Maternity Leave: A season of professional evolution

The Work Beneath the Work

 

Disclaimer: Insights here come courtesy of roughly four hours of sleep, Mom brain and a tiny human who insists on reminding me who’s really in charge. Interpret liberally.

I began writing this in my head twelve weeks into maternity leave, somewhere between the third and fourth night waking, when the house was quiet except for the small, insistent sounds of a new life rearranging mine.

It is five months now.

Five months of learning that time bends. That the smallest person in the room can reorganise an entire life without notice.

I have loved my work fiercely. I thrive in the precision of it, the cadence of an executive day, the sequencing of conversations so that alignment felt organic rather than engineered. I love the company I work for. I respect the executive team I support. I miss the rhythm.

But my tiny human demands attention (and milk) with a discipline no boardroom could rival. And somewhere along the way, I developed a deep, almost spiritual respect for cows.

There is a particular clarity that comes with sleep deprivation. It peels away vanity. It exposes structure.

For me, maternity leave has done something unusual. It has quietened the noise.

We speak often of “support” as though it is soft. It is not. It is structural. It is load-bearing.

Beneath the organisation, titles, reporting lines and meetings, there is a mycelial network. Fine threads of trust, context and timing running quietly between people. Decisions travel along those threads. So does information. So does confidence.

An EA’s influence is rarely declarative. It is rarely loud. It is composed instead of small calibrations. The conversation framed just right before it becomes conflict, the priority gently reordered before it becomes crisis, the information placed precisely where it will land and take root.

When we are present, this often feels invisible. But that does not mean to say it is.

When we step away, it becomes visible.

Not because you are replaceable.  That old corporate ghost. But because you have embedded clarity into the system. You have translated instinct into rhythm. You have converted memory into method.

Maternity leave, then, becomes a mirror. The handover process is its most honest reflection.

Not the polite document filled with bullet points and shared drives. But the deeper mapping of how work actually moves through the organisation.

A robust handover answers uncomfortable and important questions:

• Where does institutional knowledge really reside? In a folder? Or in a relationship built over three budget cycles and one difficult restructuring?
• How do decisions actually travel? Who needs to feel heard before they feel aligned?
• What rituals. The Monday morning briefing, the pre-board quiet check-in, the unscheduled corridor conversation — stabilise the executive rhythm?

These are not administrative details. They are design.

For organisations, maternity leave becomes less a disruption and an opportunity to view it as more of an audit, a rare chance to see what was previously invisible. And for EAs, it is also a professional reckoning.

You also evolve in ways that are difficult to quantify.

It offers companies the opportunity to:

• Extract processes from memory and anchor them in shared understanding.
• Is backup capacity intentional or reactive?
• Treat maternity leave not as an exception to productivity, but as part of a humane and modern rhythm of work.

I will admit, I am guilty of having held too much in my head. Of mistaking indispensability for value. Of believing that excellence meant personal containment.

Distance has corrected me. It would be easy to frame maternity leave as a pause.

It is not.

It is a shift in perspective. One that reveals both the strength of what you built and the opportunity to build it differently. The systems I helped shape have continued. Not perfectly, but steadily. That is not a threat to my value.

For EAs, maternity leave is not only about babies and bottles and bewildering levels of fatigue. It is also a season of professional evolution. You develop resilience that no corporate training can simulate. You master prioritisation under conditions of biological urgency. You practise emotional intelligence with a stakeholder who cannot yet speak but communicates everything.

Even on four hours of sleep. Even between diaper changes. Even while negotiating with a being who believes 3:17 a.m. is an appropriate time for philosophical reflection.

This is the first in a series exploring maternity leave from the perspective of an EA.

Not as an interruption to ambition.
Not as a polite footnote in a professional biography.

But as an inflection point for personal reckoning, professional design, and organisational maturity.

And sometimes, stepping away is the most precise form of leadership we practise.

Purvi Shah