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

A special post from our podcast 'Rattled' about the moment we re-enter the workforce and wonder: what the heck just happened to me?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  There'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. And those moments of I did it really matter in confidence building. They even come with Peppa Pig Designs, which if you

• 0:44Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  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. Yes, 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

• 1:29Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  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, or 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 reentry moment after the leave ends. And that moment is hard in

• 2:13Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  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. And let us know what you think. Email [email protected]. 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 missed work entirely due to caregiving,

• 2:55Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  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. And 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,

• 3:40Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  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. She 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.

• 4:15Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  So there's, 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 so. Do you remember anything about that first moment?

• 4:36Speaker 01

  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. Yeah, 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? 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

• 5:20Speaker 01

  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. And 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?

• 5:51Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  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 very high STEM in a lot of ways. Talk to me about just like the traversing of those different worlds. And yeah, how do people feel competent? Can you feel competent in both?

• 6:32Speaker 01

  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. And so actually, a lot of those things are training you to

• 7:16Speaker 01

  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. And 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.

• 7:54Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  So you're saying you've had this time at home with your baby. That's happened. You've 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

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Correct. Oh, yeah.

• 8:08Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Can you be more concrete about that? So how does that? Yeah, like, what could that look like? Or someone listening, thinking, okay, that sounds nice in theory, but yeah, what does that mean practically? Paint the picture.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Right. So it's funny. 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. 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 the efficiency, this is really cool.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Your baby is the hardest boss you may ever have. They're not very, 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. And 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.

• 9:29Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  So interesting, because I think what I hear from a lot of people, you know, about workplaces, is 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. Oh, 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. And I'm just thinking, it's true. You just don't say, oh, well, I was already, I was working on that. Like, I, all right, I guess I'll get to the laundry later. And you learn to just constantly adjust to new environments.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  And not take it personally.

• 10:05Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Not take it personally.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  This is just a basic human need.

• 10:08Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah. 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.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 10:21Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah. So fascinating. Okay. I want to talk about the G word, guilt.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:26Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Guilt. Oh, I feel so guilty. And what, I mean, I have so many thoughts on that, too. So this is going to be a fun section. Guilt is fun.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  I give an hour-long talk about it. They're like, I can talk, I can talk, I can talk.

• 10:39Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Give me your, give me your highlights. Give me your best stuff.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  My best stuff is that guilt is, mom guilt in particular, is a sexist, classist, social construct.

• 10:51Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Oh, oh, I have the chills. Like, when someone takes something small, and is like, this is bigger, I am with you. Go. I want to work. I want to hear.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Which is 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, okay, so the research I did for the book, I did all these surveying, all this interviewing. And so I had just the thousands and pages, thousands of pages of transcripts. And I actually had an amazing, single mom, lives in Cleveland, her name was 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

• 11:41Speaker 01

  in the care of somebody who I feel like might not love him quite as much as I do, right? 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? In this case, guilt is the common denominator. You

• 12:22Speaker 01

  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.

• 12:42Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  So good.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  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 placekeeper that then would be improved upon. And instead, what we've done is we've totally normalized

• 13:27Speaker 01

  12 weeks. So me, climbing the stairs of the subway to go, you know, from, 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.

• 13:37Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yep.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  12 weeks is nothing developmentally for the baby.

• 13:41Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Or for you.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Or for you.

• 13:42Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  And it's so interesting, because whenever I, you know, talk about stuff online, I'm, I feel so lucky. My Instagram account is about 45% international. It's like, really international. Yes.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 13:54Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah, even Meta told me, they're like, it's very international for a parenting account.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  And like, 97% US.

• 14:00Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Right. So, but people, like, their reactions to whenever we talk about 12 weeks.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  I know.

• 14:06Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Is 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 US compared to other jobs, which might be fewer than 12, right?

• 14:20Speaker 01

  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.

• 14:42Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Is an investment in your ability to keep going.

• 14:45Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  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.

• 14:56Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  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?

• 15:02Speaker 01

  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? It'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.

