Here's the Plan.: Your Practical, Tactical Guide to Advancing Your Career During Pregnancy and Parenthood by Allyson Downey

Author:Allyson Downey
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: pregnancy, parenting, self help, business
ISBN: 9781580056199
Publisher: Seal Press
Published: 2016-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

MISSING THE GOLD STAR

I have always been someone who seeks out validation; I pride myself on my professional achievements, and I crave some measure of proof that I’ve done well. I call it “needing a gold star.”

With a new baby, there’s no positive reinforcement of what you’re doing; no one expresses gratitude for your contributions or commends you for outstanding performance. The best you can usually hope for is a lack of negative reinforcement: a baby who isn’t crying or fussing. It’s jarring to not know whether you’re succeeding, and it’s all too easy to end up channeling that energy into assessing whether you’re succeeding as a mother.

If you’re breast-feeding, that assessment sometimes takes the form of trying to determine whether your baby is eating enough. “Perceived insufficient milk”—women fearing they aren’t producing adequate milk to nourish their baby—is a common enough phenomenon that it has a name. Some women will get a special infant scale to weigh the baby before and after nursing so as to calculate how many ounces of milk were ingested. Others run timers and keep charts of how often and how long the baby nurses. (The good news here is that it’s called “perceived” insufficient milk for a reason; it’s just your perception, and usually a faulty one.)

“I went from traveling all over the world and managing fifty people to celebrating changing my pants every day.”

—MARISA RICCIARDI, MARKETING CONSULTANT AND CMO OF NYSE EURONEXT

If you find yourself digging for validation or some measure of success, “step back,” one woman advised. Set some reasonable goals for yourself, like getting out once a day, even if it’s just to have coffee or look at the sky. She opined that too many women set unreasonable goals, like having a schedule or fitting into your jeans. “You can’t squeeze this new person into your existing standards,” she said. Another told herself every day, “I’m going to shower before my husband leaves for work and put on real clothes”—and that was enough to make her feel a little more human.

“It takes a while to get down a rhythm,” one woman shared. “I had to learn my baby. I had to learn how to be a mom.”

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