Lauren Smith Brody, Author of The Fifth Trimester: The Working Mom's Guide to Style, Sanity and Success After Baby
[0:00]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and this is Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:15]As a mom of four kids in New York City and a writer myself, I know all too well how short
[0:19]everyone is on time, so I'm here to help.
[0:21]I'm going to interview authors and writers of all types about their work, especially as
[0:25]it relates to parenting and family issues.
[0:27]Hopefully you can listen while doing 8 million other things, and fall in love with these
[0:31]talented scribes and their fantastic books, essays, and songs like I have.
[0:35]Plus, get some tips on surviving parenthood.
[0:37]For more about me, you can check out my essays at zibiowens.com.
[0:42]I'm here today with Lauren Smith Brody.
[0:45]Lauren is the founder of the fifth trimester, which is both a movement and a book called
[0:50]the fifth trimester, the working mom's guide to style, sanity, and big success after
[0:54]baby.
[0:55]Her work has been featured on Good Morning America, CNN.com, the Wall Street Journal,
[0:59]Forbes in New York Family.
[1:00]Lauren has appeared recently in Talks by Google, and on the Mother Birth Podcasts before
[1:04]coming on moms don't have time to read books.
[1:07]Before launching the fifth trimester, Lauren worked for 16 years in magazine publishing,
[1:11]most recently as the executive editor of Glamr Magazine, a Condi Nast publication.
[1:15]Lauren lives in New York City now with her husband and her two young sons.
[1:19]Before I introduce Lauren, just a reminder that this episode is sponsored by Chloe's
[1:23]fruit, the cool way to eat fruit, you can learn more at Chloe's fruit.com.
[1:28]So welcome, Lauren.
[1:29]Well, thank you so much for having me on.
[1:31]Thanks for coming.
[1:34]We could spend the whole podcast talking about the movement, the fifth trimester, and
[1:38]how amazing it is.
[1:39]But I want to talk about this fantastic book first, because there's also, it's where
[1:44]it started.
[1:45]Oh, thanks.
[1:46]Thank you, material.
[1:49]You did such an amazing job of describing how it felt to you to go back to work after
[1:53]12 weeks and how ironic it was that when you were saying, well, it was starting to be
[1:56]happy and calm, then it was time for you to go back to work.
[1:59]For those who haven't read the book, can you set the stage for us a little about how
[2:02]it felt to you?
[2:04]And can you discuss what you say in the book about what you said is kindly referred to as
[2:08]a hard time?
[2:09]Yes.
[2:10]I was being kind to myself by calling it a hard time.
[2:12]I was mostly a mess.
[2:14]So I knew, obviously, when I was pregnant, I knew about the first three trimester.
[2:18]The fourth trimester was something I learned about by reading Harvey Carp's book, The
[2:22]Happiest Baby on the Block, when I had Will, who was now nine, and he was, I thought he
[2:26]was, I didn't realize he was a fussy baby, he was totally a fussy baby, my mom kept trying
[2:30]to tell me that, and I was like, no, it's my fault.
[2:33]Anyway, I soothe him with this idea of the fourth trimester, which is recreate the feeling
[2:38]of the womb because human babies are, you know, by swaddling and all that, because human
[2:42]babies are actually born three months too early.
[2:45]And that was really helpful, but as I got throughout the book, as I was reading it, you
[2:49]know, he kept saying, Dr. Carp, get to 12 weeks, just get to 12 weeks and your baby will
[2:54]wake up to the world and we'll give something back to you, and essentially we'll be
[2:57]the baby that I thought I was giving birth to.
[3:01]And I just kept thinking, well, gosh, 12 weeks is when I go back to work.
[3:05]And I don't think I knew as deeply certainly as I do now how privileged I was to even
[3:11]be able to take those 12 weeks.
[3:13]So they were not fully paid, but, you know, I have a partner who's very supportive and
[3:19]who was around.
[3:20]I have parents who could come to town, you know, at the drop of a hat.
[3:23]We had enough money in the bank that I could take a few of those weeks unpaid and it
[3:26]was okay.
[3:27]And yet still 12 weeks was just definitely not enough time for me, but it was more than
[3:31]most American women are able to use.
[3:34]The average amount of FML used is 8.5 weeks and only 56% of American workers are even
[3:40]eligible for it.
[3:41]So anyway, but to get to the mess, so I came back to work.
[3:44]And part of me actually felt sort of steadied by being there because this was something
[3:48]I knew how to do.
[3:49]I wasn't brand new at my job the way I was brand new at motherhood, but I was brand new
[3:54]at being a working mom.
[3:55]It was my first day on the job.
[3:57]I was, you know, my day had a hard stop in a way that it never had before.
[4:02]I definitely had to get home.
[4:04]We were lucky to have a nanny in our home, but I had to get home to her.
[4:07]I had to bring the breast milk home that I had pumped at work.