• 15:28Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  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. There's all kinds of things you can ask for.

• 15:54Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  And so if someone's thinking, but I'd feel so guilty compared to my colleagues, how would you?

• 15:59Speaker 01

  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, you're not asking for it for yourself only. You're making sure your lawyer, your employer's following the law.

• 16:30Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Right? You're helping protect them, too. It's enforceable. That's the name, that's the word I was looking for.

• 16:35Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  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

• 17:20Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  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 sole 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. 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, are assumptions about kind of what a good human in that situation would do. And it's worth, it's just worth questioning that.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Nobody's, nobody's making any, nobody's doing anything bad here.

• 18:05Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  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. Like, 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.

• 18:49Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  For the bottom line.

• 18:50Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yes.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Every, this is original research that I did, fifth trimester with Vivy, another care company, every $1 an employer invests in caregiving supports for its employees yields $18.93. And I'm so sorry to be so capitalistic about it, but that is the ROI. We calculated it.

• 19:09Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  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.

• 19:18Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  It's like, a true win-win.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:25Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  When 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 LA 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.

• 20:04Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  And 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. Find out how much at Airbnb.com/host. You know that time in summer when it's about 4:00 PM? You've been with your kids all day. You're drained because you're driving them everywhere.

• 20:48Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  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. We 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.

• 21:32Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  It can be just yours, not for the kids. And then it's 4:00 PM 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. You can check out Element at drinklement.com/goodinside. That's drink L-M-N-T.com/goodinside. There's just something about summer that makes parents think, maybe this is the time to finally tackle potty training.

• 22:15Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  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. And 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,

• 22:59Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  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.

• 23:29Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Okay, 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.

• 23:38Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Did you talk to women who feel like, I wish I was home with my baby more? I do, sure. Yeah, I feel sad. And is sad guilt, are they the same? How did you, what did you find around that?

• 23:49Speaker 01

  That's a great question. So Sarah, the transcriber, so she did a lot of jobs. And she, 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 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. And this was before the Pump Act was in existence.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  So her time to pump was not necessarily protected. It would be now. And they said, you take my time. Here, we're pulling our tips for the time that you're spending pumping milk. That shouldn't have to happen.

• 24:45Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  But I guarantee you, her kids are teenagers now, she probably still thinks about it.

• 24:50Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah.

• 24:52Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Okay, a different word I want to ask you about, relief. Yeah, what makes you laugh about that?

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Oh, it's just so, it's such a conflict, you know?

• 25:02Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  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?

• 25:22Speaker 01

  When they were in it, they generally felt pretty good. It 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.

• 25:49Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  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 feeling's on a shelf and 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 out.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  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 newborn phase, there is a fifth trimester. It was like, like light bulb. My colleague Danielle, who is a young designer, I worked at a magazine. And she came to my office, she wanted me to fit a headline and 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 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, 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.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  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. And 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. And that was like eureka. This is a finite transition. There is good even in those moments of feeling like a mess

• 27:52Speaker 01

  because I've demonstrated what was needed.

• 27:54Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yes.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Maybe what I needed was a lock on my door to pump the breast milk, you know? And like my employer would have provided it had I asked. But it's the had I asked part. And realizing you need those moments of feeling sometimes a mess to even recognize what you need.

• 28:10Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  I often think with parenting that one of the hardest things for our kid is that they're just surrounded by our capability and flooded by it all the time. Where like, I have my own issues in the morning, but frankly, like putting on my shirt with my tag in the back, like I'm pretty good at that.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Not so hard for you.

