The Second Cutting of the Cord: What Actually Happens When You Go Back to Work

0:00There's just something about summer that makes parents think, maybe this is the time to finally tackle potty training. And if that's where you are right now, I want to offer a minor reframe. Potty training isn't really about the potty. Now, I know what you're thinking. Um, Dr. Becky, what do you mean? Potty is in the name. But actually, it's really all about independence. See, your kid wants to do more things on their own. Your kid wants to build confidence and feel like a big kid. That's why I like Pampers Easy Ups. They fit and feel more like underwear than a diaper, so kids can practice pulling them up and down on their own.

0:36And those moments of, I did it, really matter in confidence building. They even come with Peppa Pig designs, which if you have a toddler, you know can make almost anything more exciting. And because accidents are part of learning, Pampers Easy Ups are designed to protect day and night, which means less stress for you and more room to focus on helping your child learn. The goal isn't a perfectly dry day. The goal is to help your kid feel more capable. And I like that Pampers Easy Ups helps make room for that. We've partnered with Emily Oster, economist and founder of Parent Data, to bring exclusive pregnancy and baby content to the Good Inside app.

1:13Yes, Emily herself will be inside the app. To celebrate the launch, we've got a limited time offer. Join Good Inside on an annual membership, and we'll gift you a full year of Parent Data, Emily Oster's membership program. Good Inside and Parent Data together. It's kind of the ultimate two for one. Redeem this offer at goodinside.com. Hi, before we get into today's episode, if you have a new baby at home, or if you're about to, or if you know someone who's in that boat, I want to tell you about our Rattled podcast. It's a show made specifically for those first few months of parenthood when everything is harder than expected.

1:49Or it kind of feels like you just started inhabiting a new world, even though you're inside your same home. Right now we're running a series over there called In Good Hands. Three episodes about finding care for your child. The last one is about going back to work after having a baby. Think of it as back to school for parents. It's that re-entry moment after the leave ends. And that moment is hard in a variety of ways for every single honest human I know. Lauren Smith Brody joins me. And it's a conversation I think you're really ready for. Find and subscribe to Rattled wherever you're listening to this.

2:26And let us know what you think. Email podcast.goodinside.com. I love to know what resonates. I also love to know what doesn't. I promise you don't have to take care of my feelings because that feedback helps me grow. And that's what I'm really all about. Let's start with some data. 76 % of employees say caregiving affects stress at work. 54 % say it affects their work significantly. 46 % have misworked entirely due to caregiving, and 41 % have seen productivity decline from the challenge of finding or managing care. This data is from research that Care.com did, and it's a perfect transition into the final episode of our three-part series with Care.com about finding care for your baby.

3:11And today, the element of that we're going to be diving into is the transition back to work. We're going to talk about what happens after parental leave ends. Not just the logistics, although we have some practical logistics that are going to be helpful, but also just how it feels when you get there. The disorientation, the guilt, the relief, all of it sometimes happening in one hour. My guest today is Lauren Smith Brody. She's a journalist, author, and the person who wrote The Fifth Trimester, a book about this exact transition. She's talked to hundreds of working mothers about the return to work, and she did it herself after her first son was born.

3:52She is so honest. She has names for things that make you say, oh, that's what that is. And she gets into the details about what it actually feels like when it all happens. So let's get right into it.

4:15So there's a lot out there about the decision to go back to work. Okay. And we'll talk about so many things related to that transition. But I like to start with the experience. That first morning, that first cup of coffee, the commute, the walk into the door, the going back to your desk, but maybe your desk is in a new place or something. Do you remember anything about that first moment? No, I blacked out. No, I remember it all. In fact, when my husband read the draft of my book before I sent it to my publisher, he was like, I can't believe you remember all these details. And I was like, yeah, because I felt them like cellularly.

4:48Yeah. I actually call that chapter about the first day back in my book. I call the second cutting of the cord because that's what it felt like. And I think like so many moms, it actually it didn't feel like a decision to me to go back or not. I was at that point. My husband was in his medical training. I was the breadwinner. There was no angst about will I or won't I really had to. And I had had 12 weeks of leave, which most of them even paid, which, you know, I thought was sort of as good as it could ever get. What was wrong with me that this felt hard? And it's funny coming into the studio today, I walked up the exact same subway stop and I walked up the exact same flight of stairs.