[4:10]Otherwise it was, it was going to, you know, she was going to dip into the very small
[4:13]frozen stash I had in the freezer.
[4:15]She had to get home to her own family.
[4:17]It was just a whole layering on of stresses that I don't think I properly anticipated.
[4:23]So my goal with this book was to help women anticipate the fact that they are probably
[4:28]going to be back at work before they're physically and emotionally ready to be there,
[4:31]which is what I did end up discovering when I did a lot of research beyond my own experience.
[4:36]I interviewed more than 100 working moms who had kind of all approaches to work in motherhood
[4:41]and in surveyed almost 800.
[4:45]And so what I found is that collectively most people wished they had had more time, but
[4:48]also they just really wanted more support during that time coming back to work.
[4:53]In my own experience, I found that stumbling through was kind of the right thing for me
[4:58]to do.
[4:59]I was at that point at a senior enough position that it was okay for me to be a little bit
[5:03]transparent about what was hard and what I found is that people actually came to me and
[5:07]thanked me because I was the first person they had seen struggle and yet still succeed
[5:12]and showed them that they would one day too.
[5:14]And I realized that, you know, even though I didn't feel like a particularly powerful
[5:18]moment in terms of my career and I was not feeling super ambitious coming back to work
[5:22]at that moment, I actually did have cultural impact and that became a new way of kind
[5:28]of measuring success in my job for me and eventually grew this idea of the fifth trimester
[5:34]which I realized is simply when the working mom is born and it's just a, it's another
[5:39]trimester.
[5:40]It's another developmental phase, only this one's for mom.
[5:43]So awesome.
[5:45]In the book you cite a lot of statistics about how other countries have better returning
[5:49]and paternity policies in fact you referenced all other countries.
[5:53]You said exactly these two countries and then you're like, and there was this third country
[5:56]but now they're even they caught up.
[5:59]So why how did the U.S. end up with the policy has not that we need a whole big history
[6:03]lesson?
[6:04]Yeah, no.
[6:05]Well, I think more than anything so in the policy is really just one part of it but the
[6:11]policy is a symptom of a larger greater cultural problem we have which is that there's just
[6:14]not the cultural appreciation around the transition to new parenthood, motherhood and
[6:19]fatherhood.
[6:21]I think mostly, and this is just my own theory, I think mostly it's just that we're really
[6:26]young country.
[6:27]I think that a lot of these other countries we look at in Europe in particular are old
[6:32]and they have, they have sort of the long lens perspective of being able to look back
[6:36]over many more generations than we do and we still feel like as a country we're still
[6:41]start up.
[6:42]You know, like every generation wants to lap the next except that and I think we're starting
[6:46]to feel this now actually progress kind of halts if you don't actually give it a little
[6:51]time to breathe.
[6:53]And so if we were to build in better policies including universal childcare and you know,
[6:59]I mean there's there's almost no federal policy that doesn't impact being a good parent
[7:03]in some way.
[7:05]If we were to do that, I think studies show that it would ultimately impact the economy
[7:09]for the better but it takes taking a big collective deep breath and really forcing, you
[7:14]know, our leaders too to acknowledge that it's something that needs to be handled
[7:18]for law.
[7:19]I love how in the book you quote John Oliver saying there's nothing we wouldn't do for
[7:22]moms apart from this one major thing right except for this one thing that launches them.
[7:30]Can you talk about how going back to work when you weren't really ready affected your
[7:33]marriage?
[7:35]You said which I could totally relate to and the office not that I got an office but at
[7:39]the office I mostly kept it together but at home I picked fights with my husband over little
[7:43]things.
[7:44]They were really about one big thing.
[7:45]He didn't feel as completely the end of his robe as I did 24-7.
[7:49]Yeah.
[7:50]So it's funny so much of that in the moment felt like I was doing something wrong or
[7:54]my husband was doing something wrong and I've really come to learn by talking to all
[7:59]of these other moms that it's so much bigger than that, you know, it doesn't do any
[8:05]good to blame yourself or blame your spouse with whom you probably intended to have a totally
[8:10]equal partnership.
[8:11]Well, that gets a lot easier as the kids get older but it is a larger greater cultural
[8:15]problem and so I think owning the fact that when you go back to work, if you go back
[8:19]to work or however you define work like we all work right like some of us work for
[8:22]paychecks, some of us don't work for paycheck but we all work.
[8:26]Finding the fact that you can have cultural impact in that moment by being open and honest
[8:30]is really helpful but some of that also has to come back home with you.
[8:34]So you have to, if we want a quality in the workplace, you really have to acknowledge
[8:39]the fact that you can't be a gatekeeper, that dad has to be allowed to help as well.
[8:44]You know, we have a real disparity in the amount of maternity leave and paternity leave
[8:49]that American moms and dads take so even when men are entitled to take it and they
[8:54]are, you know, they're entitled to just as much FMLA as you are, they tend not to, in
[8:59]part because they are paid more, we know about the pay gap, but also because there's
[9:05]just this cultural idea that men's value, men are more valued in the workplace than
[9:10]women are and so when dad takes less time and says, oh, I need to be at work, it's just
[9:15]it's doubling down on that really erroneous idea.
