Someone has probably said it to you. “Just set a boundary with your boss.”
As if that were something you slip in between school pickup and reheating dinner.
Returning to work after maternity leave already asks everything of you. And now there is the expectation that you will also navigate conversations about hours, availability, and what you are and are not willing to do - while running on broken sleep, while practicing the morning goodbye all over again, while feeling the ground shift under you in ways nobody warned you about.
A limit is not a slogan
There is advice that circulates about returning to work: “protect your limits early.” It means well.
But putting a limit in place - saying no to the seven o’clock call, asking for a lighter first month, telling your manager that feeding time is not a window for questions - none of that is simple.
Setting a limit takes real mental and emotional energy. A lot of it. Not because something is wrong with you. Because you are postpartum, and that matters.
Why it drains you more than you expect
Saying no - even once, even about something that seems obvious - activates a whole internal system: drafting the sentence, anticipating the reaction, managing their discomfort, and managing your own all at once.
After birth, especially in the first weeks back, the reserves are thin. Your body is still recovering. Your sleep is interrupted. Your head is split between two worlds from the moment you wake up. And what sounds like “just say something” can leave you genuinely emptied.
That is not weakness. That is an honest accounting of what the return costs a woman, especially early on. It does not mean limits are impossible. It means a different approach gets you further.
There are ways that cost less
Not every limit looks the same.
Some are built around direct confrontation - “I will not be available after six.” Others are framed differently: “What works for me right now is wrapping up at six - here is how I will cover things before then.” Same boundary. Different emotional price tag.
Some of the women I work with find the second approach not only easier to say, but easier to hold over time. This is not compromise. It is a deliberate choice about where you spend what little you have.
The one question before any conversation
Before you talk to your manager, before you decide on hours, before you draft anything - one question is worth sitting with first:
What do I actually want?
Not what is normal. Not what the team expects. Not what the woman on your same team did when she came back. What you want, in this return, given who you are right now.
What is the one thing you most need to be different? What is wearing on you most? What would feel like a breath of air if it changed?
When you have even a partial answer to that question - even an unfinished one - the conversation with your manager shifts. You are coming from somewhere specific, not just reacting to a situation. That matters more than any particular phrasing. The returning to work after maternity leave guide goes deeper on the preparation side of this.
And what about at home?
Work limits are not enough when the home front expects you to hold everything there, too.
So many women returning to work do all of it: they manage the baby’s schedule, coordinate the childcare, remember the doctor’s appointment, pick up from daycare and cook dinner, then answer a few more emails from the couch. And take care of themselves last, if at all.
This is not a personality trait. It is a pattern that builds quietly, over months, without anyone deciding it.
Coming back to work is exactly the moment when you need someone at home who is also holding you - not just handling logistics, but genuinely asking how you are and meaning it. One conversation about this, before the sprint starts, carries further than you expect. Working mom guilt - which often makes limits harder from the inside - is worth reading alongside this.
Who is looking after you?
So many of us who return to work after having a baby are very good at looking after everyone else. The baby, the manager, the team’s needs, the home coordination.
Ourselves - last.
Not because we do not want to. Because it has not been given room.
You are 100% okay just as you are. And you are also allowed to need something. Not as a reward for good performance - because it is a necessary part of this transition. The knowing of what you need is already inside you. Sometimes it takes someone listening to it for you to be able to hear it yourself.
If the first week back is what you are bracing for, what the first week back at work really looks like names it honestly.
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