• 28:24Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Definitely not. Tying my shoes pretty fast these days, right? And so I just think about tying my shoes quickly, mindlessly. And I think about when my kid was younger, seeing all that. And that's the context in which my kid is trying to tie their shoes. Like inherently, I'm not setting them up for success, right? And if I think about if I'm trying to learn how to cook from some professional chef who never burns garlic, I'm going to be intimidated.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:47Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  And so I think what you're saying is really interesting. Going back to work, if that's something you're doing, messily with breast milk or formula on your shirt, with your desk a little bit of a mess, we can tell ourselves a story about what that means. Oh, I don't have it together. Everyone's going to know that. In general, I think we don't respond to moments. We just respond to the story we can, we tell ourselves about the moments. And the story that you're providing is so interesting, which is, you're right. Things do look a little messy and I am modeling for everyone, the reality of functioning amidst the mess and what a transition actually looks like. And by the way, I'm setting the stage for the next person to say, oh, I think, by the way, I think I could do what Lauren did. I think I

• 29:29Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  could show up with some stains on my shirt. Yeah. Versus, I'm never gonna look like if you show up looking like this, another person's like, I just can't do that. Right. Right. It's so, so good.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  I used to, it's funny, I used to talk about, and I still do, I'd go into companies and employers, I do corporate work, and I would say to them, like, it is okay for people to bring their mom and dad selves into the workplace. It's really important to demonstrate whole lives. It drives us, it gives us purpose and mattering and meaning and all of this. I now equally say, it's important for your kids to see you work. So you've got, you're working from home and you've got, maybe your newborn is not so aware, but your toddler is, right? Or if you have to close the door, if you have to say mommy needs a minute. Yeah. It's, it's okay for them to see that work is sometimes hard, that work is not always totally fair, that you do it with purpose. Hopefully you do it because you like it, that you do it because it pays you. Like, it's totally

• 30:24Speaker 01

  okay for, for your kids to see what work means to you. Yeah. And why you prioritize it.

• 30:31Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah. Let me ask you some practical questions. I'm thinking about the parent who's going back to work a couple of days a week, and they may be wondering, okay, I got the emotional stuff. Is there literal logistics or lists or things or items I should be ordering or kind of getting in place in my life for infrastructure?

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Have you heard the term decision fatigue?

• 30:51Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Uh, I live the term decision fatigue.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  So anything you can do, again, it's like an investment in your ability to keep going. Anything you can do that requires decision making, try to figure out, like, can this one decision become a system for me?

• 31:06Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Oh, I'm so intrigued. Okay.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  So if I'm gonna figure out, oh, it's my first week back and both my partner and I are working until like, end of the day, what are we doing about dinner? Decide that for one week, and then just repeat, repeat, repeat. You can also, the idea of ramping up, you can, if you don't have access to that in a work setting, if your employer's not providing it in any way, and maybe they don't have flexibility on your coming in at 10 instead of at nine, what can you set up as shortcuts in your own life? So that at least you can go like self, I did this for myself. It's not just, it's not just like, the act of the thing, it's knowing that you had the fortitude and thought and kindness to yourself to set it up. So like, maybe actually

• 31:50Speaker 01

  your whole first week, like, make a little section in your closet that is just the things that like, fit and you feel good in and are appropriate. And like, you don't make any more decisions other than that. It's like, one pair of pants, a skirt and a dress, and like, you wear them on repeat, and that's fine. And that's the break you're giving yourself. And I guarantee your colleagues won't even notice or care.

• 32:09Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  That is definitely true. I want to, I want to double click on decision fatigue, because I think it's one of the things in my parenting life that is so much more intense than I would have thought, right? Because there are so many times at the end of the night, where there's something relatively simple I have to talk about with my husband, who's, I don't know, doing this thing on the weekend, or who's doing this, who's doing that. And it's actually amazing biologically, I can't say it, I can't. Or my mom is waiting for me to make a decision. I'm like, sorry, I just couldn't decide that with my husband. Just because it's been too many decisions. A hundred percent. And the idea that, when you're transitioning back to the work, this is true if you're not working outside the home too. But I love your

• 32:52Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  language with changing decisions into systems. So they fall out of the decision bucket. If every day, me and my husband are texting, hey, who's picking up our kid at childcare today? Every day. That's a decision to text or respond.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Feelings you're gonna have about it. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So.

