My name is Rachel.* Before I became a mother I was a hard working litigator, a devoted wife, and the owner of two awesome dogs. Then I had Olivia. She is 5 months old now and beaming with big smiles every day. Olivia is a blessing to our family in ways I could never have expected and she has fulfilled every dream of what a daughter could be. I love being a mom. Soon, I will return to my job and Olivia’s full time nanny, Martha, will take over the day-to-day operations. Certainly this transition and all challenges it brings, will be explored through Work it Momma, but first I wanted to discuss why this blog matters to me.
Throughout my pregnancy I kept my eyes peeled for a mentor – an example of mothering in the workplace that could give me the confidence and support I needed to return to work. Naturally, I first explored examples at work. I was relatively new to the West Coast office when I found out I was pregnant, so I didn’t know everyone. When I asked around I was shocked to discover that I would be only the second mother the office had ever experienced – with the first being a woman who was only five months ahead of me in her pregnancy!
After that, whenever I met a working mother I immediately asked questions. “How do you manage childcare? How do you balance work with the demands of your children? When did you return to work?” Inevitably I would learn that the major piece of the equation that allowed these households to function was not a part of mine – a stay-at-home father or father who works part time, a grandparent who managed the daily pick-up and drop-off from day care, a family owned business that allowed the mother to bring her child to work, or a nine-to-five schedule that provided predictability.
This is not our reality. In our house, my husband works 12-hour days on market hours, which means he leaves for work at a frighteningly early hour. I also work long days, but I leave for work at 8:00 in the morning. So our challenge would be finding someone who wanted to work long hours, who was capable of juggling our sometimes unpredictable schedules, and who could take over those parts of our lives we had already neglected, like laundry, grocery shopping, and taking out the garbage.
Ironically, it was my husband who discovered, on a business trip to New York, a client who faced a similar lifestyle challenge. The solution for their household: two nannies, a housekeeper, a cook that did the shopping and then prepared six healthy meals for the entire week (and a gorgeous chef’s kitchen for him to cook in), a dog walker, gardeners, and a personal assistant. Now, if your jaw just dropped you know how we felt when we learned that this is how a hedge fund dad and an investment banker mom make it work. And you’ll also know how unaffordable this kind of arrangement is on 99.9% of salaries. I mean, we make good money and we live within our means, but we don’t make that much money. And even if we did, who wants to pay a team of staff to live the best part of your life? We couldn’t believe that there was nobody out there to share real, accessible solutions to our dilemma, but it sure felt like it.
Which brings me back to why this blog matters to me. I know these mothers are out there somewhere, and I hope that through this blog we find each other and maybe even offer each other a cyber-shoulder to lean on once in a while. I can’t predict how this will work out for our family, but at least I can open up my experience to others. Mentorship matters to me, and in my challenging and often harsh work culture I strive to be the kind of attorney and woman that junior attorneys can turn to for guidance, leadership, and compassion. Now I am adding my mothering experience to that equation, and hopefully as I work through the challenge of returning to work, other women in my profession can grasp the working mother as a tangible possibility and not merely some imaginary character.
So, how are we going to do it? Well, we have a plan, and we hope it works. We decided to go with one full time nanny who had glowing references and whom our daughter adores. We decided against more affordable day-care because our schedules are simply too unpredictable to manage regular pick up and drop off times. We already had a dog walker and a gardener that comes twice a month (we have a house with a yard), so we are sticking with them. We are scaling back on the housekeeper’s visits to save some money, and the nanny will pick up some of the daily up-keep, laundry, and grocery shopping. We will also be relying heavily on family that live nearby to offer us date-nights, back-up parenting, and emotional support. I am going to spend mornings with the baby, and my husband is going to handle bedtime (which happens long before I am home from work). We are still working out what to do when one of us is traveling for work (which, by the way, I have to do my FIRST week back!!! – we’ll save that tale for another time). As for that personal assistant, well, my husband and I always joke with each other that we both need a wife – but that is simply out of our reach. Instead, we are going to attempt a divide -and-conquer strategy on major household and family obligations. And, finally, we plan to take a few slow, deep breaths every day to keep it together. Will it work? Who knows, but we’ll give it a shot and share it with all of you along the way.
Go mommas!
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