Episode 23 · 17 September 2026 · 37 min
Maternity Leave
with Becca Hamilton, On her third maternity leave
What if maternity leave isn't a break you come back from, but something enormous that happens to your whole life?
“Enjoy your break.” It's such a normal thing to say to someone going on maternity leave, except maternity leave isn't really a break at all. It's a period of enormous change, and underneath all the excitement there can be a much messier set of feelings we don't talk about nearly enough. Will my job still be there when I get back? What if my maternity cover is better than me? Then the baby arrives and somehow there's another pressure: to be good at this too.
Becca Hamilton, who is currently on her third maternity leave and has supported lots of women through theirs, on the fear of being replaced, the pressure to prove that becoming a mother hasn't made you less capable, returning to work when you're sleep deprived and not quite the same person who left, and why maybe we need to stop treating maternity leave as an interruption you simply come back from.
Core themes explored
- Why “enjoy your break” misses what maternity leave really is
- The fear of being replaced
- The pressure to prove that becoming a mother hasn't made you less capable
- Returning to work as someone who has fundamentally changed