I wanted to start a discussion here for the many of us who have gone through a career break and/or actively interviewing while in the post partum period. I hope to use this space for us to share ideas of how to make this work!

When I became pregnant, I took a year off of full-time work after being burned out from working in HR during the pandemic and to manage a medical condition that could have been exacerbated by pregnancy. I continued working very part-time as an independent consultant and career coach and completed my master's degree. Some 'professional break', I know.

Now at five months post partum, I am actively interviewing to get back into the full-time workforce but am running into a few issues. For one, while I worked part-time, my unintentionally short stint at my previous role (6 months) potentially looks a bit suspect to hiring teams and I have a year then as an independent consultant that together may make me look like a job hopper.

Not only that, while I am still working part-time, I am finding I am struggly with post partum brain fog. I have multiple times set up calendar appointments at the wrong time due to time zone confusion, joining meetings a the wrong time (thankfully almost always an hour early), have found more typos in my emails, and have been doing the usual 'mommy brain' things in my personal life. For example, I put my phone directly in the sink as I was actively washing dishes this morning. This is driving me crazy as I have always been a super organized and strong communicator, and here I am having a hard time with simple tasks.

So my question for discussion is two-fold:

1) How does make yourself a stronger candidate after a short professional break from full-time work?

2) How can one best manage the brain fog that comes with early parenthood to make yourself a more reliable, on-top-of-it person?

Would love any anecdotes or perspectives from this community!