You were good at your job before maternity leave. You shouldn’t have to prove it all over again.
One-to-one maternity coaching for professional women returning to work after maternity leave who want to feel calmer and more confident at work again, and keep moving their careers forward without carrying work into every part of family life.
Take the test - Find out what’s getting in your way
- Have faith in yourself at work again
- Feel more in control
- Keep your career moving
You’ve had a baby. Not lost your talent. So why does returning to work after maternity leave make you doubt yourself so much?
While you were away, teams changed, systems moved on and important calls were made without you. Now everyone else seems to know the backstory to a project or conversation – except you. Yet your working day has less room to flex than it used to, so it’s harder to catch up. You can’t simply stay late until everything is finished, and there’s more pressure than ever to prove you’re still capable, committed and good at what you do.
Work you once completed like a breeze gets checked again and again. You sit in meetings wondering what everyone else knows that you don’t. You hear how well your maternity cover performed and wonder where that leaves you. Even when you do finally close the laptop, work follows you home. An unfinished task plays on your mind during dinner, your phone gets checked at bathtime and that meeting gets replayed just when you should be switching off. At work, you feel guilty about home. At home, you feel guilty about work. But you know this is more than a time-management problem.
It’s a much harder question you need the answer to: Am I still good enough to do this?
Becoming a mother shouldn’t mean choosing between a career you love and being present for your family. My maternity returner coaching programme can help make sure it never comes to that.
Working with Lucy has enabled me to step into this new phase of my career with greater confidence, clarity, and self-awareness.
Lily
I know how hard it is to have a baby, return to work and feel like you have to earn your place all over again.
Hi, I’m Lucy. I returned to work twice after maternity leave and remembered thinking, “I used to be really good at this but I don’t know if I can do it again.”
For years, I believed the only answer was to work harder and do more to prove that being a working parent hadn’t made me less capable. Yet still I questioned my worth and even ruled myself out of opportunities I now know I could have handled.
It was only when I experienced coaching myself that I saw many of the things I’d accepted as facts were actually beliefs I had the power to challenge. That changed everything. The pressure eased and I started to enjoy my career and spending time with my family instead of them both competing.
Today, I combine that lived experience with PCC-level professional coaching expertise, a postgraduate qualification in Business and Personal Coaching and more than 1,000 hours of coaching experience to help you have belief in your abilities again and enjoy your career and family life without constantly feeling you should be doing more.
I don’t help women squeeze themselves back into the person they were before maternity leave. I help them find a way forward that works for the person they are now.
Find out what needs to change before trying to untangle everything at once
When you’re struggling to juggle everything, the beliefs driving your inner fears can feel like hard facts. You may think – like I did – that working harder will prove your value, that asking for help makes you look less capable, or that your career simply doesn’t fit your life anymore.
Coaching gives you the protected headspace and impartial perspective to question those assumptions, work out what actually needs to change and find a way of working and living that lets you feel like you’re succeeding at both again.
Self-compassion is central to that work. You can care about doing a good job without expecting yourself to get everything right.
That’s why my maternity return to work coaching is built around The 4 Cs: a clear, adaptable framework that helps identify the areas you need to focus on that will make the greatest difference to you.
How my 4C framework will help you feel calmer and more confident:
01
Clarity
Understand what has changed, what matters now, where your strengths lie and what you want from this next stage of your career.
02
Compassion
Give yourself the understanding you would offer someone else. Challenge the expectation that you should cope without help or continually prove your worth.
03
Control
Focus on what you can influence, set boundaries, ask for support and take decisive action.
04
Connection
Rebuild relationships at work while becoming more present with the people who matter at home.
You may find you need to work across all four areas, or discover that changing one or two begins to unlock everything else. The framework gives us direction but ultimately your unique circumstances decide the focus.
What women say about working with Lucy
“The difference that my time with Lucy has made to both my home life and work life is immense…”
Jennifer
“The coaching was so insightful, and I now feel I have more clarity, self-trust and balance than before.”
Charlotte
“I now feel more in control of my situation and able to enjoy it, rather than madly scrambling to keep up!”
Hollie
Six one-to-one maternity returner coaching sessions built around you
My maternity return-to-work coaching programme focuses on the things creating the most pressure for you. Your circumstances shape what we work on, rather than a fixed course where everyone follows the same material in the same order.
- Confidential one-to-one sessions
- Arranged flexibly around you
- Online or in person in Kent or London
Your sessions might focus on:
- Reducing the second-guessing that turns a three-hour task into six.
- Preparing for a conversation with your manager.
- Rebuilding your confidence in meetings.
