Until this last Christmas, I didn’t believe in Santa but there must be a fat, white guy with a long white beard and too tight suit that loves me because my prayers about work have been answered and I’m back on maternity leave until April. Admittedly he didn’t answer my pleas for my family to be normal and non crack fiendish over the Christmas but I shall overlook that…

Now it’s unfortunate that the gift of freedom came as a result of an almighty cock up by my employer but the past few weeks have thrown me some testing times for me to learn some rather big lessons. It might be the year 2008, but the issue of maternity leave and how companies handle your return is worse than ever and it does teach you about your value and knowing your priorities.

I went through what can only be described as a real ‘mind f*ck’ about returning to work. It was clear it wasn’t exactly high on my agenda as I left the hunt for childcare until a whopping four weeks before I was due to return. When my company were surprisingly flexible and wooed me back, I guess I felt flattered, even though I was cacking myself about leaving the bambino when she was only seven months old.

“We all end up doing it in the end..” said one friend ruefully. “It’s much easier to do it with your first as everyone expects you to go back” said another. “At least you’ll get to escape the house and your mummy duties”; “You’ll start engaging your brain instead of talking in ga ga’s all day” and the most helpful one of all from mummy dearest “I never left any of you when you were so young…”

So I got the childminder and some new clothes, and as the time crept closer I began to feel curious and slightly excited about being in Soho with my crackerjack colleagues and the prospect of a new challenge. Even Christmas day with my insane family where I felt like marching them out to the back garden and shooting the frigging lot of them didn’t plunge me into despair. “You can do it!” I chanted to myself.

Getting up on the 2nd of January was a switch into auto pilot mode and because the bambino was home with the boyf, I wasn’t as stressed as I could be. I read a book first thing in the morning for the first time in nine months and tried not to literally bust a gut from wearing too tight trousers and kept checking to make sure I didn’t have camel toe (I didn’t)…

Walking back into the office was weird but my anticipation and vague excitement dissipated pretty frigging quickly when it became apparent that no preparation had been done for my arrival and I had no desk, no phone, no laptop, and…well not much of a job thang going on… A couple of hours later and a request for a meeting with my manager where I thought I’d get the lowdown on my job but he instead said “I don’t know what you’re doing. I was hoping that you could tell me…” and I felt myself sinking into a pretty demoralised low.

Of course I came home and moaned to the boyf who demanded that I get my arse in there the next day and give them what for, which of course I did but the rot had set in and calamity after calamity continued and the only thought that kept going through my head was “Is this what I have left my seven month old child at home for?” OK, that and “I think I’m going to f*cking kill somebody!”

I only went back to work for a total of four whopping days, two of which the bambino spent with the childminder. The first time I handed her to the childminder she looked back at me as if to say “What the eff do you think you’re doing mum?” with this massive scowl. “OH NO! She’s really p*ssed off!” I wailed to the boyf moments later. “Oh..well she just blew a raspberry at me…” Typical. She had a whale of a time and only cried when she saw us and suddenly twigged that we were big, fat, abandoners…

So why did I jack it in after four days? I had expected to miss my baby; that was a given and I actually coped with that fine. What I was totally unprepared for was returning to a bunch of nothingness, a political meltdown, and a total lack of structure. Considering that I’d been considering extending my leave but had been told that it was imperative for me to be back for this special role and to hit the ground running, I was outraged! I’d been off work for almost nine months, not nine frigging days! It was my right to expect to return to a job that was ready for me to step into, not being sorted out on the fly and me being treated like some hot potato.

Some people can sit at work and twiddle their fanny’s all day and collect a paycheck, and they don’t even need a baby at home to do that! But this isn’t me. I’m an intelligent woman who has nearly five years of service and brought in millions of pounds for my company. If they can’t so much as put a frigging crayola out on the table for me then no amount of money is going to make me sit there and demoralise, devalue, and disrespect myself when I could be at home enjoying the full maternity leave that I’m entitled to. OK that and the fact that they finally admitted that they botched up my maternity pay and owe me money… Santa must fancy me or something