If taking time off work for a vacation gets you anxious when the next working day looms, imagine what it would be like taking months away from work, not to mention that giving birth and caring for baby isn’t quite the same as spending a week relaxing in the Maldives.

“It is two extremes,” says Huimin, who took three months off work to deliver twin girls. Like many mothers, she felt torn between wanting to stay home with her babies and going back to a familiar schedule of activities like emails, meetings and thinking up lunch places with colleagues.

Fortunately, her boss agreed to her working part-time for six months before deciding if she wanted to come onboard fulltime again. “It gave me time to ease myself slowly into a schedule and in the end I realise that while baby is a good break from work, work is also a good break from baby,” she adds.

“Typically it’s the new mothers who have adequate childcare support who will have less emotional stress going back to work,” says HR manager Alison Ang. But some insecurities still exist – you wonder if you’re still relevant in terms of skills and efficiencies, you wonder if the people have changed, and most importantly you wonder if your colleagues will think any less of your commitment to your role now that there’s a baby to get your hands full too.

Getting a Grip

Don’t let yourself be overwhelmed by too many ‘what-ifs’, says Alison. Instead of trying to catch up on lost time, lost projects or lost deals, ask for ‘what’s next’ from your supervisors.

Here are eight tips on how to deal with stressful first days back at work.

1. Dress your best. “This will give you the confidence you need to get everyone’s attention that you’re not only back – you’re back in style,” says Alison.

2. “Give yourself time to get use to things so as to avoid setting yourself high expectations or demands,” says psychologist Daniel Koh, from Insights Mind Centre. Instead, say ‘hello’ to everyone you know so they know you’re back in the swing. Give yourself time to find out about new colleagues and any changes in the management or policies.

3. Staying in the loop of workplace news during your maternity leave would have helped you ease back into work, so at least find time to send an occasional email to your colleagues one or two weeks before you actually clock in. “We kept in touch all through the three months via sms, msn and emails, and I even went back to lunch with them one week before going back to work and it really helped to ease my anxieties,” says Cheryl, mother of one.

4. At the first opportunity, tell your boss frankly what are some arrangements that you would need to make, such as not being able to work as many extra hours, or having to be at work 15 minutes later every morning, or even a simple request to take an additional 15minutes after lunchtime to express breastmilk.

5. Deal with the guilt of leaving baby with caregivers during the day. “At first I felt really guilty, but later I learnt that whatever else that I did without the babies – shopping, dinner with friends, a movie date with my husband, or even taking my parents on a short holiday – they all made me feel guilty,” says Huimin, “so I learned to help myself by rationalising that there must be a time for everything.”

6. Keep in contact with the home scene. “By all means, make the calls home to check on baby if you need,” says Alison. But the last thing any employer needs is a new mom that is constantly worried and thinking about her baby. “Also let your supervisor know your concerns, and cue them early that you may need to take urgent leave from work, or take time off to go home early,” she adds.

7. Keep a good divide between work and family. “We make it a point not to bring work home,” says Chuan Lim who doesn’t keep a computer at home. “Inform your colleagues subtly that you need to go home punctually every day and hint that you don’t regularly pick up the phone at home after work,” advises Alison.

8. Time management is key. It is not easy to maintain work-life balance, so to make the most of her time at work, Huimin chooses to have quick lunches near a supermarket on days she needs to grab some grocery home. “It’s usually some fruits or dried foods that I can keep in the car for a couple of hours, but I try to be as discreet as I can,” she says. On days that she has a sandwich for lunch, that’s when she buys her tickets for movies and does her online researches.