5:28And I remember how heavy each step felt. And then I walked in and it was like blast of air conditioner, nobody on my body, water, ability to go to the bathroom and colleagues who were so grateful to have me back. And that alleviated immediately a lot of the feeling of do they resent me? Have they been covering for me? What did I miss? Yeah. You know, I'm thinking about these worlds that we're then traversing, right? in the moment we go back to work where okay so you're leaving your house and maybe you figure things out there you're trying to figure out this human being that is in some ways very very needy and very loud also very simple and boring like all at kind of the same time right and then you have a work life where maybe going back to a world that's chaotic where you're getting pinged all the time and there's slack messages and emails and three projects and deadlines and um very high stim in a lot of ways.

6:24Talk to me about just like the traversing of those different worlds and how do people feel competent? Can you feel competent in both? So yes, I talk a lot about resetting in this moment and about using returning from leave after, you know, after having a baby as an opportunity to reset. And for a lot of my clients, corporate or coaching, they sort of imagine that, oh, the reason I have to set these new boundaries now, the reason I need this new schedule now, the reason I have to say no to all these things is because of the baby. And yeah, actually, probably it is. And that's okay. But what I remind them is that very often new parenthood coincides with sort of that like lower middle-ish level of your career where you might be moving into management anyway.

7:12And so actually a lot of those things are training you to be a better manager. And that's the whole concept of the fifth trimester. Not that you necessarily have to have that flavor of ambition to keep moving up, stay steady. That's fine with me too. But it gives you an opportunity to say, what am I over delivering on? What have people covered for me that actually they should hang on to? I'm going to have less time in the evenings, let's say, to do business development, networking, meeting people. How do I preserve some of that? Well, I build it into my workday. And how do I do that? I have to clear space.

7:46And so there's probably things that you could manage other people into or let them hang on to that actually elevate you. They don't make you seem weaker. They make you seem stronger. So you're saying you've had this time at home with your baby. That's happened. You figured certain things out. Your schedule is changing. But that doesn't have to mean you're going back to work at a deficit. Is that what you're saying? There's correct. Oh, yeah. Be more concrete about that. So how does that? Yeah. Like, what could that look like? Or someone listening, thinking, OK, that sounds nice in theory. But yeah, what does that mean practically?

8:16paint that picture. Right. So it's funny. I, and so for the book, I interviewed and surveyed more than 700 working moms and they were all saying, you know, I'm better at saying no now, um, or I'm more efficient now. And when I actually asked them about how they use their time and what they were saying no to, it turned out it was actually almost the inverse of that. They were better at saying yes to the things that mattered most. And when they said yes, they had done all of that, like, you know mental algebra calculus whatever to figure out i can't be two places at once what am i sacrificing to be able to say yes to this and they had said yes because they really meant it and they were going to deliver on it so i say don't say that you're better at saying no you're actually better at saying better yeses and that deficiency this is really cool um your baby is the hardest boss you may ever have they're not they're not patient when they're really little right so baby cries needs a diaper change baby cries need to be picked up baby needs to be fed Like there's not a lot of waiting in between.

9:15And what I've found in my research actually is that that compression of pivot time translates to the workplace too. So you just don't need as much resetting between tasks. You just kind of go from this thing to the next thing. That's where the efficiency comes from. So interesting because I think what I hear from a lot of people, you know, about workplaces is it's like I'm working on one project and someone's like, actually, we need you for something else. We're not doing that anymore. Let's do this higher value work over here. I was already working on this. But it's so interesting. I'm thinking about life with a newborn and I'm sitting down, I'm folding my laundry and then all of a sudden, oh, baby's awake.

9:51And I'm just thinking it's true. You just don't say, oh, well, I was already I was working on that. Like, all right, I guess I'll get to the laundry later. And you learn to just constantly adjust to new environments and not take it personally, not take it personally. This is just a basic human need. Did they not think my work was good? Often not. They just think there's something else to work on. And so you're saying my body has kind of gotten more familiar with that, which means that also will plug in in a different way when I go back to work. Exactly. Yeah. So fascinating. Okay. I want to talk about the G word, guilt.