[9:19]So one thing that can really help and we didn't, we weren't able to do this.
[9:24]My husband was in his residency when we had my first son and he was finishing his residency
[9:28]when we had our second and so his hours were nuts, I mean, and I was at that point actually
[9:32]at the breadwinner because he was still in his training.
[9:36]So it was a lot of pressure and it was pressure on him because he couldn't really be
[9:40]around and as involved as he wanted to when he was working week-long overnight shifts,
[9:44]like, you know, that would just not, not going to work.
[9:48]So you know, it is sometimes about baby steps, it's about, you know, saving like a couple
[9:53]of discreet duties that are actually for the dad or partner and saying, I'm not going
[9:58]to do this at all.
[9:59]I'm not even-
[10:00]you'll learn how to do it, you learn how to do it.
[10:02]And it means giving up that control over
[10:05]how whatever the baby task is is being done.
[10:08]But ultimately, there's so many studies
[10:10]that show that this is ultimately really good
[10:12]for the children to have dads that involve that early on.
[10:16]And it also just sets up patterns that I have bigger kids now.
[10:20]You have some bigger kids like you can see it play out
[10:24]positively and negatively.
[10:26]And as much as you can do early on to truly
[10:29]share the work, but also the heartbreak
[10:33]and the joy, even the fun stuff of parenting
[10:37]is really helpful.
[10:38]You're so funny.
[10:39]You talk in the book about marriage
[10:40]and say how you have to prioritize each other.
[10:42]And you write, ha, ha, ha.
[10:44]I know.
[10:44]I know.
[10:45]I'm glad I had left some more.
[10:46]Ha, ha, ha.
[10:48]So funny.
[10:49]So do you feel that prioritizing marriage
[10:52]is just like part and parcel of this whole thing?
[10:53]Yeah.
[10:54]I mean, I will say so.
[10:54]I interviewed a number of single moms in the book.
[10:57]I'm so, so glad I did because they were so clear about the fact
[11:00]that there was no luxury of worrying about asking for help.
[11:04]They knew that in order to be good parents
[11:06]and take care of their children, they
[11:07]had to ask for help of their family,
[11:09]of their friends, of whomever.
[11:10]So I think we need to take some of that back
[11:12]into our marriages, for sure.
[11:14]But I also did not want to write a chapter,
[11:17]even interviewing other people, and not just
[11:18]for my own perspective, but I didn't
[11:20]want to write a chapter that dictated date night.
[11:22]Because for a lot of new parents, particularly
[11:25]in the fifth trimester, when you're first
[11:26]going back to work, what does that actually look like?
[11:28]That is, if you're a breastfeeding, that
[11:30]is pumping a bottle before you go out,
[11:33]spending money on a babysitter when money might already
[11:35]be a little tight at the moment.
[11:37]It's, you know, making time to kind of clear your brain
[11:40]of the baby stuff, and have a lovely meal.
[11:43]Maybe have some wine, but maybe you can't really
[11:45]have some wine, because maybe you're nursing,
[11:46]and that doesn't work, and you've got to wake up really early
[11:48]the next morning, or maybe you have to wake up in four hours.
[11:50]Anyway, so it just becomes this added pressure,
[11:53]you know, to suggest that.
[11:55]So I was really relieved when I looked at,
[11:58]I kind of became a, like, a data nerd by looking at everything
[12:01]that I got in from the survey of all these moms.
[12:04]And I found that there was a group of moms
[12:06]who reported fighting more with their partners
[12:12]than they ever had before during the fifth trimester,
[12:14]most they'd ever fought.
[12:16]But there was a subset, a sizable subset of those moms
[12:18]who also said they felt closer than they ever
[12:21]had been to their partners.
[12:22]And I thought, well, oh, that's really interesting.
[12:24]They're disagreeing, but they're doing it
[12:25]in a really productive way that's ultimately beneficial.
[12:28]So what else do they have in common?
[12:29]And I tried to see, you know, what other factors they had.
[12:32]And there were a couple of things, but namely,
[12:34]they spent time alone with their partners
[12:36]without the baby.
[12:37]But here's the big bite.
[12:38]It wasn't copious numbers of hours.
[12:41]It was, they spent between one and four hours.
[12:43]So there were moms who, you know, spent five and six and seven
[12:48]hours alone per week with their partners,
[12:50]and they were super duper happy,
[12:51]but there was a really small percentage of women.
[12:53]There were a lot of women who spent less than one hour per week
[12:56]with their partners.
[12:58]There were a good number who spent between one and four,
[13:01]and there was almost no variation in their happiness
[13:03]between them.
[13:04]So what that said to me is, yes, you can go have that, like,
[13:07]lovely date with the babysitter in the bottle of wine
[13:10]that might dress you out.
