My first performance review after maternity leave was disappointing. It was difficult to be a great mom and a great employee.
I Went From "Exceptional" to "Successful" at Work — Because I Became a Mom
The year I gave birth was also the year my performance review broke my heart.
I opened my annual review and felt my stomach drop. For the first time, the words staring back at me were "Successful Contributor" — not the "Exceptional Contributor" rating I had earned the two years prior.
It wasn't just a label. It was a signal. Future promotions were tied to that rating. Raises were benchmarked against it. That single word — successful instead of exceptional — was now sitting in an HR file, quietly shaping my career trajectory.
As my family's primary earner, my salary wasn't abstract. It paid for our health insurance, our mortgage, and our new life as a family of three. I couldn't afford to let this slide. But I also didn't fully understand yet how much the deck had been stacked against me from the moment I went into labor.
The Year Nobody Put in My Performance Review
What my review didn't mention was this: I hemorrhaged two liters of blood during delivery.
My first hours of motherhood were spent watching a nurse thread a tube down my newborn's throat because he needed help breathing. I visited him in the NICU from a wheelchair, squeezing in iron infusions and pumping sessions between visits, because his tubes made breastfeeding impossible.
I came home anemic. And then, instead of sleeping at night, I would lie awake in a panic — convinced my baby had stopped breathing. When the anxiety released its grip, I was nursing.
Despite all of it, I returned to work part-time at ten weeks. By the time my son was four months old, I was back full-time — scheduling calls around pumping sessions, and on the days my schedule ran long, breathing through the physical pain of engorgement, milk soaking through my shirt before I could get to the pump.
I was working eight-hour days on four hours of sleep, performing competently and calmly, pretending it wasn't quietly destroying me.
I was doing the very best I could.
I just wasn't doing it exceptionally. And apparently, that was the standard.
The Impossible Balancing Act No One Prepares You For
After having a baby, I found myself caught in a trap I hadn't anticipated — the feeling that I had to choose between being a great mother and a great employee, and that I was somehow failing at both.
So I did what high-achievers do. I dove back in. I analyzed, optimized, and produced. I smiled through every meeting as if nothing had fundamentally changed — even though everything had changed. I expended every ounce of energy I had during my nine-to-five, desperate to claw my way back to "exceptional."
I didn't know how to ask for help. I didn't even know how to verbalize what I was going through.
Then one day, on a work call with a colleague in Canada, I mentioned offhandedly that my son was nine months old. She paused.
"Wait — what are you doing working?"
Then she caught herself. "Oh, right. You're in the United States."
My organization offered twelve weeks of paid parental leave — genuinely generous by American standards. And I had absorbed the unspoken message that came with it: be grateful. You got more than most.
But gratitude doesn't speed up physical recovery. I didn't feel like myself again until seven months postpartum. I was still learning how to exist in my changed body, still finding my footing as a mother, still processing a traumatic birth — all while logging on every morning, on time, ready to deliver.
The System Wasn't Built for This Moment
A 2024 survey conducted by Parentaly found that only 20% of expecting mothers in the United States receive meaningful career support from their managers throughout the parental leave experience. I was in the other 80%.
There was no structured transition plan when I left for leave. There was no thoughtful onboarding when I returned. My annual goals had been written assuming a full twelve-month work schedule — for a year, I would only be present for nine months, while recovering from a medical crisis.
The things my performance review failed to account for:
I grew a human being inside my body. I survived a hemorrhage. I watched my son fight to breathe in the NICU and held myself together anyway. I battled postpartum anxiety in the dark, alone, while the rest of the house slept. I nursed through pain and pumped through packed calendars. I managed a direct report, met my deadlines, and showed up — every single day — while running on fumes and sheer determination.
I'd Call That Pretty Exceptional
The word "successful" isn't an insult. But it stung, because I knew what it really reflected — not my output, not my resilience, not my commitment, but a system that had no framework for what I had just survived.
American workplaces are not designed for new mothers. Twelve weeks of leave — even generous leave — cannot bridge the gap between giving birth and being back. And when companies fail to build real support structures around parental leave, they don't just lose a rating point on someone's review. They lose trust. They lose talent. And they quietly send a message to every new mother watching: your best, right now, isn't good enough.
Mine was. It absolutely was.
And I wish someone had said so.
If you're a working mom navigating the return from leave — or a manager trying to better support one — I'd love to hear from you in the comments.