Back to work: A kitchen table post

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This week’s post has us sitting around the kitchen table talking about going back to work. Pull up a seat; we’ll pour you some tea or make you a strong coffee, and let’s talk. Did you go back to work after your baby died? How did it go? What would you tell other babyloss parents about to venture back into that world?

Did you return to work after your baby died? When did you do that and how did it go?

Emily: I did return to work…..maybe one month after Henry died. I was probably in no way ready to do it, but I suppose having a purpose to get out of bed and go somewhere was helpful. I still felt pretty foggy and definitely was phoning it in at the beginning.

Kathy: I returned to work four weeks after Tinsley died. Looking back, maybe I should have asked for a couple more weeks off but I also remember feeling like I needed to have structure by that point. I work remotely so it was a softer re-entry than if I had to see people face-to-face. I cried a lot and working from home gave me the space to do that comfortably during the workday.

Jo-Anne: I returned to work six weeks after Zia died having exhausted my leave days. If I'd had a living child I could have been entitled to five months of leave. But I had no baby to care for, no reason to stay off or have more time. So six weeks it was. My baby was, as we all know, dead. There was no other option for me, being the higher salaried parent, to stay home any longer. I had a mortgage,  bills, and living souls that relied on me. 

The hardest part was that everything felt so normal. It wasn't. My husband and I decided he'd stay home to take care of our son instead of sending him back to kindergarten because we became those paranoid parents. We were judged, ridiculed, and told we were overreacting. I suppose people had their opinions, and we had ours. I don’t regret the choices we made, not even now, nine years later.

Megan: I was on a sabbatical (one of the perks of academia) my whole pregnancy with James and after she died, I could just not imagine going back to work the following fall. When I thought about being around colleagues and students, my heart would start to race. I was fortunate to be able to figure out how to take leave in the fall and I went back this past spring. Having those eight months off from work after James died was really helpful because it allowed me to focus on my grief and gave me the time and space to begin to process what had happened. When I went back to teaching, I made the decision to be open and vulnerable with my students and colleagues about my experience of loss. With this in mind, I sent out an email to my department a few weeks before I returned in which I asked that they talk to me about James and that hearing her name spoken makes me feel connected to her (in other words, please don’t avoid the topic!!). I also sent along some helpful links that offer tips for helping a loved one in their grief (www.refugeingrief.org).

Nori: I returned to work, in person, three months after Olivia died. My employer offered generous maternity leave, but I ended up not being eligible for an additional eight weeks of “child bonding leave” because my child had died. That felt like such an insult, on top of everything else. I was in no way ready to go back after three months, so I returned part time, and was definitely not a star employee for quite a while. My boss at the time did the best she could to support me, which included sending an email to everyone who knew me, explaining what happened and some dos and don’ts. She was also very kind about supporting me with a reduced schedule and workload for a while.

Samantha: I was a freelance writer when Alana died and I had planned to give myself a three month "maternity leave," which I stuck to even though she had died. I desperately needed that time and frankly quite a bit more than that - so it was only very slowly that I returned to working on certain projects and went very easy on myself in terms of selecting projects only with flexible deadlines, since I never knew when I would be able to focus enough to work and when I just couldn't.

Jen: I was a grad student when Anja died, working on the last chapters of my PhD dissertation and doing research assistant work for my supervisor. I had a fellowship that I could put on pause but I would not be paid until I went back to school and work so I didn’t really take a leave. This was a terrible idea. Even though I wasn’t on leave, I definitely couldn’t work, and I just felt a massive amount of guilt on top of all the grief and every other emotion you feel when your baby dies. I was also terrified all the time that if I didn’t keep going and working myself to the bone I’d never find a job in academia, a space that is infamous for it’s never-stop mentality.

What was the hardest part about returning to work?

Samantha: The sheer lack of motivation. I just didn't care about anything anymore—it all seemed so trivial and meaningless compared to the enormity of my loss. Like, why even bother? (Also honestly I never really got past that. Now I spend all my time doing unpaid volunteer work for stillbirth prevention and find it immensely more fulfilling than anything I did previously.)

Jo-Anne: It was hard to go back to work and have people's smiles fade at the sight of me, the awkward silences, the stiff condolences, and worse the pretending nothing happened. It was a strange place to be in. I wanted people to know, but dreaded it at the same time. I didn’t want to be pitied, but I didn’t want to pretend my life hadn’t been turned upside down.

Emily: I had a hard time really caring about anything—the day-to-day items on my to do list just seemed so enormously unimportant. I dreaded picking up the phone for clients. It was a real struggle to answer their innocent questions about how my baby was doing. I also will forever remember some of the more out of line conversations (“Well, I guess you’ll just have to have another one;” “Please don’t be mad at God;”” When your baby died, wasn’t that just the saddest thing that ever happened to you?”).

Kathy: Working closely with two other women that were currently in their third trimesters when I returned was brutal. Why were their babies still alive but mine died? That pain extended to helping cover for them when they were on maternity leave and the difficulty continued when they returned from leave—seeing the pictures and celebrations of their newborns while I visited my baby's grave crystallized how unfair it all was. I'm fortunate that those colleagues were also friends who were sensitive and did their best to protect me from those happy conversations...but it was like trying to keep water off someone swimming in a pool.

Megan: Losing James changed my perspective on everything and at times, I had difficulty feeling empathy for some of the issues my students were dealing with (stress, anxiety over grades, etc.). I think this was partly because a lot of “problems” seem trivial to me now and also, I was so raw (and still am). I just don’t have a lot of emotional resources left to devote to anyone other than my family.