- Setting better boundaries around work and family life.
- Being less hard on yourself when you’ve had a difficult day.
- Pursuing your next opportunity without feeling that something else has to give.
Sometimes the first shift is surprisingly small: one assumption challenged, one conversation approached differently or one decision made. Our six sessions together give you the space to build on those shifts and make changes you can sustain.
Coaching and accountability support that continues between sessions
Your coaching doesn’t stop when the call ends. You’ll have your own online coaching platform where your goals, preparation prompts, reflections and useful resources are kept together, making it easy to build on what we uncover without adding another pile of homework to your life.
Depending on what you need, I may share hand-picked articles, podcasts and videos, or create personal resources for you, such as a short meditation, an emotional regulation exercise or leadership development tools you can return to in your own time.
If accountability helps you stay on track, I can check in between sessions too. If it doesn’t, we won’t. Everything is tailored to what will help you make the changes stick, without giving you more to manage.
Three steps to get your confidence, control and career moving again
1. Start with a free conversation
Book a free 30-minute introductory call so we can talk about what has changed, what feels difficult right now and what you would like to be different.
2. Find your focus
Across six confidential one-to-one sessions, we use The 4 Cs to identify and work through the areas that will make the greatest difference to you.
3. Turn insight into action
You take realistic steps between sessions, supported by resources and reflection, so the changes you make can hold when work and family life get busy.
Imagine the relief of not having to constantly prove yourself anymore
- Speaking in a meeting without rehearsing every sentence in your head first.
- Finishing a piece of work without checking it into the ground.
- Closing your laptop, knowing what can wait until tomorrow, and still be present at dinner or bedtime.
- Asking for help or setting a boundary without feeling like it’s evidence that you can’t cope.
- Seeing a promotion, leadership role or new opportunity and thinking: “I can find a way to make this work.”
The goal is to feel calmer under pressure, more confident in your abilities and less critical of yourself as the professional and parent you are now.
Find out what’s really making your return to work harder than it needs to be
When work and home both feel harder than they should, it can be difficult to know what needs your attention first. Take The 4 Cs Return-to-Work Check-In, a short self-assessment that helps you see where you currently need the most support across Clarity, Compassion, Control and Connection. In just a few minutes, you’ll get a clearer picture of what’s working, where you need more support and which changes could make the biggest difference.
Take the free 4 Cs Return-to-Work Check-In
Looking for maternity coaching for your employees?
Returning after maternity leave can be one of the most vulnerable points in a woman’s career. Even experienced, high-performing employees can come back questioning their confidence, their place in the team and whether the career they had before still fits the life they have now.
Specialist one-to-one coaching gives them confidential space to work through those challenges, rebuild confidence and continue progressing. For employers, it is also a practical way to support wellbeing, retain experienced people, strengthen gender diversity and show that becoming a parent does not have to stall someone’s career. I work with HR and L&D teams to provide flexible maternity return coaching tailored to the needs of each woman.
You can be a good parent and still have a career you enjoy.
If returning to work has left you questioning things that once felt certain, you don’t have to keep working harder and hoping it gets easier.
Start with a free 30-minute conversation about what has changed, where you are struggling and what you want to be different.
Frequently asked questions about Lucy Chaplin’s coaching service for women returning from maternity leave
When is the best time to start return-to-work coaching after maternity leave?
You can start before you return to work or once you are back. Coaching before your return can help you prepare mentally and practically for what is ahead. If you have already returned, we can focus on the challenges you are experiencing now. I work with new parents and parents who have long since returned to work.
I’ve been back at work for months or even years. Is this still relevant?
Yes. Yes. My working parent coaching also supports women who have been back at work for months or years. The challenges connected with becoming a working parent do not always disappear once the initial return is over. Confidence, guilt, career progression, changing childcare arrangements and the pressure of balancing work and home can remain difficult several years later. If those patterns are still affecting your work or the choices you are making, coaching can still help.
What happens during the six coaching sessions?
The sessions are shaped around your circumstances rather than a fixed curriculum. The 4 Cs give us a framework for identifying where support will make the biggest difference, but what we work on and the order we work on it will be personal to you.
Do I need to know exactly what I want to work on before we start?
No. Part of the coaching process is creating enough space to understand what is really happening and where change would help most. We can use our first conversations and The 4 Cs to bring greater clarity to what you need.
Can my employer pay for the coaching?
Yes. I work directly with individual women and with employers who fund maternity return coaching for their people. Your employer can find out more here Maternity coaching for employers
Is maternity returner coaching available online or in person?
Yes. Most coaching takes place online, with in-person sessions also available in Kent and London.
