mind.
This time, I realized I was thinking much more about flexibility. I wanted to be there for my baby and find a way to make my working life fit with that. My priorities had shifted before I’d really stopped to acknowledge it.
Honestly, that sometimes makes me sad. I love my life now, but I occasionally miss being able to say yes to something without first working out what it would mean for everyone at home.
When I think about my son’s future, though, I know I don’t want to tell him, “I sacrificed my career for you.” I don’t want him to feel responsible for the things I found difficult or the choices I made.
I’d rather be able to tell him that I found ways to keep growing, even when my career didn’t look quite the way I’d imagined it would.
I still want to do meaningful work and take on challenges. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is my willingness to say yes to everything, especially when I know what it will take to fit it into my day.
Sometimes, saying, “This is what I need right now,” feels harder than agreeing to take on more. I’m learning to say it anyway.
A different way to measure ambition
For a long time, I measured ambition by how much more I could take on. Now I’m trying to think about what I actually want my working life to look like, rather than assuming the next opportunity is always the right one.
Related: I Thought Becoming an Executive Was the Goal. Then I Became a Mom
That realization was also what eventually led me to start a small space online, @quietlybalancing.
One evening, while putting my baby to sleep, I started wondering how many other mothers were thinking about the same things. Were they opening their laptops after bedtime, too? Did they still want to build a career but feel unsure about what that meant now?
I didn’t have a plan to become an influencer. I just wanted somewhere to talk about what I was experiencing, in the hope that another mother might recognize herself in it. I think I needed that reassurance as much as anyone else.
I’m still ambitious. I’m also waking up at 6, sometimes working at 10 p.m. and learning that pushing harder isn’t always going to solve the problem. There are days when I feel proud of how much I’m managing and days when I miss how straightforward work used to feel.
I hope my son will one day feel proud of me. For now, I’m trying to build a career I can feel proud of, too—one that leaves room for the life we have together.
I used to ask myself, “How much more can I achieve?” I still care about the answer, but these days I’m also asking, “What kind of life do I want to build?”
