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I am ridiculously excited for our first Halloween! I'm having the mommy group over, and I'm making big girl cupcakes, and baby cupcakes. I was psyched to make carrot cake with nuts and candy corn on top, until someone reminded me both are a choking hazard...I will definitely be sending photos to the BlogHer Halloween Photoshare! My son is going to be Superman (of course...).
I attended the Working Mother Work Life Congress this week in New York. Below I’ve tried to capture vignettes of what I found interesting at the meeting, as well as one piece of advice that changed my thinking and I hope will help you too.
Every ounce counts. Heather Chase is CEO of Corporate Lactation Services, which provides lactation consultants to working women at US companies. Helping women pump at work saves companies money: one day absences for sick children occur more than twice as often for mothers who feed their babies formula. CIGNA conducted a two year study of 343 employees who took part in a lactation support program and found the program saved CIGNA $240,00 annually in health care costs, 62% fewer prescriptions for babies, and $60,000 savings in reduced absenteeism rates.
But as my baby gets closer to a year old, I’ve found it harder to nurse and pump regularly. For one, he is just not that interested. Once or twice a day is enough nursing for him. And I’m less motivated to nurse, and certainly to pump. But Heather, a warm and wonderful woman who I wish I could have called for lactation advice said to me, “Every ounce counts.” Meaning, every ounce of breastmilk is a “gift” to my baby. She said nursing him twice a day is great, and I should not feel any guilt about it. And even better she thinks I won’t need to keep pumping. I’ll have the supply to nurse him when it suits us.
I left the Working Mother Conference early. Something about being in New York, five hours away from the baby, made me anxious. Something about now, maybe it’s H1N1, who knows, makes me feel very vulnerable when I am physically far apart from my 10 month old. I talked about how I missed him. Nina Madoo from Marriott, a super smart woman, said, “I know, it’s like you ache for them.” Yep, I ached for the baby, and feared he had a cold. I ran out and took an early train to make it home to see him before he went to bed. Mothers of older children tell me this ache will diminish, as he gets older, more willful, and more difficult. They promise I will relish a night alone. But now, I look at his photo on my laptop, my milk comes down, and I literally and physically ache for him.
But here’s the truth: I got what I needed from the meeting, for me. I had spent enough time, made enough connections, done what I’d come to do. Maybe I didn’t network as much as I could have, but in a couple years, when I have an impossible toddler and no longer baby deliciousness, I will. And this, to me, is the gift of motherhood. I’m getting better at drawing boundaries. If I’m done at work, I’m done. Well, I try.
And the sense I got from the Working Mother Congress and that I get whenever I talk to working parents is, yes, we all ache for our babies when they are little. But we go to work, we do what we need to do. But we don’t have to pretend any more that we don’t ache for them, and that is profound. I think that our generation is lucky in the sense that we don’t have pretend anymore that we aren’t parents and that it doesn’t change our work lives. Women still pay a “mommy tax” but we aren’t forced to pretend motherhood isn’t happening to us, which is how it used to be, I believe in corporate America.
And it’s not that new mothers don’t want to work. A recent survey of 1,200 new mothers found that 20% actually reported being more ambitious after having their baby. Throughout the career life cycle, women are more engaged at work than men. Engagement is lower for women in their thirties than it is for women in their twenties (who are the most ambitious and highly career-engaged group in this study), probably because work and family demands converge at this time.