[13:11]Or it is just as valid to sit across your own dinner table
[13:15]or to sit on the couch and hold hands for an hour
[13:17]and watch your favorite TV show just for a regular, weekly TV
[13:21]date that you schedule and really look forward to.
[13:24]That counts, and that was protective of the relationships
[13:26]for these women, which I found really comforting.
[13:28]That's great.
[13:29]That's good to know.
[13:32]To switch gears for a minute, you talk in such a poignant way
[13:35]about selecting a nanny.
[13:36]Yeah, and you mentioned conflicted you were to leave your son
[13:40]and you write in the arms of a woman who's perfume.
[13:42]I didn't even know yet, which I thought was just so beautifully
[13:44]written.
[13:45]How did it feel to you to leave your kids at home?
[13:48]It felt, it's actually, it was like one of the first titles
[13:50]I came up with of the chapters.
[13:51]It felt like a second cutting of the cord.
[13:54]The first one you don't really feel.
[13:56]This one you definitely feel.
[13:57]And particularly if you've been home
[14:00]on maternity leave with that baby on you,
[14:03]it's a real physical separation to walk away
[14:06]from your baby.
[14:06]I cried the whole way to work.
[14:08]And yet I also felt kind of elated
[14:11]to be free in some ways.
[14:13]I had a couple practice runs, but probably not
[14:15]enough of just running to the store
[14:18]or whatever, to be away from the baby.
[14:21]It's funny, my kids actually just talked to Jean,
[14:23]who's no longer our nanny, because they sort of outgrown her.
[14:25]Now we just have after-school babysitters.
[14:28]The other day, and it was such a wonderful conversation
[14:31]to catch up with her.
[14:32]And she's taking care of a baby now.
[14:33]And so I could hear her in the background with the baby,
[14:36]and who was sounded super cute.
[14:37]I love how she said the part with you.
[14:38]And she's like, go go run your air.
[14:40]Yes, exactly.
[14:41]It was for me, she knew I needed that test run.
[14:44]And in the first day, I mean, this is the truth in the book.
[14:47]I actually hugged her goodbye.
[14:48]I was like, I don't even know you,
[14:49]but I'm hugging you, and I'm crying on you.
[14:51]And God, you're taking care of the most important work
[14:55]I've ever done in my life.
[14:56]And the person I love the most in this world is baby.
[14:58]And OK, I guess it's going to be OK.
[15:01]What I found in looking at the research about child care.
[15:04]And so it's the first chapter of the book,
[15:05]because it is for most parents.
[15:08]It's like the primary thing.
[15:09]Like, nothing else works if you haven't figured out
[15:11]who's going to be able to take care of a child, right?
[15:13]So, but it was the last chapter I wrote,
[15:15]because I felt so conflicted about my perspective,
[15:17]because everything about it is so personal.
[15:20]The way you manage, you know, someone,
[15:22]whether it is a daycare, you know, staff at a daycare center
[15:25]or someone in your home, or even your mother-in-law,
[15:28]if your mother-in-law is watching your baby during the day,
[15:30]is so, so similar and so different from the way
[15:33]you manage at work.
[15:34]And it's really, it's very emotional work.
[15:37]And so I decided just to be really, again,
[15:40]analytical about it.
[15:41]And I looked at the studies of, you know,
[15:43]what is supposedly better for baby, you know,
[15:45]in terms of the decisions you're making
[15:47]about who's taking care of your child.
[15:49]And there's this massive compendium
[15:51]of 15 years worth of child care studies.
[15:53]It pulls together hundreds and hundreds of studies
[15:55]to like boil it down to the real takeaway,
[15:58]which is essentially daycare is great.
[16:02]Can be can be detrimental, mostly good.
[16:04]Home care is great.
[16:06]Can be detrimental, mostly good.
[16:08]Having family at home or even mom taking care of the baby
[16:10]is great, but can be detrimental.
[16:12]To add up same thing.
[16:14]And yet if you get to the very, very, very end,
[16:16]what it says is the one thing that's really genuinely
[16:18]predictive of your child's success,
[16:21]being cared for by someone,
[16:23]is how comfortable you are with your decision
[16:26]around that child care.
[16:27]So I was like, thank God,
[16:29]because this is good.
[16:29]I had totally procrastinated writing this chapter of the book
[16:32]and even researching it, but that just like,
[16:34]shine to light on what I needed to do,
[16:36]which was help women get comfortable
[16:38]with the decisions they were making around child care,
[16:41]not like making the right decision,
[16:43]but making the comfortable decision.
[16:45]And so that really led my research and led me to interview
[16:49]a lot of people about what they were looking for
[16:51]when they were touring daycare.
[16:52]And how do they manage,
[16:54]if they have a caregiver in the home,
[16:55]how do they manage that person differently
[16:57]than they do at work and how do they feel about it?
[16:59]And so that's what the chapter turned into.