Nori: I have to echo everyone else on the changed perspective. Suddenly, my work seemed utterly pointless, as did all the social niceties of office life. Who cared about any of that when my baby had died? I especially hated when people asked “how are you?”—which is an incredibly common and normal thing to ask. I just couldn’t bring myself to say “good,” which was the expected answer, so every time someone asked that, I did an elaborate calculus in my head to formulate a response that was both honest and not completely off-putting. I’m not sure I always succeeded.

Jen: I think it was that I was so angry and resentful about having to be there and so scared that if I didn’t stay I would never be able to come back. And I felt all the same lack of motivation, inability to care about the things I used to care about, that everyone else has described. Nothing much mattered anymore and it was pretty much impossible for me to write when my whole project seemed worthless and unimportant.

Do you have any tips, having been through it now, for those going back to work?

Samantha: Give yourself grace. It took years (YEARS!) before my brain started functioning anywhere near its normal capacity again. Grief and trauma literally rewire your brain. No matter how hard you try, your productivity is going to be reduced, and other people are not going to understand this. Let go of expectations. All you need to do is get through the day. If it is a bad day and you're able to just cut out early or "phone it in" don't feel guilty about doing that. Self care comes first.

Emily: Be very patient with yourself. Your entire perspective has changed. You are not the same person you were before.

Kathy: Ask for what you need. There aren’t any handbooks that I know of for HR departments or managers to support parents returning to work after stillbirth. Below (in the comments) is the email that I sent to those I worked closely with, in case it's a helpful template….

Megan: Be honest and direct with your colleagues about what will make you the most comfortable. For some parents that may mean asking colleagues to not talk about their loss and for others, the opposite may be true. For me, I wanted people to be comfortable asking about my experience and talking openly about James.

Nori: Ask for what you need, and be very direct about it. For example, you may need to ask your boss to email everyone you might come into contact with and let them know what happened, to try to protect you from constantly having to answer “how’s the baby?” My partner’s boss did not do this for clients or people in other parts of the company, which meant he was still answering that question for many months afterwards. The only thing that eventually helped me enjoy work again was starting a completely new job, where people didn’t know my history unless I told them.

Jo-Anne: I don’t know if I have the right advice all these years later. Maybe I'm still that angry woman I was nine years ago. I will say that you need to do whatever is good for you and your family. Take a vacation. Change jobs if you're able. Write. Meditate. Breathe. Stay away from events you simply have to be at. You don’t. They will survive without you. Some will barely miss you. Cry. Laugh. Know it's okay to feel shit about everything. Do absolutely nothing if that serves you. Tell people that you need time. Talk to your partner. Ask for help. Know you're not alone.

Jen: All the advice from my Glow colleagues is so good and so important. I wish I’d heard it ten years ago! I guess my biggest tip would be, even if you think you can’t afford a break, you need to take one. I still feel the effects of not-ever-truly-stopping and know that my mental and physical health have suffered more than they would have if I had taken better care of myself way back then. You do need to take of yourself.

How did your workplace and colleagues support you? What other support would have been helpful?

Samantha: Just acknowledging the loss, saying my daughter's name. I understood and forgave the people who said the well-meaning wrong thing. But to this day (nine years later) I can still name the people who said nothing at all, and I still want nothing to do with them. Don't pretend my child didn't exist and that my life wasn't shattered into a million pieces. It takes enormous courage for me just to show up here; the least you can do is find the courage to acknowledge that.

Megan: The things Samantha said above about acknowledging the loss resonate so much for me. All I want is for the people in my life to acknowledge that I have a daughter and although she died, she is very much a part of my life and always will be. I did encounter a few colleagues (distant ones) that simply acted as if nothing had happened and that hurt me even though we weren’t particularly close to begin with. But the colleagues with whom I have worked closely for many years have really shown up and I will always appreciate that support.

Emily: My boss was very kind and flexible. He certainly didn’t rush me to come back and seemed understanding when I needed to take days off or leave early sometimes.

Kathy: The most helpful thing my workplace did was ask me what I needed and how they could support me when I returned. That is what prompted me to communicate my needs so clearly in an email. They also sent gifts and mementos when she died. Their acknowledgement of her death as a real baby that really died was so important. I'm really grateful for the VP of HR and the CEO for their intentionality in navigating my minefield, not only in the immediate aftermath of her death but also for their ongoing sensitivity. They send flowers to me every year on her birthday and know that on December 4th, I am most decidedly out of the office.

Nori: Even though I only felt more comfortable at work after leaving the job I had when Olivia died, it’s not because my coworkers did anything wrong. It’s just that I could only associate that job with the hope I had while pregnant with her and then the crushing grief and crushed expectations, even humiliation, that I felt when I returned without any baby photos to hang in my cubicle. There’s really nothing they could have done to change that. I perceived myself as being an object of pity there, whether or not it was true, and I needed a clean slate. At my new job, I tell people the truth when they ask if my son is my only child, but “person whose baby died” doesn’t feel like my primary identity at work anymore.

Jo-Anne: My workplace was great under the circumstances, but I could have used five months because I did have a baby and you need a whole lot more time to grieve than you do to celebrate.

Please join us at this kitchen table. Did you go back to work after your baby died? How did it go? What was hardest about going back to work? What was helpful? How were you supported? What other supports would have helped you?