10:26Oh, yeah. Guilt. Oh, I feel so guilty. And I have so many thoughts on that, too. So this is going to be a fun section. Guilt is fun. I give an hour long talk about it. So like I can talk and talk and talk. Give me your give me your highlights. Give me your best stuff. My best stuff is that guilt is mom guilt in particular is a sexist classist social construct. Oh, I have the chills. I like when someone takes something small and is like, this is bigger. I am with you. Go. I want to hear not to say that if you say you feel guilty as a mom that you're falling prey to it or doing something wrong. But OK, so the research I did for the book, I did all these serving all this interviewing.

11:09And so I had just thousands and thousands of pages of transcripts. And I actually had an amazing single mom lives in Cleveland. Her name is Sarah. Do the transcribing because this was like pre-AI being able to transcribe things. And she would she's a mom of two and she had little kids at the time. And she would like send me her comments in the margins like I just needed her to transcribe. But she was a perfect sort of test case for me. And she was like, have you noticed guilt? Everybody talks about guilt and it means totally different things to different people. So you've got one person saying like, I feel guilty leaving my baby in the care of somebody who I feel like might not love him quite as much as I do.

11:45Right. Or who doesn't know him as well as I do at this point. And then you've got other moms and calling that guilt. And then you've got other moms saying, I feel guilty because actually I love being at the office. I love having adult conversations. I feel like I know this part of myself better than I know the part of myself that I was doing for the first time at home. I feel so guilty. And guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt. It just kept popping up in every single transcript. So not to harp on math, but I think my son must have been learning fractions at the time. And I remember showing him that, you know, what do you do when you have a common denominator?

12:19In this case, guilt is the common denominator. You scratch it out and you look more closely at what's on top. And for some people, it might be what's on top is they don't feel good in their body or they don't have enough time or they were, you know, told something about the job they were coming back to that's a little different and solve for the specificity. But don't blame yourself and call it guilt. So good. We've done so much to normalize, particularly that like 12 week mark. Like we think of 12 weeks as like a generous amount of time to be on a maternity or paternity leave. it's totally arbitrary the law for it actually so so fmla which is the federally protected unpaid leave was passed in 1993 it was one of the first things that bill clinton signed into law but it had been proposed for nine years in a row prior to that and when it was first proposed in 1984 it was meant to be six paid months of leave so it got whittled away and compromised and meant to be used as like a place keeper that then would be improved upon.

13:24And instead, what we've done is we've totally normalized 12 weeks. So me climbing the stairs of the subway to go, you know, from the subway to go back to my job that first day feeling heavy, I thought, what's wrong with me? I got a whole 12 weeks. 12 weeks is nothing developmentally for the baby. Or for you. Or for you. And it's so interesting because whenever I, you know, talk about stuff online, I feel so lucky. my Instagram account is about 45 % international. It's like really international. Yes. Wow. Yeah. Even Meta told me they're like, it's very international for a parenting account. I'm like 97 % U.S.

14:00Right. So, but people like their reactions to whenever we talk about 12 weeks. I know. It's just, I'm so sorry. That's it. Like, it's just so, it seems so wild in other countries. what feels generous at some places in the U.S. compared to other jobs, which might be fewer than 12, right? Right. Right. The other thing I talk about a lot is really understanding your rights, because I think it helps you realize and normalize what you deserve and to understand the economic case of supporting and retaining you. So anything you do for yourself or anything you ask someone to do for you to be able to sustain your career in this transition time is an investment in your ability to keep going.

14:45Yeah. It is a small price to pay for you to still be at your job, moving up, mentoring, being mentored, all of that a year from now. So it's really worth it when you do the math. Give an example of what someone might think to ask for at work, but then maybe they'd say, oh, I'm going to feel so guilty. So yeah, what? Sure. So, so ramp up programs exist at some law firms, some financial firms. They're not really widely adopted yet, but it's the ability to come back and say for the first month or two months, work at a reduced schedule, but at full pay. And they're not given out like for charity, right?

15:19It's because it's a good business decision. They know that it's going to retain people. If you don't have access to that, see what you can do to cobble together your own kind of ramp up. Yeah. So it might be coming back, shaving a week off of your leave or not, by the way, and then applying those five days to five Fridays. So you come back for a four day week, Right. Or it might be asking to come in at 10 instead of nine so that you can do the full like feeding at the breast in the morning first thing, because that's when you have the most milk. And that's when your baby takes the most and sets you up for a much more focused and better day.

