The compromises to be made when you go on long leave

WHEN I was pregnant with my first child, I thought I had things all figured out.

I spoke to my bosses early to let them know about my pregnancy, sat down and thought through a rescoping of my role at the company, planned and decided on an advance date to commence maternity leave, scheduled handover meetings and completed a highly-detailed, multi-page document listing and explaining how to perform all my duties and projects in the last 2 weeks I had before going on leave.

And yet - I wound up returning to work after 90 working days away, only to discover that I had just about nothing figured out. And ultimately, that I was regrettably way in over my head in my mistaken assumptions of what I could accomplish and the workload I was able to handle.