Paternity Reality Pt.1
I’m on the verge of leaving my job for six weeks.
While this is an exciting opportunity, my mind is racing with a lot of prospective challenges and questions. Before addressing those challenges and questions let me backtrack and add some context. A year and a half ago Weave announced a very competitive paternity policy. The policy consists of the following:
- 12 weeks full paid time off for mothers and 6 weeks full paid time off for fathers
- 1 years worth of diapers
- 6 weeks of home meal deliveries (twice a week)
- 12 weeks of house cleaning (every other week)
- Weave baby swag
- An existential crisis (maybe it’s just me)
My wife an I are no strangers to kids. We currently have two young boys, but we have felt for a while that we wanted to bring another child into our family. I would like to go on record to say this policy is what swayed us to have another child (not really) and Weave should carry part of the responsibility for what happened next.
We debated whether we would have 3 or 4 children in our family, but at the ultrasound for our third child we were informed we were also expecting our fourth. This caught us completely by surprise. We had made jokes here and there leading up to our ultrasound, but never firmly believed twins were a real possibility (P.S. for the record the only paternity benefits that double if you have twins is the diapers).
Bringing a child into this world is something we have a very limited number of times to experience. I appreciate the opportunity to work for a company that understands this and gives parents the needed time to bond with their child and family. Of the stops I’ve made in my career Weave is the only company I’ve worked for that has had a formal paternity policy. As I reach what is likely the end of my child bearing years (didn’t you just enter your thirties?) this leave is much needed as our family prepares to adjust to a change that turned out to be twice as big as expected.
Now, if the births of my first two children have taught me anything it’s that babies aren’t beholden to a 40 week womb residence. My kids tend to skip out early on their stays (first child born at 31 weeks and the second at 36) and that poses some unique problems for my current situation. Twins by nature are more prone to be born before 40 weeks and given our history of preterm labor I don’t know when I will be leaving my post.
As I wait for the fateful day to arrive my mind is racing with a lot of questions. I’m excited, anxious, and nervous. This is shaping up to be one of the biggest challenges of my career. I have many responsibilities to my work, products, and team. I’m putting all of that on hold for my ultimate responsibility as a father. I will try my best to answer the following questions when I revisit them in part two of this article upon returning from my leave.
Does my team really need me?
What if my time away only proves that my team can survive without me and I’m expendable? Our teams at Weave are divided up by features with each PM owning their features and working with a team of developers and a designer. We have planned out our next quarter as far as what we would like to accomplish. There are still some questions to be answered on some of our planned features.
On top of that we have a big release that is coming very soon. Then there are two big features that we will need to start beta testing about the time I should be taking my leave. Beta testing is typically something I am very involved with as we work closely with our customers to ensure things are working properly. One of my biggest worries is how the beta will go without me there to take part. I want it to go on without me, but decisions will have to be made without my involvement and my hope is that things don’t stall in my absence.
Is this fair to my team?
It’s hard not to feel selfish in taking 6 weeks off, but I know this is something I need to take advantage of. My absence will inevitably effect my team, but at the moment I’m still not sure to what extent. So far this year, two other team members (engineers) have taken paternity leave so this isn’t entirely a new experience for our team. When I return I’ll hopefully have a better understanding of my role on our team and what they rely on me to provide for us to be successful. I also worry that I may find out I haven’t been enabling my team enough to survive without me and that my absence turns out to be a bottleneck on their progress.
Who will fill in for me?
As I have wrestled with this question I have had other questions. It is reasonable to ask another PM to do my job and theirs? Am I better off just letting my team handle things? And is it realistic to expect them to just hand things over when I return?
My plan as of today is to rely on one of our PMs that I work with closely to help out while I’m out. This means running some of our betas and working to answer questions about upcoming features through customer research. I have a lot of faith in this individual and they are willing to help out, but they have their own team they work with and their own products they manage. Is it fair to put this burden on them?
Should I still be checking in during my time off?
If so how much? I am invested in what my team works on and and want to know how things are progressing. I want to support them even if it is from afar or in a more limited fashion. It’s hard to say what kind of time I’ll have while on leave and whether it’s helpful.
My plan at the moment is to check in a couple of times a week via Slack to see how things are going and see if there are any questions I can answer. I don’t want to try and micromanage anything, but I do want to try and keep tabs so I can pick back up when when I return. Another question I want to revisit after my leave is whether checking in is/was helpful for me and/or the team. I’ll also followup with the frequency with which I actually did end up checking in.
What does my family need from me?
After all the whole reason I’m taking this leave if for our family. Our older sons need to know that they are still important and loved. My wife will need emotional support and our babies will need attention from both parents. I know I will come away from this time with a renewed appreciation for all that my wife does for our family. I hope to have my wife guest write in my next article to share her thoughts on the benefits of my paternity leave.
What are you going to do during your 6 weeks?
Probably start another job and collect double paychecks (I joke… kind of). For my own sanity I feel like I want to plan adventures with my oldest two boys to make sure we are getting out of the house. I would like to spend time learning more about no code solutions out there and how they are being leveraged to start and jumpstart businesses. I want to spend time helping my oldest son continue building his website we started at a family code night. I want to see how long of a consecutive streak that same son and I can keep on Duolingo learning Chinese. I want to potty train my second oldest son. I want to read some books… You can see where this is going. There are tons of things I would like to do and likely won’t get around to as these babies will probably consume most of my time, but we’ll see how many I can check off.
Part 2
In my next article Paternity Reality Pt.2 I’ll revisit many of these thoughts and questions I had with some answers on how my experience played out. I’ll try and be as transparent as possible about the challenges and benefits of my paternity leave and hopefully have some tips for others that may be navigating a similar path.
UPDATE!
As I mentioned in this article we have a history of preterm labor with our children. During the writing of this article our twins were born at just 27 weeks both weighing a little over 2 lbs. Being born this early they will be in the Newborn ICU (NICU) for ~3 months.
Because of this unique situation I will be heading back to work during the 3 month period our children are in the NICU. My schedule will likely be a bit modified to accommodate visiting our newborns and caring for our two other children. My plan is to take my full paternity leave when our twins are ready to come home.
