One thing the pregnancy books don’t tell you is just how much counting and math you’ll do in the newborn months. How many wet diapers and how many dry. How many minutes on your left boob, then your right. How many nighttime wakeups, and drops of vitamin D, and smiles for Mommy. Good job, Baby!
Then you go back to work (your paid work, because of course maternity leave is work, too), and it’s a different kind of numbers game: How many minutes earlier than usual that you have to leave now. How many meetings missed due to daycare illnesses. How many ounces pumped today versus yesterday, and will they average out to enough milk for tomorrow? How about hours wasted sterilizing all those pump parts? And let’s not even discuss the ratio of childcare cost to your after-tax household income.
Those numbers are stressful, and they can trick you into thinking that new working parenthood is a time of deficit, not growth. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve spent years researching what I call The Fifth Trimester, the return to paid work after maternity leave, and here’s what I know for sure from thousands of new moms’ real trajectories: You are more valuable than ever. So, please fill your head and heart up with these ways of measuring your incredible worth now, the R.O.I. of you.
Pumping moms are doing two (maybe three!) jobs at once: At a minimum, when you pump milk for your baby at work you are doing two jobs: 1) You are making life-sustaining milk for your child, and 2) You are modeling for everyone else in your orbit at work that working, pumping parenthood is possible and sustainable, too. That impacts company culture, including recruiting and retention, which have calculable value to your employer. And – and! – if you happen to be one of those moms whose body lets her answer some emails or edit a draft or make a call while doing that pumping? Triple threat. You’re doing three jobs at once. Extraordinary.
When you say “yes” to something, it actually counts double: I call this compromise math. A lot of new moms proclaim that they’re better at saying “no” now that they have a kid. And that’s great. I’m all for boundary setting. But I like to flip the idea around a bit. When you’ve done a calculation in your mind about whether you’ll take that work trip, or stay late to get a project out the door, if you get to a decision of “yes,” that’s an incredibly committed “yes.” You’ve figured out the babysitting. The number of pumped bottles needed. The logistics of a missed bedtime. So when you’re in, you’re all in. Your delivery is double.
You’re not letting people down – you’re aspiring up: One symptom of sexism is that many women have been conditioned to over-deliver on their jobs. We hang onto tasks that are beneath our paygrade, or keep doing an old job when we’ve been promoted into the next one. Then comes Baby, and something’s got to give. But rather than feeling like you’re slacking off, I challenge you to use this as an opportunity for a more managerial mindset shift. When you delegate work that you’ve outgrown, you’re training other colleagues to gain experience, and giving yourself precious “white space” time, those glorious empty windows in your calendar (in addition to – not instead of – pumping time). Use them for networking, idea development, or refueling to sustain you. It’s all in service of your future career.
Motherhood is hyper motivating. It’s time for a major cultural narrative shift around working parenthood. The Motherhood Penalty is real, and it’s due in part to the measurable bias that people assume moms are less committed and less motivated at work after having kids. This could not be more wrong! Don’t buy it! I spent nearly a year doing research that proved that parents who were supported by their workplaces with humane policies, benefits, and culture actually were more motivated in their jobs, not less. Specifically because of their kids, they wanted to move up, earn more, and find more meaning in their work. The white paper that I produced on this research, in partnership with the childcare company Vivvi, proved that for every $1 companies invested in caregiving benefits, parents yielded $18.93 of productivity – that’s an 18x R.O.I.
You see broken systems and fix them for all. The North Star of my work – the reason I wrote my book and transformed my own career – is that individual problems, more often than not, are systems that need revolutionizing. If you are feeling mom guilt, if your body and brain aren’t ready to be back at work after 12 weeks (or 2, like 25% of moms!), if it’s impossible to find childcare, this is not something you’re doing wrong, but a broken system. But all is not hopeless. As an individual, you do have impact to make systemic change. Here’s where the R.O.I. comes in: When you ask for better benefits, or an accommodation or flexibility that you need in order to keep going at work, that transparency (and the plan you propose) isn’t just good for you. It’s a gift to every other colleague who, for one reason or another, does not have the agency to ask. It’s also a gift to your employer. You are doing your job by pointing out gaps in support that, when solved, will ultimately make teams more effective and your company more profitable.
And future you is killing it. Everything you ask for now is an investment in your ability to keep going – and growing. That simple idea is the unlock for so many of the moms I coach. The WFH day, change of hours, or access to benefits like MilkMate that they ask for now keeps them from quitting and gets them over the hump so that they stay in the pipeline to leadership. Thirty percent of new moms leave their jobs within a year of having a baby – it’s a real inflection point – but those who stay in the pipeline to leadership end up being super-performers. Research shows that companies with a higher percentage of women in leadership have higher profits, higher returns to shareholders, and more effective teams. The ROI of you right now is big. The ROI of Future You is exponential.
Lauren Smith Brody is the CEO of The Fifth Trimester, a workplace gender equality consultancy, and a co-founder of the Chamber of Mothers, a public policy nonprofit. Find her on Instagram or LinkedIn to get in touch.