• 33:12Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  And instead, it's, hey, let's divvy up our days. Obviously, things might have to change, emergencies come up, but let's have a system. Yeah. Now it's out of the decision bucket most days, which means that energy can be used for something else.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  I also like to tell people, your measures of success are gonna be different in this moment. Like, if you, and we are so conditioned, and forgive yourself, if you measure success in like, minutes and hours and midnight oil burned and number of emails sent and connections made, let's expand what success looks like. Right? Right? But like, maybe it's also like, did I get to read a book to my baby tonight? You know? And I think it's really helpful to integrate to do lists, so that like, all the things you're doing for your personal life, and I, and I do, they are, it is unpaid labor, right? Like, that is, it's popular to think of it that way. I agree with that. However, like, it's labor I love to do. Yeah. So if you can integrate the things in your list that are both like, for your paid work and your unpaid work, so

• 34:11Speaker 01

  that to you, you can see, even if you've checked off more of one list than the other.

• 34:16Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  It's all stuff that matters. Yeah. It's all stuff that provides value to the world.

• 34:22Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  And you can lay your head on the pillow feeling really good about that at night, even if you've done more of one, one day and more of one the other, maybe even a whole week, or maybe even a whole month.

• 34:31Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Well, I think about how often people say, I don't feel like a success at home or at work. But part of what you're saying is, we have to really look at what success looks like in each. And if we've kind of laid that out for ourselves, we might be more likely to feel success in both.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Also, people, people believe what you tell them about yourself. So I'll say to people, okay, so if you have always been Becky who worked the most, what else could you be? Could you be Becky who always asks the hard question in the meeting? Could you be Becky who's the most amazing mentor? Maybe you're actually, just brand yourself, maybe you're Becky who makes great decisions.

• 35:08Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Becky with the good hair.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. My, my friend Robbie calls you Becky with the good care. It's a whole thing. I was like, saving it to tell you at the end.

• 35:17Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  I need your friend, such better branding than Dr. Becky. I'm changing my Instagram name. Dead. And Dr. Becky at Good Inside is basically dead. Can tell my team.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, wait.

• 35:27Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  I don't even know.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Wait, no, no, no.

• 35:28Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  How you're branding yourself.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  How you're branding yourself. So maybe you're branding yourself as a really good decision maker. Yeah. And then when you make decisions across your life, you're like, right, but I make good decisions. Also, so few of these decisions are permanent. Yeah. Right? Even big things, like your childcare choice that you make. Your baby's needs evolve very, very quickly, especially in the beginning. And so the decision that you make today might be the right decision for today. And you might make a new right decision two days from now, and that's still, that doesn't mean that your previous decision was wrong. It was right for the moment.

• 35:59Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  A hundred percent. Okay. One other thing I want to say about setting ourselves up to feel successful, is this part of my career, this Dr. Becky, kind of, is a newer part of my career. For most of my careers in private practice, a couple of days a week, okay? And what I wish someone had told me, I haven't really talked about this publicly, okay? Going into a much higher paced, my, my, my work at Good Inside, especially with my team, and always think about new things, is high paced. There's always some new problem to solve, something to think about. My work in private practice is, was almost more similar to parenting. It's slow. You're sitting with someone, you're hearing their story. I think there's something

• 36:39Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  that happens if you go to work outside the home in a fast paced environment. You have this high STEM environment, and so you feel better, the more stuff you accomplish, the more complicated the problems. When you go home to be with your baby or your toddler, what they need from you, so slow. It's so low STEM. They need you to put your phone away, and they need you to sit and watch them build a tower like it is the most interesting thing in the world. And you basically, if you want to really get the most out of the moment, need to say nothing. You're gonna say things like this during those five minutes. You're building a tower. Like, that's literally what you're gonna say. Like, if someone's like, and then what? No, no, and then you're gonna be quiet. Or you're gonna take blocks and build a tower

• 37:22Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  next to them. You're not gonna say, what kind of tower are you building? Oh my goodness, are you building a fire station? You're building a castle? No, that's like, the worst thing for a kid. They feel pressured. They just want your attention. And so you're gonna listen and say very little and watch. And I think the thing parents need to know, is the more you're in a high STEM environment, those low STEM moments, your body almost panics during the night, like, what am I doing? Because the, it's such a big gap. And then our brain tells ourselves this, or I'm not doing anything, or it almost, it almost feels boring if you're comparing it to this high rep, high volume, high intensity situation. So I, I think it's so important, you're commuting home. And I like you naming the multiplicity of identities.

