Three Months of Mat Leave Reignited Something In Me

Taylor Armstrong · 2026-10-03

A home office desk by a window in afternoon light, with a laptop open to a dashboard and a baby's soft toy sitting beside the keyboard.

I'm back!! Recently returning from maternity leave has me reflecting on how much this time has mattered to me and how it's made me stronger as I get back into the swing of things at work.

I had my first child in June, and he is amazing. I'm obsessed with him. The idea of returning to work felt really hard. I knew I would have to go from spending all day every day focused on him to balancing taking care of him (with the help of family) and coming back to work at Soundstripe. That's a genuine shift in how a day is shaped, and nobody tells you how abrupt it feels on the first Monday.

I am extremely grateful that Soundstripe gave me three months off. And I came back to a very warm welcome. I was able to jump right back into things and take on some projects, which did more for me than I expected it to.

What does time away actually give back to the work?

As I returned, I jumped right back into things, and I feel so much better than I expected. I got to build a mini app that automates marketing reporting, and I'm updating website pages, all with the help of AI tools. Those are the kinds of projects you take on when you have the appetite for them, rather than the kind you grind through on fumes. AI Tools are improving at lightning speed, and walking away from them for 3 months and then coming back has been mind-blowing.

It has felt so nice to feel like a whole person again as I get to use more than the mothering parts of my brain. And I'm witnessing so much change and innovation, it's exciting.

That's the part of parental leave that tends to get argued about in the abstract. In practice, the three months didn't take me out of the work. It gave me back the version of myself who wants to build things.

Why does the bonding time matter so much?

The other thing worth saying is how important leave is for bonding with the baby. It's crazy how much he has changed from when he was born to three months old, doubling in size and developing a personality, now giving me smiles and giggles.

That time's so valuable, and it's important for a baby to be able to look at their parents' faces and get that one on one attention as they develop. You cannot defer those weeks and collect them later. They happen once, and then the baby is a different baby.

What happens when a parent starts watching development closely?

Now that I'm a parent, I am fascinated by babies and their development, and it's sparking ideas for a potential passion project. That's as far as I'll go on it for now.