[17:02]And again, I was very comforted to find out
[17:05]that it's actually, a lot of it is actually within your control.
[17:09]More than you think.
[17:11]So much parenting advice.
[17:12]It's like, do what feels right to you.
[17:13]I know, right, but if you had to determine what that is,
[17:16]you know, it's so true.
[17:18]Yeah.
[17:18]And by your fourth child, you probably do.
[17:23]You talk about feeling like you're turning into your mom
[17:25]when you have yourself sort of freezing bonnet sauce.
[17:27]Yeah, it's like an individual bag.
[17:29]It's in your freezer, which is great.
[17:30]You still do that.
[17:31]You still do that.
[17:32]Yes, I do.
[17:32]I want you to send me some of your bonnet sauce.
[17:35]We have nothing in the freezer.
[17:37]But I have to just ask you,
[17:39]you put cinnamon in your bonnet sauce.
[17:40]Yeah, it's amazing.
[17:42]It's really good.
[17:43]It just sort of gives it like an earthy kind of slightly dark.
[17:46]I mean, it's like a tablespoon for a huge pod.
[17:47]But I don't know.
[17:49]I think it's nice to, to, I always like to own my work.
[17:51]And so it is totally a more of a Italian recipe,
[17:54]but I added my own little one little kick.
[17:56]All right.
[17:57]Well, try that next time I ever took it again.
[18:02]You talk about laying in bed at night in the book,
[18:04]feeling guilty.
[18:05]So I'm going to do it work and wrestling with things.
[18:07]And finally deciding it was stupid
[18:10]the waste time feeling that way.
[18:11]You just said that's it feels stupid.
[18:12]And you say something to all the women in the book,
[18:14]like how about we stop?
[18:16]Let's just stop, which is so great.
[18:19]So tell me, how do we all get rid of our mom, Guild?
[18:22]We just snap our fingers and it's gone.
[18:24]No, so if you want clarity on any parenting issue,
[18:27]just write a parenting book.
[18:28]Because if you have to interview all of these experts
[18:31]and actually see, you know,
[18:33]what a lot of other mothers having common,
[18:36]it really helps you realize it's not just you, first of all.
[18:39]But so one of the things that I actually splurged on
[18:42]in writing this book is I hired someone
[18:44]to do the transcribing.
[18:45]And she's awesome.
[18:46]Her name is Sarah.
[18:46]She's a single mom who lives outside of Cleveland.
[18:49]And we've become friendly.
[18:50]And I love her pieces.
[18:50]She's just the best and she taught me a lot
[18:53]about sort of thinking just beyond my own experience.
[18:57]But so what I learned when she sent me these transcripts
[19:00]is that the word that jumped off the page universally,
[19:03]like regardless of whether a mom was a single mom
[19:06]and adoptive mom used to surrogate,
[19:08]had an hourly wage working job or 12 degrees,
[19:12]10 year at Harvard.
[19:13]Like it just didn't matter.
[19:15]The one thing they all had in common was guilt.
[19:17]But when they described, but they felt guilty
[19:19]about very different things.
[19:22]So some of them felt guilty about leaving their baby
[19:26]in the care of someone they felt like was maybe not
[19:27]as capable as they would have been themselves
[19:30]if they'd been home with the baby.
[19:31]Some of them felt guilty for enjoying being at work.
[19:34]You know, you name a topic, somebody felt guilty about it.
[19:38]And I realized pretty quickly that if guilt was just
[19:40]this universal and we were all constantly thinking,
[19:44]guilt sort of implies this idea that you've done
[19:45]something wrong and there was another better choice
[19:47]you could have made.
[19:48]But if everyone is feeling some form of guilt,
[19:50]there is no other better working mom.
[19:53]Like we're all her and we're all just doing our best
[19:57]and also given all of the research that I had seen
[19:59]by this.
[20:00]the point I wrote a book about the United States
[20:02]and sort of the culture that we live in
[20:04]and the fact that it's really, it's not your fault.
[20:06]Like it's a larger, greater cultural problem.
[20:09]I realized that this guilt is sort of a,
[20:11]it's a dangerous cycle and it doesn't actually
[20:14]help progress anything in the workplace.
[20:16]It doesn't progress anything at home.
[20:18]We just feel like we've done something wrong.
[20:19]We've done nothing wrong.
[20:21]We're just trying to do the best we can for our kids.
[20:22]So I really feel like Will is now in third grade
[20:25]and he's learning about denominators like cross it out.
[20:28]It is a come denominator.
[20:30]And yes, the feelings you have are real
[20:32]and the problems that have caused those feelings culturally
[20:36]or in your own specific workplace or home
[20:38]deserve to be tended to and solved.
[20:41]But like let's solve them.
[20:42]Let's not just write everything off as mom guilt.
[20:44]And also, you know, like if we do,
[20:46]like let's at least talk about dad guilt too
[20:48]because they have some and they might like
[20:50]to talk about it as well.
