The shift is over. But the day isn’t.
There’s a two-minute drive between the hospital and my son’s daycare. Close enough that I could probably count the seconds.
But those two minutes? They’re doing a lot of work.
The Smallest Transition Nobody Talks About
my experience
I finish handover, grab my bag, badge still clipped to my scrubs, and walk out to the car.
Inside the ward, I’ve been clinical. Switched on for every alarm, every obs, every patient need. And now, two minutes later, I need to be Mum.
The car is the only gap between those two worlds.
Some days I sit in it for a second before I even start the engine. Not long. Just — a breath.
What I Do in Those Two Minutes
On the way to work, I listen to worship in the car. It’s become a ritual I didn’t plan — just something that started and stuck.
I’ve realised I need something similar on the way out too.
Not always music. Sometimes just quiet. Sometimes a prayer that’s barely a sentence — “Help me be present for him right now.”
It sounds small. But it’s the difference between walking into daycare still half in the ward, and actually showing up.
→ Self Care for Nurse Mums That Actually Works
He Doesn’t Say Anything. He Doesn’t Have To.
My son is 16 months old. He can’t tell me he missed me. He can’t say “Mum, where were you?”
But when I walk through that daycare door and he sees me — the way his whole body changes. Arms up. That sound he makes. The way he buries his face into my neck the second I pick him up.
He doesn’t need words. And honestly? Neither do I.
“말 없이도 다 안다.” — We know everything without a word.
That moment resets something in me that the shift spent down.
But Some Days I Drive In Hollow
I won’t pretend every pickup is that tender.
Some days I get in the car with sore feet, a headache I’ve been ignoring since 10am, and a brain still writing discharge summaries in the background.
Some days he cries when I pick him up — that overtired, overstimulated cry — and I have to hold him through it when what I really want is five minutes of silence.
Those days don’t make me a bad mum. They make me a human one.
→ Being Present When Running on Empty
The Guilt That Hides in the Pickup
Here’s what nobody really talks about — the guilt doesn’t always look like guilt.
Sometimes it looks like rushing. Grabbing him and heading home as fast as possible because you feel like you owe him the rest of the day.
Sometimes it looks like overcompensating — saying yes to everything, skipping the nap routine, staying up later than you should because at least I’m here now.
He doesn’t need you to be perfect from 3pm to bedtime. He just needs you to show up. And you did.
→ The Daycare Guilt Every Nurse Mum Knows
✝️ A Quiet Thought
There’s a version of that drive I used to dread. The empty-tank version. The I have nothing left version.
What shifted for me — slowly, not all at once — was realising I wasn’t supposed to manufacture presence out of nothing.
Grace isn’t just a word in my blog name. It’s what I ask for in those two minutes. Give me what I don’t have. Help me be enough for him right now.
Most days, somehow, it’s enough.
Shifting with Grace — You don’t have to be full to show up. You just have to show up.