Now your hair is falling out, you may as well have drawn the bags under your eyes with a permanent marker, and you cry when you look at the work clothes you shoved to the back of your closet on that magic day some months ago when people stopped looking at you with those question-mark eyebrows and started asking, ‘So when are you due?’

You’re going back to the office.

Is it possible you can still think about document edits and client speed dial numbers? (You did write those down before maternity leave, didn’t you?) Will your mind ever move beyond what was in the last diaper and the image of that incredible, adorable smile, and no don’t tell me it was gas, it was a smile - baby loves me!

You can do it. Your mind is not permanent mush. You are valuable and needed at your workplace. And at home, which is why you feel like you can’t get off the sofa to organize the baby’s diaper bag and polish your work shoes and all the other things that need to be done before you go back. But contrary to what your great-aunt and / or next-door-neighbor is telling you, leaving your infant in someone else’s care is neither neglect nor a sign of anything lacking in your mommy-soul.

You work because you need to. You need the money, you need the stimulation from stretching your mind around other adults, you need to continue growing even though some people already think you’re a grown-up, and you need to not feel guilty about it.

You can feel sad. You will miss your baby. You will probably cry in your car before you clock in, and maybe after as well. Or maybe you won’t cry, and will be thrown into a tornado of fear that you’re somehow bad if you’re glad to be back at work. Either way, your guilt is unnecessary.

No one can love your baby like you do. But that doesn’t translate to no one will care for your baby as thoroughly as you do. You’ve researched your care situation, be it a relative, a woman down the street, a nanny, or a day care center, and you know that the place and people you have chosen are a safe and loving environment for your baby. You know he or she will be held, fed, changed promptly, talked to, rocked to sleep, and everything else that you did together at home. That’s what your mind knows.

What your heart knows is different. It’s the one that’s torn up about this whole thing. And the only thing you can do to convince it is to give it time to adjust.

Don’t make your first day back at work the baby’s first day with his or her caregiver. Get together the week before for a couple of days of you watching while baby and caregiver get to know each other. Spend a few hours there the first day, doing your best to not snatch up your angel every time he’s hungry, and letting him fuss in the caregiver’s arms as he gets used to the fact that they feel different from your arms. Not worse — different. You’re introducing baby to an important person in his life, and you want them to be friends.

Call the second you get to work that first day, if you want. Call from the car in the day care parking lot, if it makes you feel better. Call every hour and demand to know how many minutes she's been asleep and how many ounces she's eaten. Don't worry about it; just call as often as you need. Visit if you want, and can arrange it. Leave early and settle your baby back into the arms he was born to rest in. Wherever he is, whomever he's with, will understand. You're not the first person who's called to check on baby, and you probably aren't even the one who's called the most frequently. If you are, you're just raising the bar so other new mothers feel more at ease doing the same thing.

Expect to feel like a train wreck. Expect to take three hours to get out the door in the morning, when before it was forty-five minutes. Expect to forget something vaguely essential, like your day planner or tubing for your breast pump.

Don’t let your self-esteem crash just because your desk is covered with seemingly urgent matters that were actually resolved weeks ago, though no one bothered to then file the papers correctly. Don’t feel like a fool when your boss starts asking questions that only someone who’d been pulling sixty-hour weeks could be expected to answer.

Remember, you’ve literally spent a lifetime away from your paid job – your baby's lifetime. You aren't returning to the same place you left, nor are you the same person, and you're allowed to need time to adjust to everything as it now stands. Every one of your co-workers may think that it's business as usual now that you're back, but you know better, and there's nothing wrong with reminding them of the facts.

The difficulties in actually getting through your day may surprise you. I wasn't kidding when I said it would take you three hours to get out the door, and that's with some prep the night before. The nights before and the weekends are vital in time-management now. Packing the diaper bag and getting the bottles ready and organizing your purse with all of your essentials before you go to bed will spare you a lot of frustration in the morning when you are afraid to take a shower in case baby wakes up and you need to pump and she has an unexpected run of three dirty diapers in a row.

Lay in some frozen meals or sandwich fixings or cereal and carrot sticks if that’s what it takes to get your family fed as quickly as possible in the evenings. Invest in paper plates – your time can be more valuably spent at the moment, as can your partner’s. You can use china again in a month, but skip it for now. Let the dust bunnies roam free and multiply – there’s time to round them up and evict them later, when you’re a little bit used to the way things have changed.

The first week back after maternity leave may be the hardest week in balancing your personal and professional lives, but the thing about being at a point like that is the knowing it will get better. Trust me, it will. It may not get less complicated and you may never lose the feeling that you’ve been sliced into pieces that don’t seem to fit back together, but you will adapt. You’ll form your own routines and develop strategies for coping with the inevitable problems, just as you had pre-mommyhood.

Besides the increase in the number of routines and problems, the difference now is the reward. That sweet, sweet smile...it's not gas. Baby loves you. Congratulations, and welcome back.