[20:51]Let's drag them into that mess.
[20:52]Exactly.
[20:53]Yes.
[20:56]It's so great when you wrote in the book
[20:58]about the new found respect you feel for moms
[21:00]who you had seen at work who weren't even able
[21:02]to change a toner cartridge.
[21:04]Yeah.
[21:04]I just got the view.
[21:05]Simultaneously swaddling a baby.
[21:07]Yeah.
[21:08]And holding a cup of coffee.
[21:09]Yeah.
[21:10]Actually, I had this idea for a TV show
[21:12]that I'm actually trying to work on with my husband Kyle
[21:14]is a TV producer now for morning in production.
[21:16]And about being a top mom like a contest
[21:20]where you could have my gosh face off.
[21:22]Yeah.
[21:23]Who can hold coffee and full of a stroller
[21:25]and you have 30 seconds.
[21:27]So you know, because I feel like one day
[21:29]I was leaving the park and I was holding like 57 bags
[21:31]and pushing a stroller and like I was a street
[21:33]and I was like, it's amazing that I can actually
[21:35]yeah, Harry, this makes me think.
[21:37]So just I promise you know how to hold all this stuff.
[21:39]If you do that show, everyone gets a trophy.
[21:41]They're all winners.
[21:42]You know, it's true.
[21:43]I mean, it's really no topic.
[21:45]Yeah.
[21:46]Anyway, moms obviously have to just pull off so much
[21:49]about how I'm going to work.
[21:50]Yeah.
[21:51]You should have a nice light on that as well.
[21:53]Oh, thanks.
[21:55]You had a really interesting chapter
[21:56]about making yourself look good to feel good
[22:00]and applying makeup and doing it quickly
[22:02]because obviously a lot of moms don't have time,
[22:04]especially working moms, lots of moms.
[22:06]And you even say if you like your body more
[22:09]you'll like everyone more.
[22:11]It's true.
[22:12]So as you said, I worked at Glamor Magazine
[22:14]and a big part of my job was probably actually
[22:17]less a part of my job than I felt obligated
[22:19]to have a part of my job was looking the part.
[22:21]And to be totally honest, like I'm five foot three
[22:25]and like my weight goes up and down a little bit.
[22:27]And I was not able to just pull things out of the closet
[22:31]and wear them to a fancy lunch on a moment's notice
[22:34]because I wasn't always sample size.
[22:36]And I also edited all of these beauty and fashion pages
[22:40]mostly to distill the information that came in
[22:42]from the real experts, like the market editors,
[22:44]to make it palatable for the mass audience of Glamor readers.
[22:50]So I felt like I was coming into it
[22:52]with kind of a slightly phony expertise
[22:54]because I didn't always look so good myself.
[22:57]But I also like a lot of the women I interviewed
[23:00]experienced this feeling of, you know, yes,
[23:03]obviously I don't have as much time to spend on myself
[23:05]but also like I just don't care as much.
[23:08]Like I have such bigger obligations
[23:11]but also things that bring me joy right now
[23:13]than looking in the mirror and like tending to my skin.
[23:16]Like come on really, like I would rather,
[23:18]I would rather make sure my baby
[23:19]doesn't have the XMR cradle cap.
[23:20]You guys might deal with myself.
[23:22]However, I really did force myself once again
[23:25]to look at the studies.
[23:27]And they do show, you know, for better or for worse
[23:30]that the way we look affects how we feel about ourselves
[23:33]and that we project that in the workplace.
[23:35]There are actually studies that show that
[23:36]and people respond to what you put out there.
[23:40]So given that and given the rest of the data
[23:43]that shows that women have so much less time
[23:45]to spend on themselves in the morning,
[23:46]it's really about being really incredibly efficient.
[23:48]It's about, you know, sounds basic
[23:50]but get a haircut that works for you
[23:52]that doesn't require a lot of work.
[23:54]Get your hair colored in a way
[23:55]that like if you, if you're getting a color
[23:57]to, you know, talk to the colorist and say,
[23:59]I need something that's gonna grow out.
[24:00]I really realistically, I'm gonna get here twice a year.
[24:02]Like how can we make this work
[24:04]so that you're not always stressing
[24:05]about the fact that you aren't going to get it,
[24:07]you know, colored?
[24:09]In terms of your skin,
[24:10]I interviewed an amazing dermatologist,
[24:12]Jessica Weiser here in New York
[24:13]who works with a big practice.
[24:15]It sees a lot of celebrities
[24:17]and I expected her to give me
[24:18]and they have like a little line of products.
[24:19]I expected her to say, well, you need ABCDEF
[24:22]and G in their skin, you know, arsenal.
[24:24]No, she said two things.
[24:25]You need to drink a lot of water,
[24:27]particularly if you're breastfeeding.
[24:29]I know me too, but it's so true.
[24:31]And you need to, and you need to wash your face
[24:34]at the end of the day.
[24:35]You need to wash off your makeup.
