Our Best Advice for New Working Moms
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Ladies, what is your best advice for new working moms about maternity leave, returning to work, and balancing everything — and your best general new mom tips? What tips and tricks were given to you, and what ones do you pass along to other new moms?
Best Advice for New Moms (General)
- Bring a nail file with you to the hospital because babies are born with vampire nails!
- Make sure your partner understands that he or she really needs to be your advocate during labor and delivery because you will be in pain, exhausted, and not really making sense. A doula can also fill this role! (This was my big lesson from my first son’s birth!)
- If you can, get a pedicure when you’re close to your due date — I didn’t for my first and remember being annoyed staring at my scrabbly toes but unable to find they time to paint them without the baby around.
- Go into the delivery room with a flexible plan — it’s OK to say you’d like to avoid an epidural, or that you’d rather not use formula until month six — but at the end of the day things will go the way they go.
- If you worry about your baby nursing or latching, ask the hospital to see their lactation consultant; if they don’t have one, ask for a tiny bottle of formula and try to use it to entice the baby to nurse. (Put a few drops on the baby’s tongue, then a few drops on your nipple.) My milk took days to come in both times, and my kids definitely got a few bottles of formula in the early days.
Advice for Maternity Leave
- Don’t plan on doing too much — just give yourself over to baby’s schedule.
- Don’t beat yourself up if you fall down a hole with a completely mindless binge show while breastfeeding — with my first baby it was Property Brothers; with my second it was Shark Tank. At a certain point the tedium will get to you and you can turn to more educational maternity leave projects, but unless and until that happens, don’t worry about it too much.
- Keep an eye on your work email and voicemails to the extent you need to (for some people that may be never; for others it may be once a week or only once a day), but for the most part try not to respond to things that other people are in charge of or capable of handling. Keep this time sacred for yourself and your family.
{see more of our tips for your maternity leave}
Advice for New Working Moms
- Be gentle with yourself — it may not go how you expect it to go. (Newsflash: None of parenting goes how you expect it to go.) You may think you’ll be teary-eyed and nervous but instead you’re super excited to jump back in — on the flip side, you may think you’re eager to get back and then find yourself obsessing over your baby all day. Both are normal reactions!
- Limit your commitments during the baby’s first year and encourage your partner to do the same. I’m not quite sure what it is about “new baby,” but I’ve known several men to react by joining extracurricular sports leagues or picking up new intensive hobbies. Yeah, no. In fact, have your partner watch this video on marriage and feminism (NSFW) (and maybe read our older post on how to get your partner to care about the little stuff).
- Speaking of your partner: Set expectations early that you two will be sharing parenting and household duties. Here are some dimensions to consider when discussing sharing parenting duties; in general it works best if one of you takes full domain over various categories instead of splitting them. (Particularly drop-off and pickup — if at all possible have one person in charge of drop-off and one person in charge of pickup if that’s in your routine. And if you’re driving, put your shoe or bag in the backseat with your baby!)
- Nursing when you’re back to work: Pumping stinks, and you worry your supply is dropping no matter what you do. I’ve also known some moms who say that they “feel like they can’t be themselves” while producing milk — we had a fun discussion a few years ago about how Type A women react in very different ways to breastfeeding. Know that combination feeding is an option — and so is stopping nursing entirely! On the flip side, I’ve known some women who nursed for years while working (different kids, but still, years of pumping). Do what’s right for you and your family and don’t get too hung up on what other people and society may be telling you.
- A note on “feeling like yourself again” — a postpartum identity crisis is definitely a thing. It happens. Honor this huge life change that you’ve just gone through and don’t try to force yourself back into your old framework too soon. You may get back there, you may not; this is a time to assess old priorities and figure out where new priorities fit. The first year in particular is a whirlwind, but I’d guess that I started to see glimpses of my old self around the time the kids were 2.
OK readers, over to you. That’s some of my best advice for new moms; what’s yours?
Stock photo via Stencil.
Because you never know how sleep will go, do as much as you can the night/weekend before. I pick and iron my outfits for the week on Sunday night. It saves me a lot of morning frustration. (This also came in really handy the morning my son made a mess all over me during drop-off. I ran home and did not have to think before grabbing Tuesday’s outfit). I also switched to showering the night before. My son wakes up any time between 5:15 and 7:00 (woof) so not having to worry about squeezing in both showering and nursing in the morning makes things much easier.
My biggest surprise as a working parent was the number of sick days we’d experience. January and February were BRUTAL for my son, and I literally had pink eye (and could not wear mascara) for the entire month of March. Do your best to line up a plan with your employer/partner/back-up sitter for those dreaded afternoon daycare calls. And if you can, spend some time home hugging your little one when he’s sick. During most viruses, hugs and breastmilk are the best you can do for your sick kid.