15:52There's all kinds of things you can ask for. And so if someone's thinking, but I'd feel so guilty compared to my colleagues, how would you? So the law exists for a reason. So you should know about the PUMP Act and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, both of which were passed in the last five or six years, both of which actually, and this is not true for all laws, are, oh my gosh, what is the word? Sorry, I'm blanking on it. But it's where, like, if your employer doesn't offer it to you, you can go to them and say, actually, you're required by law to do this. And you're not asking for it for yourself only.

16:26You're making sure your employer is following the law. Yeah. You're helping protect them, too. It's enforceable. That's the name. That's the word I was looking for. Great. I was following anyway. Yeah. The other thing I want to say about the guilt piece, and there's so many thoughts I have about guilt, but I think especially when it comes to I feel guilty talking to adults, right, and liking that, or I feel guilty asking for a ramp up program or to shift my leave to make that work. I feel so guilty. I think one of the things we're saying there is we're questioning whether good people, feel and do those things so for example okay i'm a mom i'm going back to work and i really like i actually really like a lot of my work time it feels easier it feels stimulating whatever it is right feel guilty i would encourage someone to say hold on am i saying a good mom wouldn't enjoy adult conversations because i actually think that's i think that's something we have to really challenge right i think it goes back to this yeah a good mom just wants her soul focus to be her baby all the time all the pleasure all the identity all the energy i fill myself up by pouring myself out like i always think the math doesn't math but we've been fed that idea yeah and going back to your other question okay a good employee wouldn't ask for a ramp-up program that would help her do better at work well actually that like maybe that doesn't make sense and so i think we're kind of always confronting when we say guilt are some our assumptions about kind of what a good human in that situation would do.

17:59And it's worth, it's just worth questioning that. Yeah, nobody's making any, nobody's doing anything bad here. Yeah. You know, you're just, everybody's doing the best they can in the circumstances they have. And we're all contributing to that progress and to that evolution. So the thing you're asking for, there might be 15 other people around you who need it, who feel for some reason that they can't be, they don't have quite the license to be able to. When you ask for something, it's not just for you, although it is pretty awesome to feel emboldened by caring for a baby that you're like, oh, no, this isn't just for me.

18:29Like, I need this for my family. Right. But it's not just for you and your family. It's for everybody around you who can't speak up as loudly and including people who are doing elder care, all kinds of caregiving that happens across a five generation workforce. Right. And like older generations may not be as comfortable even asking for it or talking about it. And you're doing it for the quality of your employer. Yeah. For the bottom line. Yes. Every This is original research that I did fifth trimester with Vivi, another care company. Every$1 an employer invests in caregiving supports for its employees yields$18.93.

19:04And I'm so sorry to be so capitalistic about it, but that is the ROI. We calculated it. Yeah. And you need to know that because you should be filled up with that. When you ask for something, it's not just a failure on your part. It's actually benefiting our whole economy. It's like a true win-win. Yeah.

19:25When you're a parent, summer can feel like it's all about the kids, which can be so joyful. And also, you sometimes just want time for yourself. You want to swap your running around shoes for your favorite sandals and talk to your friends about what's been on your mind that has nothing to do with your kids. That's why I loved my trip to L.A. this summer. I visited some of my amazing friends in California. We had a fabulous dinner where we could have candid conversations about the realities of motherhood. And we found the most amazing home on Airbnb with views of the city and a beautiful pool, a space where we could stop feeling like just moms for a while and connect to who we are alongside that.

20:04And the best part, the stunning kitchen where my friend Caro put together the most incredible dinner. We were so grateful for the hosts who listed their home on Airbnb because we were able to connect in their space. And it made me think about all the families traveling away from home this summer and the opportunities for connection those empty spaces could bring. If you have summer travel plans, you could list your home on Airbnb and maybe give another great group of moms the much-needed retreat they're craving. It's a great way to earn some extra money to put toward your own travel. Your home might be worth more than you think.

20:38Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. You know that time in summer when it's about 4 p.m. You've been with your kids all day. you're drained because you're driving them everywhere you've made snacks 15 times and honestly you want something around them that just feels like yours now this is the part that gets a little serious but stay with me that's often a moment when a lot of parents reach for a glass of wine and this is not a referendum on wine but so many parents i know tell me i don't even want to have it i don't like the way it makes me feel in the moment or the next day but i think what the real need is, is that we are looking for something adult.

