I attempted paternity leave and sucked at it
I never really gave paternity leave a fair shot. After my first child was born, I took a week off. We launched Make in LA shortly after my second, and while I tried to take a month off, things didn’t go smoothly. In preparing for my third, I attempted to take 9 weeks off. This is longer than most of the men I know in the US and far shorter than most of the men in Canada and Europe that I know. However, in addition to the benefit to my family, pushing myself to take a longer leave had two professional goals: (1) find out what systems break and where the weak links may lie, and (2) model a culture where family leaves are encouraged. This blog details the plan, observations, and what I think went right and wrong.
And by the way, family leave in the US is broken:
Nearly one in four employed women giving birth in the United States is back at work within two weeks. Only 9 percent of work sites in the United States offer paid paternity leave to all male employees, and 76 percent of fathers are back to work within a week after the birth or adoption of a child. (source: https://parenting.nytimes.com/work-money/alexis-ohanian-paternity-leave)
The Plan
My plan was to take approx 9 weeks off: from due date minus 12 days through week seven of life. For most of that time, I would take care of the wife and the kids that entire time and learn what a family of five means, with the exception of a five-day stretch where we’d have 12 new companies in program on site and my in-laws would cover the family duties that week.
With so many balls moving, I wanted set my accessibility to daily. However, I knew that I would do not good to either family or work if I stayed on top of email. So I planned to ignore slack and email and delete them all upon my return. I set an ongoing open time for calls daily from 9–9:30am to do things like review documents or initiate wires, and would make myself available outside of that time via text.
While I was out, there were a number of projects that I wanted to delegate and so handed off those projects to the best people on the team. A 3 page document detailed those projects, the assigned lead, and any other notes. I also left a comment about delegating my personality, my role on the team as both optimist and instigator and everyone should take stock in our teams’ speed of execution.
Additionally, upon my return I planned to ease back into the hustle and told my team I needed one additional month where I was in the office but not traveling.
One last thing I did was pre-write my out of office email and baby announcement emails. While I am not very into baby announcements, several people specifically asked me for them and so I added the email addresses to my file so that when labor started I just had to flip one switch and when the baby came it was as simple as copy and paste.
The Reality
The third time around isn’t easier. In fact, 4 years passed so we were rusty with bathing, cleaning the belly button, nursing, swaddling, etc. We even forgot to buy wipes and socks, and all the small outfits we owned were way bigger than the kid (who was 8 lbs 4 oz). One thing that was easier: we did find that we would have much longer pauses between baby crying and our action. With the first kid, every noise put us on edge and by the time we hit #3 it could be minutes.
One week in, I could already feel dread. So much time off from Make in LA will be a challenge because I love what I do and so many major decisions are being made. It’s nice to have a firm with a strong brand and no #KeyMan (or #KeyPerson) culture. But I suspect me not being part of the action was harder for me than for Noramay and Carmen😜
Having a kid again is bringing my wife and I closer. We feel like we are part of a team and spending so much time together working on our “project.” I forgot that babies are night owls. He would get his best sleep from dawn to dusk, and was most awake at 8pm. I really wanted to track my sleep schedules but my Oura had no clue that I was trying to sleep from 10ish to 2 and only showed me going to bed for the last stretch (Those minutes counted, damnit). We had struggles in nursing and it’s hard to realize all the things that are going right when you are so sleep deprived and in pain.
At the hospital many dads get a kick out of cutting the cord. But it ain’t my jam. I feel like it was a helpful tool used to get dads in the delivery room. This was the first time I did it and I got nothing out of it.
I found myself craving interactions and activities. Since my team stopped including me in Slack conversations, I sought connection via social media. Other activities that satisfied me included organizing beads.
I searched for activities to pass the time while the baby is sleeping but according to my Trello board I was extremely unproductive the week my son was born #BrokenMetrics.
What I lacked in productivity I gained in observation skills. I had no idea but people get locked into changing diapers a certain way. For me, I was okay with putting the baby down with the head to the left for me and feet to the right. My wife and mother-in-law were unable to change a diaper that way. And do you know what a breast shell is? I didn’t and can’t believe it took me three kids to catch wind. I love the shape and ID of the Lacticups but someone picked a cheap plastic and they crack/leak easily. Products like this are much more durable but are poorly designed. And while I rant about products, clothing manufacturers need to realize that all pajamas need zippers, not buttons. The rule should be if you need to open it from neck to foot, do not use buttons! Magnetic buttons are not the same.
Week two took forever to come and when it did I was stir crazy. Before paternity leave I was a fine tuned machine of productive netting conversations with hundreds of founders each month.