Honestly, my advice is Just Say No To Pumping. It’s not worth the hassle unless you somehow have way more time than money. I calculated how much formula money I saved by pumping, and it worked out to like $2.50/hour, or almost $10 if you only count the time I was actively engaged in storing milk, setting up the pump, etc, but not the time I was “working” but really distracted. (Neither of these figures includes the time my husband spent washing pump parts!) Valuing my time at even HALF my hourly rate makes pumped milk orders of magnitude more expensive than formula. And pumping is stressful! Ugh. Never again.
I thought of a couple more:
-when returning to work, drop kiddo off at daycare or the babysitter one day early, before you return to work- just for a short day. This is a practice run so you can see everything you need set up for the morning, and it lets you and baby get first-day-apart emotions out before you are in front of coworkers.
-Breastfeeding is a family affair- a family commitment. When baby is first born you will spend 8+ hours per day actively pumping and/or nursing. That will come down to 4-6 hours per day once you have your feeding system down- but it is a big time commitment. I had a lactation consultant show my husband how to wash and assemble all of the breast pump and bottle parts, and explain to him this was the best way a husband can support a family breastfeeding commitment. He washed all of those bottles and pump parts every night for a full year with each of my kiddos. Basically any activity that does not involve actively removing milk from you is game for delegation to anyone who can help.
Oh and if you plan on pumping and going back to work, get to know either the kiinde system or freemie cups or both.
With the kiinde system you pump right into really high quality milk bags (that cost the same as normal milk bags). When you are ready to feed baby, you put a plastic bottle holder on top of the milk bag, put a really high quality nipple on it, and feed baby. It is an amazing new product, and very reasonably priced too. Plus you don’t have to heat breast milk twice (once to make bottles for daycare and then again when they give the baby the bottle). You just send the milk bags to daycare, and they heat them once when they give the bottle.
The Freemie cups are cups that connect to your pump and collect your milk, and they fit in your bra. This only worked for me farther along in my pumping journey, after my oversupply resolves (don’t be jealous, oversupply causes dangerous mastitis too). I would put my Freemie cups in before I left home, and connect the tubing to my Spectra S9 when I got on the train or in the car to commute. I had a big winter coat on and the train is loud, so no one could tell I was pumping. Then I just poured the milk into bags when I got to work. This meant fewer pumping breaks during my workday.
1) Have your partner give baby at least one middle-of-the-night feed each night, so you can get at least 4-5 hours of sustained sleep. If you need, have someone give baby a second bottle of pumped milk during the day so you can nap. Also, when you come home from the hospital and baby hasn’t figured out days and nights, taking shifts works best. One of you is up 9pm-3am and the other does 3am-9am. Your sleep is your sanity, and your sanity matters! If you run too short on sleep postpartum depression and anxiety are more likely to set in, and you will also have trouble problem solving newborn baby challenges.
2). Push your husband or partner to take off all the time that they can. Sadly most of the men I see don’t do this! Studies show that the more time fathers take off, the more they end up helping for the next 18 years!!- because they are around more during the crucial role shift that happens after every time a baby is born in a family. Obviously parental leave laws and policies vary by state and employer, but the key is for husbands to do what they can. If that means skipping a guys’ fishing trip or babymoon so you can bond more with your baby when they are born, well it’s worth it.
3). Know that you WILL find your groove again- in stages. Every couple months you will reclaim another tiny piece of yourself- your body, your sleep, your confidence, etc..
Here are the most valuable gems I picked up from this online community when my LO was little:
1. “It’s the presence of breastmilk, not the absence of formula, that matters.” This was a mental gamechanger for me. I didn’t start nursing until my LO was 5 weeks old and then really struggled when we started. LO got a mixture of formula and pumped milk until nursing got easier. This sounds so corny now, but when I only managed to pump 1-2 ounces ALL DAY, I would swirl the bottle around at my LO before I gave it to him and say out loud: “Look at that? I made that for you. I did it because I love it.” It sounds so cheesy as I type it, but it really helped at the time.
2. When I got close to the end of my leave, I really wanted a little more time with my LO. I wanted to take off another month, but I was afraid to ask. Someone here told me that I should just ask for it because my employer would much rather give me 4 more weeks and have me return to work happy and ready to be back, than to have me return angry, resentful, and as a result, unproductive. I made the request and my employer didn’t event bat an eye. That extra month made all the difference to me.
Also, if you want to work a reduced schedule when you return from leave as part of a ramp up period, I suggest taking Wednesdays off (instead of Friday’s). This way, you get 2 days of work, 1 day off, 2 days of work, 2 days off, etc. Working 2 days in a row is so much easier than working 4 days in a row.
