If you’re on maternity leave and questioning your career path, you’re not alone. Executive coach Maya Sharfi explores why this moment brings career questions to the surface — and walks through both sides of the decision: why it might be wise to wait, and why it might be exactly the right time to act. With real client stories and practical tools, this article helps you think it through clearly.

Over almost 15 years of coaching women, I’ve worked with a lot of clients who are either on maternity leave or just back from it — and the same question keeps coming up:

Is now the time to make a big change in my career?

You’re not sleeping. Everything feels different. It’s a massive transition. Maybe you should sit tight. Maybe you should let things stabilize first.

There are real reasons to wait — and real reasons to act. I want to walk through both, because if you’re in this moment, you’re not alone. This is one of the most common times women rethink their careers.

Why Maternity Leave Triggers Career Questions

Something about becoming a parent — or adding another child to your family — brings things into sharp focus.

Things you’ve been tolerating in your career suddenly feel obvious.

Maybe it’s the manager who consistently takes credit for your ideas in front of senior leadership. Maybe it’s the fact that you’re three years overdue for a promotion that keeps getting quietly deprioritized. Maybe it’s that your best skills — the ones that actually light you up — haven’t been touched in your current role in years. None of these things felt urgent enough to fix. But they’ve been adding up.

You also start valuing your time differently. I remember thinking about time completely different once I had a newborn — even 10 minutes of available time felt incredibly precious. But it goes deeper than your schedule.

Becoming responsible for another human makes you think differently about your own life. If you’ve been in the wrong role for three or five years, suddenly that time feels precious. You watch your newborn change by the day, and you realize: life moves fast. And suddenly you’re asking questions you’ve been too busy to sit with:

• Where do I actually want to be, and am I even on the right track to get there?
• Am I still growing, or have I been coasting in this role for longer than I want to admit?
• Do I want to lead, or have I been climbing toward something I don’t actually want?
• What do I want to be known for in my field, five years from now?

According to a Careers After Babies survey, 57% of women who returned to work after maternity leave left their organization within two years. The data doesn’t tell us why women left, but it’s a sign that something about this transition isn’t working, and that the reasons most likely differ from woman to woman.

Having my daughter triggered some of the deepest questioning about my career. I had been:

• Delivering session after session, feeling drained afterward
• Doing project management inside my coaching sessions instead of actual coaching
• Making decisions for clients, tracking their progress, and managing their work

It was exhausting. I knew something wasn’t working. But I’d been sitting with it, complaining about it, and not changing it — until after my daughter arrived. Then it felt existential. I couldn’t just go with the flow anymore.

Why It Might NOT Be the Right Time

When you attend a meditation retreat, you’re advised not to make major life decisions during the following week. People have huge realizations at these retreats and want to change everything, but retreat leaders have learned to encourage people to sit with it first.

The phase after giving birth can feel similar. You are:

• Sleep deprived
• Hormonally shifting
• Navigating a major life transition

Sometimes the wise move is to pause. Not blow everything up. Give yourself time to stabilize — and if you still feel the same way in three, six, or twelve months, you can make the change then.

The “Date to Doubt” Method

I once coached a client who’d just returned from maternity leave and wanted to quit. Before her leave, she had been exceptional — two steps ahead of everything. Now she felt like she couldn’t keep up.

So we created a calendar invite. We called it a “date to doubt.”

• Set six months in the future
• Invitee: your inner critic
• Subject line: Decide whether I’m not cut out for my job anymore
  

It gave her a place to revisit the question without making a reactive decision. She was deeply grateful she didn’t quit — because what needed to change wasn’t her career. It was how she was operating.

She had spent years solving problems by outworking everyone. Over-preparing. Proving herself. But she had experience and instincts she wasn’t leveraging. That’s what we worked on.

Why It Might Actually Be the Perfect Time

On the other hand, there is something very powerful about the moment you transition to parenthood or grow your family, and I want to name it clearly.

Most of the time, there are things we tolerate. A culture that doesn’t fit. Uncertainty about what’s next. But figuring out what you want feels like so much work. So we put it off. Just get through this deadline. Just get through this quarter. I see women do this for years — three, five — thinking about what they want but never resolving it because it never feels urgent enough.

This moment is different.

Becoming a parent makes things crystal clear. Your priorities shift. Your time feels precious. Life feels fast. And suddenly, the question you’ve been avoiding becomes unavoidable.

Despite this, 98% of mothers want to return to work after maternity leave. The question isn’t whether you want a career; it’s whether the role you’re returning to still fits the woman you’ve become.

This is the moment when your urgency to change is at its highest — and urgency is a rare resource. It’s what makes you say: enough. It’s time. I’m willing to face the discomfort.

Discomfort in service of what, though? Maybe you’re trying to figure out what the right next role actually looks like. Maybe you want to switch jobs and finally land on a team that doesn’t deplete you. Or maybe you want to use your full range, the strategic, analytical edge you’ve been holding back. Or maybe you’re done putting up with a micromanaging boss and want real autonomy for once.

That’s what actually creates change. Because underneath most resistance is a belief: that what you want isn’t possible, or that you’re not capable of it. Urgency gives you just enough power to move anyway. And we will never overcome those limiting beliefs if we don’t one day decide to get started anyway.

“But I’m Not Sleeping. Do I Have Time for This?”

This is the most common hesitation I hear. You’re on all day at work and with your kids. You get through what you need to get through, and then you fall into bed. Adding “figuring out my career” to that list can feel like too much.

But I want to offer a different frame: not as adding more, but as changing how you’re already doing things.

The Napkin Test

I coached a client with two young kids who was overwhelmed at work. She came to our session to prepare for a brainstorming meeting — her plan was to stay up late and over-prepare, as she always had. But it was a preliminary brainstorming meeting.

So I told her: set a timer for five minutes and write down three points on a napkin that you’ll bring to the meeting.

She was uncomfortable. It went against everything in her. But she did it — and it worked. And more than that, she realized: I didn’t need three hours of preparation in the first place.

That opened up a bigger question: where else am I doing this?

She had been subsidizing her performance through preparation. But she had 17 years of experience. She didn’t need to operate that way anymore. She could rely on her judgment, respond in real time, and show up as the expert she actually was in meetings. With less effort. And more sleep.

The Real Transition

This is what becomes possible — not just finding more time, but becoming someone who gets big results in ever-smaller amounts of time. If burnout has been part of your story, this shift is often the beginning of the way out.

In my own program, I challenged myself to make every resource lesson as short as possible. Many are three to four minutes, because what makes the difference isn’t the volume of content. It’s the insight. The shift.

My Honest Take

I invested in coaching and made a major change right after I returned from maternity leave. It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

When I look back at what I solved during that time — what I finally addressed — my work and my life are almost completely different. A real level up.

I learned that I was overdelivering to clients out of a sense of insecurity that I wasn’t enough. I was project-managing their results instead of believing they were capable.

Once I made changes, my client sessions stopped feeling draining, I started attracting clients who were more resourceful, and my clients got more powerful results from our work.

And I’ve helped many clients do the same: move from overworking to actually leveraging themselves.

This is a poignant, powerful moment. It really can be the launching point for your next chapter.

Ready to Make Maternity Leave Your Turning Point?

If you’re reading this on maternity leave — or just back from it — and something is telling you it’s time for a change, that instinct is worth listening to.

I work with ambitious women at exactly this crossroads: clarity on what you want, a strategy to get there, and the support to move even when life is full.

Book a free consultation today, and let’s figure out what’s possible for your next chapter.