[24:36]And I was like, Jess, come on really, that's all.
[24:38]She's like, no, because really the goal
[24:41]is to not need to add,
[24:42]not need to spend a lot of time putting on makeup
[24:44]in the morning.
[24:45]You just need to have your skin feeling good
[24:47]so that it's good bare
[24:48]and you don't need a lot of stuff to be covered up.
[24:50]That said, I really relied on concealer.
[24:53]I definitely think like if you spend money on one thing,
[24:55]make it concealer, make it one that works
[24:57]for your skin tone and the texture that you need.
[25:00]I think that would be last night because I was too tired
[25:03]and I didn't wash my face and all this depth.
[25:05]And I thought of your book and you were like,
[25:06]you have to wash away the day.
[25:08]You have to.
[25:09]And I was like, okay, okay, okay.
[25:10]I'm going to wash away the day.
[25:11]No, every night it is a battle in the mirror
[25:14]because it's like the last thing I wanna do.
[25:16]I know and even if it's one minute,
[25:18]it just feels like note is get me to the pillow,
[25:21]but it's really helpful.
[25:23]And then a one more thing about closet.
[25:25]So a lot of women just are tortured by their closets
[25:28]in the morning going back to work.
[25:29]These are closed that you may not have worn
[25:31]in more than a year.
[25:32]So you may not be sure that they're stylish,
[25:34]but also they might not fit quite the same way yet.
[25:37]Make a little miniature section within your closet
[25:39]that is your closet within a closet
[25:41]of only the things that fit and are appropriate
[25:44]for your workplace.
[25:45]And so that may be six things.
[25:47]And if you look at those six things
[25:48]and there's not a single pair of pants,
[25:50]I'm like, okay, go buy a pair of pants,
[25:51]but that's all you gotta buy.
[25:53]And then add to it as things start to fit
[25:55]or as the seasons change and things start to become
[25:56]more appropriate fine, but just don't even bother
[25:59]with everything else.
[26:00]Just choose from that one sort of very paired down section
[26:03]and it will make your morning a lot easier.
[26:06]Excellent advice.
[26:08]I wanna make sure to give you enough time to tell us more
[26:10]about the movement of the fifth trimester.
[26:11]Because now you have all these corporate programs
[26:14]that you're doing, you're giving workshops.
[26:16]Just telling you, I saw my picture in the,
[26:18]again, the workshop picture on your website.
[26:21]So cool from a long time ago.
[26:23]Or last year, you do workshops.
[26:25]You talk all over your really inspiring change,
[26:29]which is amazing.
[26:30]It's like just incredible what you've even been able
[26:33]to do in such a short amount of time
[26:35]and that's where this is going.
[26:36]So tell us more.
[26:38]So my intention all along was to give women
[26:40]the tools they need to make real change
[26:43]inside their own workplaces.
[26:44]And that could be allowing you to kind of move up
[26:47]in your career and advocate for policies.
[26:49]It could be being the first parent to ask
[26:51]for something in a workplace and change policy that way.
[26:54]But I also want women to know that it is absolutely
[26:57]effective to also just be transparent
[26:59]about motherhood in the workplace.
[27:01]Because nobody can know that there's a problem
[27:03]to be solved unless they see that there's a problem.
[27:05]So we all have to kind of take a like a pinky promise
[27:08]as my kids say, like packed with each other
[27:11]to really be a little bit more open about this stuff.
[27:14]So that's one thing.
[27:15]And that is really the core philosophy
[27:18]of the movement and what I sort of,
[27:20]what I hope that other women will catch on to as well
[27:23]in a way that we can all work together
[27:24]to make real progress here since it seems like
[27:27]our government is not doing that for us yet, right?
[27:30]But I also do go into companies and they have grown.
[27:33]It's a lot of law firms, tech firms.
[27:36]I was at Google recently, as you said.
[27:38]I've been in Facebook.
[27:40]American Express had me in a ton of law firms.
[27:42]Law firms have largely actually good maternity
[27:47]and paternity leave policies,
[27:49]but they still know they have a retention problem.
[27:51]So that's where I come in and help them
[27:52]on the reentry side of things to help them figure out.
[27:55]Culturally, what do people feel like they can
[27:57]and can't use of these benefits
[27:59]and what would help them stay?
[28:01]Because there's so much research that shows
[28:03]that if you support new parents coming back to work
[28:06]from work, coming back from parental leave
[28:08]when they come back to work, that you will retain them
[28:10]and you will actually like, you just have to boil it
[28:12]down to dollars to get people to listen
[28:15]and you will save money.
[28:17]There was a study that was done internationally
[28:19]that showed that if private companies offered,
[28:23]I think it's 16 weeks of paid parental leave
[28:25]and offered six weeks of partially of like part time work
[28:30]coming back but paid in full,
[28:32]that it would a boost the economy
[28:34]because those parents are home during those days
[28:36]and spending money and also not spending
[28:38]as much on childcare for those days.