• 38:07Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  I've always been Becky who works the latest. That was one way I found purpose in an environment when it worked. Maybe I could be Becky who makes, you know, asks the tough questions. I love that. I think the other multiplicity that's helpful is, what's the name for the part of you who's going into parenting mode? Like, I am, this is, you know, point five X Becky. Right. I've got to activate point five X. Like, I don't know how many people who listen to podcasts at point five X. People.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Zero people.

• 38:35Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Zero people. And it's almost a badge of honor. Yeah. I know people are like, I listen at three X. I'm like, that literally gives me a panic attack. But everyone else in the group is like, oh, kind of like, when you hear a kid eats broccoli, or like, that person's so amazing. But I think we have to really expect ourselves, we probably are going from two X, three X at work, and that works for us. And we get compliments for that. And we feel good to say, all right, let me transition and get myself ready for point five X mom.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 39:07Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  That's a real biological shift.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  I love, I also love, I love naming things. I'm like, like, my family does all the New York Times word games in the morning. And I was a magazine editor for years, right? So I love giving things names, like the fifth trimester, right? Which I made up. But also things that, you know, as soon as you hear them, you're like, Oh, that's a thing. So like benevolent discrimination is a term that comes up in my work a lot. And I love it. What it means is when you are, say, you've gone back to your, to your paid work, and someone doesn't give you access to work that would help you grow, but they're doing it because they think it's probably kinder. So, oh, she shouldn't have to go on that work trip. Oh, he doesn't have to join us for drinks. He's got a new baby.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  And it comes from kindness. And so I love the generosity of naming the benevolence of it, but it is discrimination. And as soon as you hear that, you're like, oh,

• 40:02Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  That's what that was.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  I contend to this, like, it wasn't something I did wrong, and I can help them do better, too. I can manage up.

• 40:08Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Because I can explain to them that this is something that people do.

• 40:11Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Um, so there's terms like that. There's, you know, gatekeeping around if you've had a shorter leave, or if you've had a longer leave, say, than your partner has, and you've professionalized all these things that you do for the baby, and then you're both now back fully, like, in your job jobs, but you come home at the end of the day, and you know how to do all these things that the partner maybe didn't have as much training on.

• 40:33Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yep.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  That's a moment of reset, too. Right? And so that's called gatekeeping. As soon as you hear that, you go, oh, it's not something that's wrong in my marriage that we're unequal. It's not me that I've failed. It's like something that happens to people, and we can work on it together.

• 40:45Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  You know what I'm obsessed with here, where whenever I work with families, um, I, I always end up saying, when I hear stuff that's going on in their home, this is not your kid's fault. It's not your fault. Like, I think our system of like, whose fault is this, is generally unhelpful to make any progress. There's often a cycle. And if it's anyone's fault, it's the cycle's fault. And naming something does the same thing. It's not necessarily, I'm a bad person, or my manager's a bad person. We can sit together and look at, oh, that's benevolent discrimination. What can we?

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:16Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Do about it?

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:17Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Oh, my partner. Oh, you're a good person. I'm a good person. Oh, that's gatekeeping. Let's look at it together, instead of kind of like that. So I love, I love, like, that's kind of why naming things probably really helps.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it draws in community and it's teamwork.