21:15We are looking to hold something that tells us, I am not just a caregiver setting up a slip and slide and making my 19th meal of the day. And honestly, that's one of my favorite reasons for Element. See, you can use Element as your adult summer drink. It can be just yours, not for the kids. And then it's 4 p.m. And what you might be looking for isn't necessarily alcohol. You might be looking for something that just reminds you of you, that you're an adult, you're not only a caregiver, and you're allowed to have something of your own. Plus the fact that it's healthy, no sugar, and actually hydrates you is going to take you through the rest of the day and help you stay calmer while it still meets that need.

21:58You can check out Element at drinkelement.com slash goodinside. That's drinkelemente.com slash goodinside.

22:22Okay, I'm thinking about all the women you researched. And let me just do one more on the guilt before I talk about the relief part. Did you talk to women who feel like, I wish I was home with my baby more? I do. Yeah, I feel sad. And is sad, guilt, are they the same? How did you, you know, what did you find around that? That's a great question. So Sarah, the transcriber, so she did a lot of jobs. And she was back at work within a week of having her oldest. She also pretty quickly after that ended up separating from her husband. she talked about um lining this is awful but she she talked about lining her bra with diapers to catch the milk because that's how soon she was back sarah absolutely felt sad she also felt like i have to do this right now and i don't think she felt actually particularly guilty because she knew that it wasn't a choice she was making necessarily but what she found solace in was solidarity Her colleagues all pooled their break time and they pooled their tips.

23:24And this was before the Pump Act was in existence. So her time to pump was not necessarily protected. It would be now. And they said, you take my time. Here, we're pooling our tips for the time that you're spending pumping milk. That shouldn't have to happen. Yeah. But I guarantee you, her kids are teenagers now. She probably still thinks about it. Yeah. Okay. a different word I want to ask you about relief yeah what makes you laugh about that oh it's just so it's such a conflict you know yeah did you find in your interviews that someone who went back women who went back to work found part of the day relief easier in some way or oh you know slipping back into part of my own life I'm different now but that's still alive and is parenting easier and then should I feel guilty about that relief like how did you see that arc When they were in it, they generally felt pretty good.

24:18It was those transition moments of getting there for people who are commuting, using that time well, of transitioning out of being able to put your phone down, get off the slack, you know, at night. That was really hard. But I think even the relief takes some getting used to because people can feel weird and guilty for feeling relieved to be away from their baby, too. Yeah. And that's where I just feel like this idea of two things are true is so important. Where we have this short circuit in our brain where we have a feeling. And for some reason, we think it cancels out every other feeling versus that feelings on a shelf.

25:01And there's other feelings on the shelf. So I can feel relief around going back to work and I can love the heck out of my baby. Right. I can enjoy adult conversations and I can be so grateful that I have a baby. How about I can look like a mess and actually that makes progress. So there was a moment this was really like this was the eureka moment when I thought, oh, there's not just a first, second and third trimester and a fourth trimester. That's baby. That's, you know, newborn phase. There is a fifth trimester. It was like like light bulb. My colleague, Danielle, who is a young designer. I worked in a magazine and she came to my office.

25:38She wanted me to fit a headline and on a on a layout. And honestly, like it was I don't even know how many pairs of shoes I had under my desk. Definitely a breast breast pump on my desk. Definitely something on my shirt, like for sure. And you can tell like no amount of Botox will hide the expression on my face. I just I just my parents told me from a young age, like you can't tell a lie. It's all written on your face, girl. So Danielle walks in. I am feeling like a mess and looking like a mess. And she says to me, oh, LSB, like they called me LSB. I'm so glad you're back. We really need you to do this.

26:06And also like, and she's gesturing to like this mess on my desk. She's like, thanks for all this too. And I'm like, I was a little bit of a young manager. I felt a little sheepish about it. I thought, am I not role modeling in the right way? And she goes, and we worked with like almost all women. She goes, nobody else is doing this. It looks really hard. And also like, you're exactly who I want to come to with this question. And I'm just so impressed that it's like hard, but you're still doing it and doing a good job. And like, thanks for showing me that because I feel like I'll be able to do it one day too.