[28:40]And B, it would save $19 billion in losses of revenue
[28:46]for companies because they would not lose these employees
[28:49]because you're losing also things like
[28:51]what you've invested in, they're training and anyways,
[28:53]if you can boil it down to dollars, it really helps
[28:56]and it's been wonderful to go into these workplaces
[28:58]and feel heard and also to hear even months later
[29:02]that their employees are thanking them
[29:05]for having had me in because just my being there
[29:08]kind of says a lot in the first place.
[29:09]It says, you're allowed to take a lunch
[29:10]and come listen to this lady who cares about this stuff
[29:13]and we're not afraid to talk about it
[29:14]and go ahead and ask for what you need.
[29:17]That's great, thanks.
[29:18]And you also offer all sorts of services for moms.
[29:21]Yes, yes, yes, so there's also coaching.
[29:24]And then I do, you know, obviously the corporate engagements
[29:28]that I do are corporate and they're actually handled
[29:30]through mostly through my speaker spirit,
[29:33]which is at Penguin Random House.
[29:34]But I also that allows me to be able to do
[29:37]these more community focused groups too,
[29:39]which can be a group of 12 moms
[29:40]and somebody's, you know, kitchen and living room
[29:43]or it could be in New York especially
[29:45]and I know a lot of other cities have this too.
[29:48]There are new mom meet-up groups that happen.
[29:50]There's one that's Hudson River parks.
[29:51]Mamas that I'm doing in a couple of weeks.
[29:54]I've spoken at Parks Loop parents and these are
[29:58]amazing communities and to be able to
[30:00]come together and have this one thing in common, which is that you all have a new baby.
[30:06]It's amazing how much you expand your sort of bubble of what you think is normal in your
[30:10]industry when you meet people in five other industries. You become a lot more emboldened to think
[30:15]of yourself as a career-working mom and not just as like what's normal in my workplace and what
[30:20]can I can't ask for? You become just more empowered really. And so what are you going, what's
[30:27]up next for you aside from the eight million things? I can't even like ask that with the
[30:32]straight side. It's no, it's ridiculous and I can't answer it like very clearly. So it's you know,
[30:37]I would love to tell you that I know exactly what my next nonfiction book is. I don't. I am
[30:42]writing a novel on the side that I have. You are? I haven't touched in like nine months. So I hope
[30:46]to get back to it the summer that is the plan for August. Can you preview of what it's a
[30:50]about? Oh god, I know. It's probably not. No, no, no. It's like three, it's three interlocking
[30:54]stories that take place in the Hamptons. There's a, you know, there's a dead baby,
[31:01]which is probably not very on brand for me. But anyway, it's kind of a mystery.
[31:06]But it is an outlet for me and it's something that allows me to have something creative that I
[31:10]dip in and out of when I can. And I'm really building this company in this movement. And
[31:16]I probably, you know, looking, if you look at my website, when you see all of the things that I say
[31:21]that I offer, it's like, I know too many things. I can't believe that you are even managing it
[31:26]all yourself. I'm like, she must have a team of you. I mean, every now and then I will hire a part
[31:31]time assistant for a little while to help. But it is, you know, there is this idea that starting
[31:35]your own company as a woman is, you know, like the ideal. And in many ways, it's amazing to be in
[31:41]charge of your own schedule and your own destiny and everything else. But I think that
[31:45]a lot of women, particularly women who are coming back to jobs after having a baby that are
[31:49]maybe not that supportive, think like, oh, I'm going to go hang my own shingle and do my own thing.
[31:53]Well, it is so much work, so much pressure. And it is financially really hard to sustain. So I do a
[32:00]lot of other side gigs to make it work. I just, I just finished at three month long maternity leave
[32:04]fill in at Elle magazine for the executive editor, which was awesome because it was like everything
[32:10]I already knew how to do from my old corporate job. But it also gave me a different perspective
[32:16]of filling in for someone who's on maternity leave and what maternity leave can look like for somebody
[32:20]who operates the way she does. And she was a little bit different in her approach than I had been
[32:24]and she was great. And it was such a learning experience. But that was like a four day a week gig
[32:30]for three months. And yet I'm still trying to like do all this other stuff too. So it's a lot.
[32:35]But I see you. I wouldn't have it on the other way. I do drop off. I don't usually do pick
[32:41]up. Well, thank you. Thanks not only for coming on mom's and her time to read books, but honestly
[32:47]on behalf of all the women who are going back who feel so alone and just having had four kids
[32:52]and go back to an office. But that time of life is such a vulnerable, sensitive time and the fact
[32:58]that you're out there helping so many women through it. It's just amazing. So thank you. Thanks for
[33:03]the support. Of course. No. And thanks to everybody for listening. I hope you'll subscribe to
[33:07]mom's and her time to read books. And again, this has been sponsored by Chloe's fruit, the
[33:11]cool way to eat fruit. Chloe's fruit.com. Thanks so much.