Here is something I recently picked up after reading I Know How She Does It, which was recommended to me by someone here. There are 168 hours in a week. If you sleep 8 hours a night and have a 60 hour workweek (which consists of 10 hours a day at the office and 2 hours a day of round trip commuting), that still leaves you with 52 hours a week to spend with your family. That is a lot of time. You have to look at time in terms of weeks (168 hours) instead of days (24 hours) because it is physically impossible to fit all components of your life into 24 hours.
Finally, don’t be so fixated on capturing a precious moment on video or by taking a perfect photo. Live it in real time.
If you are using a day care, save leave for that first winter! Ours were constantly ill and the 24-hour rule meant I probably took another 1-2 weeks off that winter. The good news is we didn’t stay home at all the second winter.
Try to chill and don’t make it harder on yourself than it already is. If there is a way you can cut a corner safely and reasonably, just do it. You can always do more once your kid is older.
– signed, nearly drove myself insane obsessing over a variety of things that did not, in retrospect, matter in the slightest (which of these four sippy cups should I use??? will I ruin my child’s palate by introducing squash before green beans??? will everyone hate me if I don’t bring homemade cookies to the daycare cookie swap???, is it too much change to introduce cows milk and shoes in the same month???? etc.)
I don’t even remember the vast majority of things I’ve worried about over the past few years, and the ones I do remember have only stuck around because they are deeply hilarious in retrospect.
These are generally on point! But I respectfully disagree with giving your baby a bottle/formula to assist with nursing. Instead, I’d encourage nursing and recommend a nursing mom work with a certified lactation consultant if she has any issues with latching or supply. Also, I think it’s worth noting that the WHO recommends nursing to 2 years old so if a new mom can nurse / pump, it’s good to try! Nursing / pumping is so much more doable with a village to support you (be it other nursing moms, lactation consultants, or La Leche League Groups).
Also, I’m a big advocate that maternity leave is sacred, and that while you may be willing to work, your choice to work sets a precedent for others who do not want to (or perhaps cannot, due to medical complications or colicky babies) work while on leave.
If you plan on daycare, and live in a major city, get on a wait list in your first or second trimester. Don’t wait until baby comes!
+1 baby wearing.
+1 be kind and gentle to yourself.
+1 walk and get fresh air.
Try to get your baby on a sleep schedule (but don’t cancel plans because of it) but remember it’s totally okay to hold baby while he or she sleeps. You’ll have a wiggly toddler before you know it.
Ask for help. Order online. Store brand diapers work just as well. Don’t hand wash bottles. If the choice is between anything else and sleep – CHOOSE SLEEP. Don’t forget to shower. You are amazing.
Babywearing for sure.
Nursing may be uncomfortable initially but shouldn’t hurt, get help if it’s painful. Lanolin, so much lanolin.
If baby’s crying, that’s okay – it doens’t mean you’ve done anything wrong, you’ll learn to figure it out.
Leave the house every day even if you just walk around the block.
Talk or text at least one friend every day.
It’s okay to let baby sleep on you in carrier or co-sleep. Don’t worry about setting up lifelong habits, just do what feels right for you.
It’s okay to hand your DH the baby as soon as he walks in the door from work, and then walk out the door and get 20 minutes (or however long) outdoors by yourself.
If it’s winter, you can still take baby outside lots for fresh air for you both.
When should I expect a national chain-type daycare center to tell me if they have a spot for me? I’m due in 4 weeks, will need a spot starting after Thanksgiving. Also, when should I start putting together a back-up plan (nanny)?
Baby carriers! Ask other recent moms what they’ve liked, look at them in the store, but put at least one on your registry. They are lots that aren’t very expensive (especially for the tiny stage) and they will give your arms a break. Also, local baby wearing groups can be a great outing during maternity leave.
If breastfeeding – have your baby evaluated at the hospital for lip and tongue tie (even if latch seems OK initially), and then again by your pediatrician at the first appointment or two if there are any latch issues. My kiddo was a little early and a lot of her early latch issues were attributed to her gestational age. When I finally realized she had a lip tie, it was too late to take care of it without anesthesia (and it didn’t cause any other issues that were harmful to her).
Also: velcro swaddles.
Bring a camera to the hospital and take a photo of your new little family as soon as that baby is wrapped and in your arms. You may look terrible, but you’ll look back one day and be thankful you have it. It’s truly the sweetest moment to capture. While on leave, get your baby into some sort of schedule. It will help tremendously when you head back to work. Last but not least…. Invest in good mascara, concealer, lip gloss and dry shampoo. These are my life lines for super rushed week day mornings.