I took 5 months of parental leave for my first-born, when she was 14 months old. The single hardest thing to adjust to was: No breaks. Never.

To illustrate this a little better: In the last month I spent one day a week at the office, to help with re-transitioning into my old role and get back up to speed. Those were my days of vacations!

All of a sudden, I had adult conversations. When I needed a break, I would pour myself a cup of coffee and just flip through a magazine. There’d be other people, but they’d never yell into my ear when they needed something from me.

In fact, there was surprisingly little that people needed from me that was more than my thoughts on certain topics.

When I’d tell people: “No, I can’t do that”, they’d accept that. When I told them, something would be done “Next week”, they would be ok with it.

When I wanted to think something through, I would go to another room and just stare at the whiteboard and my notes for an hour.

I would go to the bathroom by myself. With the door closed.