AI builds your return-to-work roadmap after baby — feeding logistics, childcare backup, household load, and the conversation with your manager — with a plan for the days it falls apart, because some of them will.
You're carrying guilt, months of broken sleep, a shifted sense of who you are, and an expectation from somewhere that you'll perform as though none of it happened.
Feeding, pumping, bottles, nursery drop-off, the commute, nap timing, and a morning that was already too short before any of this was added to it.
Flexible hours, home working days, pumping breaks, a phased return, protected time in the calendar. Some of these are entitlements rather than favours — but only if you know which, where you live.
Trying to be fully available in both places usually ends in exhaustion and the conviction that you're failing at each. A plan that assumes some days go wrong lasts longer than one that doesn't.