Should I or Shouldn't I?

As I write this I have just pressed send on the email to my HR department advising them of my resignation. From the middle of August I will be unemployed for the first time in my life.

I started working at 17 and even when I lived on temporary contracts in the early days of my flying career, I knew I had a job to return to at some point in the future. Handing my notice in for my current position was a massive leap of faith and the decision to not return was not taken lightly.

When I worked for Monarch it was all I had ever wanted to do. It was my career and I spent the best 7 years flying for them. The position I am currently in was something that allowed us to live a certain way but was not something I enjoyed. Some of my Mum friends have careers that they have spent years working and studying for however, I have no attachment to my current role.

We are very lucky that there is no urgent need for me to go back to work. Yes we would have so much more money if I was earning too but I wouldn’t be going back full time even if I did choose to return. I would have to do 3 days a week and Little A would have to be put into Nursery for those days. We worked out that on my part time wage coming in and the Nursery fees going out, we would only just about break even. We may even be a little bit worse off.

I wonder how I would have felt if Coronavirus hadn’t entered our lives and I had continued with my recovery following my Counselling back in January. Perhaps I may have decided that for my own sanity I would return to work. Unfortunately, whilst I was doing really well pre-lockdown, I have really struggled with the restrictions put upon us. Being apart from my family and friends and not being able to travel freely has been hard.

My current role was working in administration. The company I work for handles the pensions of millions of people across many different companies. It’s a very stressful and very pressured environment to work in and not something that would help improve my mental health.

After talking with Mr N and weighing up our finances, we decided that I would give up my job and stay at home with Little A. We went through all of our monthly outgoings and have changed providers to get our bills as low as possible and we were also due to re-mortgage which has allowed us to save money there too.

I always imagined that when I had a baby I would definitely be a stay at home Mum, unless financially this wasn’t possible. The realities of being a stay at home Mum are again very different. Most of my Mum friends are returning to work and so it does worry me that I could find myself lonely. My fear of baby and toddler classes is something that I am going to try and have to overcome. I will have to try and make more of an effort to go and meet people even if the thought of it terrifies me.

I still have friends who work shifts so at least I will have more time to spend with them in the week and some of my Mum friends are returning to work part time so hopefully I will still get to see some of them too.

I feel like I have been robbed of so much because of PND and I want to spend this time with Little A making up for it. So many memories of the early days are filled with sadness and despair, I want to replace those with happy ones.

Mr N is still working from home currently and his company doesn’t intend on people going back to the office in London until at least September so I don’t think it’ll really hit me until then. I worry that that first day will feel like his first day back at work after I’d had Little A; when I was alone and couldn’t cope but I’m hopeful that as the lockdown slowly lifts, my confidence will grow and I won’t be so scared