• 41:32Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Hundred percent. Um, all right. Anything you want to end with? Anything? Someone's listening, they're managing the transition back to working outside the home, they're thinking about it. Anything you're like, I just gotta get this in, they have to know this.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  Okay, so I also co-founded a nonprofit. It's called The Chamber of Mothers. We unite, we unite moms across 50 chapters across the United States to work in a nonpartisan fashion on paid leave, childcare, and maternal health legislation. These are things that have wide public approval. They are really common sense bills, for the most part. We meet evenly with Republican and Democratic offices. We have kids, so my oldest is 18, but a bunch of my colleagues, like, pregnant right now, having babies. Everyone contributes to the capacity that they can in the moment. But I do think, and the research would show this,

• 42:22Speaker 01

  too, that there is, um, new parenthood, even the busiest new parenthood, when you're going back to work, can ignite a nurturing in you. Walking up those subway stairs, I also remember looking around and going like, oh, my God, all these people are somebody's child. Like, that's somebody's parent. There's a, there's a tenderness to all of your interactions with the world that I think also lights people up to nurture and advocate. So whatever capacity you have to advocate, I think really boomerings back to you in terms of like, redefining that sense of success and who you are. So when you advocate for yourself at work, when you add, when you vote, when you show up to vote with your baby, like, that should feed you, too.

• 43:06Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  You should feel like this is what we are giving to the world.

• 43:09Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah. So have people check that out.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:12Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah. Awesome. We'll link to it in the show notes.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 43:15Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Thank you. This has been so fun, and I've learned a lot.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Thank you. You, too. Good flight.

• 43:27Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Here's a theme I keep thinking about that kind of connects so many different things Lauren was talking about. I love this idea that when we have a problem, we're either in kind of the mindset where it's me against another person. And maybe I wouldn't have a problem if that person just kind of came and saw things the way I did. The issue with that mindset is we tend to not be terribly productive when we talk to someone, and people kind of get defensive. Another mindset is, when I have a problem, can I frame it in a way where it's me and the other person, kind of on the same side of the table, looking at a problem together? Now, all of a sudden, this other person might want to work with

• 44:10Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  me. They're gonna feel like a teammate. And now we can get to the bottom of something together. When you put a name to something, benevolent discrimination, gatekeeping, when you have a cycle you can recognize with a manager, or with a partner, or with a friend, all of a sudden, you can talk to that person, like, hey, have you noticed the cycle we're in? Hey, do you think maybe this thing is happening? I just learned about it. I thought I could talk about it with you. Not only is someone gonna be less defensive, but I promise you, we are gonna be so much more effective in getting the thing we want. And so that's the thing I'm gonna be thinking about after this episode, and I have a feeling that applies to more than one thing in your life as well. All right. Let's end the way we always do.

• 44:52Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Place your feet on the ground. Place a hand on your heart. And let's remind ourselves, even as we struggle on the outside, we remain good inside. I'll see you next week.

• 45:26Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  You know, parents carry a lot. In fact, data show that most parents spend every waking hour caring for someone else. So if you feel exhausted and stretched thin, you're not alone, and that makes sense. And look, I also know from experience what a relief it is to find caregiving support. Finding a babysitter you trust, and your kids will have fun with, that makes it so much easier to go back to work, or travel, or, yeah, even go on one date with your partner. Care.com makes it easier to find trusted, background-checked caregivers with search and hiring tools you won't find on social media. Whether you need full-time help, or just part-time help with morning drop-off, or after-school care, Care.com

• 46:10Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  can help you find nannies, sitters, and daycares. And you can find the expertise that matters to you. Think homework help, CPR training, or experience with multiple kids. And if you're considering daycare, you can search, compare, and request tours, and could even get a discount on daycare tuition as a Care.com member. If you need more support, Care.com can help. For a limited time, you can use the code BECKY35 to save 35% on a Care.com membership. When it's not you, it's Care.com. Hi. Quick thing. Check out Good Inside's back-to-school program. Lessons, scripts, guides for the moments that decide how the rest of the year feels. The first day, the

• 46:51Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  morning, the drop-off, after-school, confidence, friendship, and even bullying. A one-time purchase also gives you access to our upcoming live workshop on August 19th with me. Links in the show notes.