The advice that does not travel

When career skills fail you as a new mother

I was alone in a hospital room with my newborn son. He was born a month earlier and picked up an infection that had to be treated, so we were back in the hospital.

Nurses came in and out. Each one, and I mean each of them, gave me a different piece of advice. They had the best intentions and shared what they had seen over the years, while I thought I was going crazy - who to listen to?

Then one nurse said something I'll never forget: Well, you seem like an accomplished career woman, just apply here what you do in your work.

Kindly said - and largely misleading, at least in my experience. In months to come, almost everything that served me well in building my career, among others - the need to control, the drive to optimize everything, the self-criticism I believed pushed me to go further - just did not work as a new mother (or mother in general). It made things worse. It added to the confusion and overwhelm of that early phase.

And here is the thing: even the most well-meaning advice, when it is contradictory and comes from all directions, does not help. It makes the already present confusion worse. Because everything is so new, you are already overwhelmed, unsure, and doubting yourself - and now you have ten different people telling you ten different things.

What helped was deciding who the one or two people are I will trust and listen to, and seeing the rest as noise. Deciding is the keyword here - there is no such thing as absolute truth and right way, we can just at any point of time, and in every aspect of life, decide what is best for us (and our family).

How the same pattern shows up in our careers

The same confusion happens with our careers after we have children.

Not long after giving birth,  especially if you were considered driven and had a successful career before, questions start: Are you going back to work?When are you going back?Are you sure you want to go back so soon?Why are you waiting so long?

And the issue is: you might not even be sure yourself yet. You are in the middle of the overwhelming early phase of motherhood, and you are supposed to have full clarity about your career?

And here is what makes the career confusion even worse: the expectation we have of ourselves about what we should want.

If you have spent 15-20 years building a successful career, there's often an unspoken expectation - from yourself - that you should want to go back, and soon. That you should be excited about it. That you should still be as ambitious and as driven.

And when you do not feel that way - when you realize you would rather stay home for a bit, or scale back, or redesign your career completely - it can feel like a failure. Like you are letting down the version of yourself who worked so hard to get here.

The guilt is not just about the baby. It is about yourself. About the expectation that you should be the same person you were before, when actually, nothing is the same - your world has literally changed.

I have worked with women who made career decisions during this time - decisions based on what they thought they should do, or what they had planned before they became mothers - back when they could not yet comprehend how they would actually feel.

The emotional complexity

Every choice is okay. Going back after three months, staying home for a few years, something in between - all of it is fine.

But here is what often gets overlooked: it is not really about the choice itself. It is rather about the complex emotions that come with it, no matter what you choose (and no matter how much you ignore them).

The confusion, the mixed feelings. The overwhelm, the guilt. And often, the surprise at your own feelings about work and career - feelings you did not expect to have.

I have worked with many high-achieving women who were surprised by their own reactions. Women who thought they would rush back to work and feel relieved to use their brains again - only to find themselves crying in the office bathroom, wanting to be home with their baby instead. And women who thought they would absolutely love being home, only to realize they desperately miss work, their professional identity, and the feeling of being themselves.

The guilt goes both ways. If you go back to work, there is guilt about leaving your baby. About missing milestones. About not being "present." And if you stay home, especially if you have spent 15-20 years building a career, there's guilt about betraying everything you worked for - and fear about becoming “less relevant” the longer you take.

And here is what makes it even harder: for high achievers, a career is not just a job. It is normally a large part of your identity. So whatever choice you make, it can feel like betraying one part of yourself for another. Go back to work, and it feels like you're betraying your maternal instinct. Staying home feels like you're betraying your professional self.

A friend who has been in VC for years said recently, "It must be toughest for women trying to do both - be in these, by definition, very demanding careers, and navigate the early years of their children. They must feel like they are failing at everything."

And he is right. That is often the reality: not feeling like you are doing either thing well. Not present enough at work, not present enough at home. The invisible cost of "having it all" - which is not that invisible at all to the women living it.

Not always a choice

And it is important to emphasize: it is not always even a choice.

Some women go back to work because, financially, both parents need to work. Because of the cost of life and childcare in some cities, the numbers simply do not add up with one income. Some women stay home because their partner's job is so demanding that someone needs to be flexible - and it defaults to the mother. Some women can not work due to visa restrictions, even if they desperately want to.

The women I know who stayed home for 6-7 years? They had the financial cushion to do that (often earned during previous years). Not everyone does. The women who went back after three months? Some wanted to, some had to. It is rarely as simple as "I wanted and chose this."

So when we talk about these decisions, we have to remember: they are not made in a vacuum. They are shaped by various factors - the financial reality, partners' job demands, and what is even possible given the circumstances.

The pressure

And then there is the external pressure, which varies wildly depending on where you live.

I recently saw a post that summed this very well: when she went back to work after four months, her German colleagues said, "Why so early?!" while her French colleagues said, "Why did it take you so long?" Same choice, opposite reactions. Different cultures, different expectations - and it all adds to the confusion, especially in a European context with its multitude of strong traditions.

I know women who went back to work earlier than they wanted - worried about losing clients, losing momentum, losing their place. Women who made childcare choices that reflected what "everyone does" in their city or industry, more than what felt right for them.

And I know women on the opposite side who stayed home longer than they wanted, even though they missed work and interactions with people, because they live in a country or city where going back "too early" gets you labeled a “bad” mother.

Why it matters to everyone

This is not just a woman's issue, by the way. Luckily, most of the men I know are married to equals - women they met at university or an exchange, at work, through their professional circles. Which means their partners are facing these same questions and complex emotions.

And increasingly, men are more involved in these decisions. They see the price their partners pay, whichever choice they make. They see the guilt, the identity crisis, the feeling of failing at everything when trying to do both.

So this matters to them too. Not just as partners, but as people who care about the women in their lives, navigating tough choices in a system that was not built and optimized for them.

Whom to listen to, and whom to ignore

So here is what I've learned - and it might seem obvious, but I will share it anyway:

Be careful who you take advice from. Ideally, it should be someone whose life you respect and admire, and not just their career achievements - rather, all of who they are and what they stand for, and whose life you would gladly live.

And remind yourself that each of us is unique. Each motherhood journey is unique. And despite what you thought before you became a mother, things can change.

Plans can change. You might think you will rush back to work, only to realize you want more time at home. Or the opposite. Both are okay.

You might realize that the career that used to fit, sometimes for many years, does not fit anymore. And that is not a bad thing.  You have more options than you see right now. It is actually not all or nothing - go back to your old role full-time or stay home completely. There are paths in between. You can redesign your career to fit your life today, and not the other way around.

This might be the beginning of a new chapter. The one you get to create with the maturity and self-awareness you didn't have 15-20 years ago when you started. And isn't that a wonderful thing!