After one week though I was bored with social media. In search of an outlet, I bought a shovel and started to dig out plants in the yard. I struggled to find a balance between being available for the family and waiting on the family for the next move. Each day this week I would start on the journey of being patient and content with inefficiencies and each day I would fail. I reworked my observations to ensure that they don’t come out as suggestions or coercions to get out of the house as a family (pro-tip: e-scootering postpartum is not as easy as it seems).
Resigned to the home, I stumbled on my journal from 15 years ago and started writing. A book with a lot of blank pages is both intimidation and inspiring. What do I want to write? Journals and blogs seem mutually exclusive like Instagram is for pretty and Twitter is for thought provoking and Facebook is for family. I see blogs for promoting ideas but journals are for more intimate family details or broader concepts I’m working through. I imagine my kids finding my journal and adhering more value to it than my blog. One thing remains consistent: the desire to have a voice at the table where it can have an impact.
Week three came quicker than week two and this is the week that my in-laws arrived so that I can go back to work. I find that the paternity leave allowed me to be more free at work. My only responsibility was to the 12 companies in our building that week. It offered me plenty of dead time to think, or to tweet. I find that I have more energy and crave for work. I was in no hurry to go home despite my love for the family. Not sure if it is just the addiction I have to work or the intense joy I have from building companies and shaping founders in the earliest days when things are broken and we can roll up our sleeves and figure things out. The week was heavenly.
My wife, being a total rockstar, decided to bring the new family camping in Yosemite. Or more precisely, glamping. The baby loved the drive and I felt like we were living the adventurous life of my dreams.
One month in, the baby is still living in 3 hr chunks at best. The baby takes one of those hours so this means that our life is now in 2 hr chunks for sleep, work, the other kids, or food. With the unpredictability of babies it’s hard to focus on work. The threat of an interruption keeps me relegated to anything that can be done in minutes. Work, kid projects, and home projects that are more ambitious keep piling up. Once again I am sucked into social media. While I am not a big user of social media normally, I feel like it was designed for moments like this. Which is exactly when you want to be present and don’t really want to be on that stuff.
One hack I do is bring back my old school watch to keep some more distance from my phone. Which has a side effect of feeling FOMO about missing work. Which makes me feel like a failure for not accomplishing whatever bonding I need to accomplish with the new baby. The type of bonding that Alexis Ohanian and so many dads rave about. How does one know what is enough, too much, or too little bonding? That failure to know what is enough also leads me into a guilt for letting my team down and not maximizing the outcome here. They are carrying a greater load for me to be here and I am not making the most of it. It reminds me of kids beating themselves up after a sibling dies and someone tells them something like “you were chosen to live for a reason and you have to live a life worth living.”
Another hack worth mentioning was the ability to fall asleep quickly. I reduced caffeine intake and when I had a moment to take a nap I would do a meditation like a body scan, but focused on my tongue. It seemed to work.
Week six and seven flew by and an unexpected family death meant that I needed to take the two older kids to Canada and spend 48 hours away from the little one. It made me think a lot about life and how a new baby or a dead family member changes everything, but also changes nothing. Birth and death have been happening for thousands of years and life goes on. It seems significant to us when it happens, but as a civilization a birth or death is just another day. Kid 1 and Kid 2 seemed to get that intuitively.
Did Paternity Leave Work
One of my female colleagues is hustling and didn’t take this much time off. My other female colleague had a single mom. Being around impressive women makes me appreciate maternity leave and leaves me in awe of the women who do it on their own. I feel ashamed of myself for even having an internal struggle around paternity leave.
On the work front, I left and chaos did not ensue. The email plan going in was to delete every email over the seven weeks. I wished I could do that but I loved seeing founder updates and had a hard time following my rule. The long list of tasks to get done was incomplete and balls were dropped, but dropped based on how poorly I communicated the value and importance to the other team members and how much they believed in that value. Overall, I think my team and the culture we have at MiLA allows for people to take family leave without guilt, despite the constant guilt I felt.
On the home front, I realized that while fatherhood is my jam, perhaps paternity leave is not for me. And perhaps it is not meant to be for me. It is for the rest of my family. Covering Kid 1 and Kid 2 allowed them to feel loved when there may be less mom time. Baby and wife had the chance to bond without distraction, and when I had the baby she was able to make sure the older kids felt appreciated. Everyone appreciated the time and to be honest I feel like I finally have my baby whispering mojo with Kid 3. I can read his cues with a fairly high hit rate and he lets me soothe him. Perhaps it’s because I was clueless with Kid 1 … and Kid 2 didn’t want to hang with me. So maybe it was the long leave time that allowed Kid 3 and I to be in sync. The only way to really know is to keep having more kids … or be comfortable not knowing.