Programming Post-Progeny: A New Parent's Perspective
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DjangoCon US 201724 / 48
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Perspective (visual)Gastropod shellBitDifferent (Kate Ryan album)XMLUML
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MereologyMultiplication signComputer programmingSelf-organizationLevel (video gaming)Data managementMathematicsPoint (geometry)Meeting/InterviewComputer animation
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Multiplication signException handlingFigurate numberBarrelled spaceLink (knot theory)CASE <Informatik>Computer animation
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28:27
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:01
And thank you all for coming. This is a bit of a different talk for me, so bear with me.
00:30
So I'm Jacinda, and this is Ada. She's also with us in the audience today because leaving for five days is still a bit challenging.
00:42
Welcome to Programming After Progeny, a talk that is part time management, part encouragement of flexible work arrangements, and definitely an excuse for us to all enjoy cute baby pictures together. First, I'd like to thank Heather and Jeff for taking my daughter and holding her. If that changes, she may end up on stage at some point
01:04
as well. I'd also like to thank the organizers for accepting this talk. This isn't the first talk that I've given at a conference, but it's certainly the most personal. My previous talks, I'm more used to giving talks with titles like Connecting Patients to Doctors in Real Time, Delving into the Django Admin, Admin
01:23
Performance Talks, IPython, Twilio Programmable Video. However, despite the fact that I am not a child care expert and my anecdotes are not statistically significant data, I feel it's important for us to share the rest of our lives with each other because we are people, not just programmers.
01:42
And it would be foolish to think that we work in isolation from other important parts of our lives. There are also many things that I acknowledged as being important before I had a child, but that still blindsided me, even though I thought I was prepared. So if nothing else, I hope this talk reaches a parent out
02:00
there or a someday parent or someone who works with parents and lets them know that they're a people with similar feelings and that they are probably not alone. Now, before we begin, I'd like to set expectations just a bit. First, this is a personal story. Talk to other parents, and you'll hear as many other stories as there are parents
02:24
and as there are children. The things that have worked for me are not things that I'm saying everyone can or should do. People have different feelings about children and different feelings about parenting. Heck, I wonder on an almost daily basis
02:41
if I'm screwing this up. And I might do things differently in the future or if I could go back in time. But this is where I'm at right now. My daughter entered the world about two weeks late, so she was right on par with programming even then.
03:04
Nothing ever arrives on time. We had actually struggled with infertility, a pregnancy loss, and long induction, all topics for another time, but that I'm happy to share more about with anyone who has questions. And we were delighted she was here. I was exhausted and needed to heal, but incredibly happy.
03:24
I had started maternity leave a few days earlier when I had gone to the hospital and was looking forward to time to recover and to get to know this brand new little person. So it was time for expectations to meet reality. Before I had a child, I expected
03:43
that it would be tough. I knew plenty of other parents. I had three younger siblings. I'd spent quite a bit of time around babies. I thought I knew what I was getting into. I'd done a lot of reading. Oh yeah, books are great. I knew I would have a small human being who would take up an awful lot of time, but in between diapers, feedings, and nap time,
04:02
I would have some time to myself, right? Yeah, no. So that's my daughter when she was about four months old. This is my daughter when she was about nine days old. The first few months are not what you picture when you think about babies.
04:22
Newborns eat every one to two hours around the clock. They, maybe three if you're lucky. They don't sleep for long stretches of a time. They're actually, except in some cases, physically incapable of doing that.
04:41
There are exceptions just like everything else, but most newborns don't sleep for very long at any stretch of the time. They have stomachs that are about the size of, oh, I think it was a marble by the end of the first week, and they're like this big when they're born. So they have to eat frequently because they really can't eat a lot at any given time.
05:05
And then I also thought I have 12 weeks of maternity leave to figure this out. That's plenty of time. So keep that in the back of your mind because I have to take a necessary detour on this talk and just go through the obligatory.
05:21
US has no guaranteed paid maternity or paternity leave. We rank dead last in the OECD in company with only Papua New Guinea. This is a ranking of other countries in the OECD and how much paid maternity leave they provide. It's fantastic that so many tech companies
05:42
have fabulous leave policies, Google, Amazon. Actually, I'm not sure how good Amazon is. I think it's good, but I know Google, Netflix, Facebook all have great maternity leave policies and paternity leave policies, but that leaves out a whole bunch of people.
06:01
And this is not something that should be dependent upon employment status. In 2014, only 13% of US civilian employees had any access to paid family leave. The Family Medical Leave Act provides 12 weeks of unpaid leave, which means that after you've given
06:22
birth, you have 12 weeks where you may not be fired from your position. But only 60% or so of US workers are actually eligible for the Family Medical Leave Act, so that means 40% of people who are employed
06:43
are not eligible for the Family Medical Leave Act. Remember, that's unpaid leave, so 40% of US employees, if they had a child, would not be eligible to take any form of leave and have their job be guaranteed when they came back.
07:00
Additionally, the World Health Organization recommends six months of exclusive breastfeeding with one year as a primary nutrition source. Nursing can be hard, pumping can be harder, and good parental leave policies make this easier. It's hard to even think you have breastfeeding
07:21
figured out at 12 weeks, and going back to work at that point, for some people is easy and for a lot of other people is hard, the US does not do a good job of supporting those people. This is not the main thrust of my talk, but I felt like I needed to include it
07:41
because it's something that we don't do well here in the US and that we should do better. So, back to my personal story and not statistics. Here are a few more details about my expectations. I expected that 12 weeks would be plenty of time
08:03
to figure out everything I needed to know and that I would be ready to go back to work at that time and that she would be ready to go to daycare. I expected that by 12 weeks, she wouldn't be sleeping well but that we would have started figuring something out.
08:21
I expected that she would go to childcare and that she might be a little unhappy with unfamiliar caretakers, but that she would adjust. I expected that pumping would be easy. I was wrong. Reality, 12 weeks is short. This is actually a picture of Ada
08:41
from when she was 13 weeks old. At 13 weeks, babies are still generally immobile. Most of them can't even roll over yet and are only starting to develop reasonable head control. The other reality is that babies are individuals
09:00
and all of those expectations I had about how she would do with other people, how she would sleep, how I would do all of the things that the book said I should do and that things would turn out fine, it didn't happen. From day one, she had a vocal personality. She hated car seats, swaddles and strollers, which leaves out pretty much all of the sleep strategies
09:22
that they tell you about. It would take 40 minutes to an hour to get her swaddled and down and then she would sleep for about 20 minutes in the swaddle and wake up screaming. This meant that a lot of the things that you typically hear from people, like have you driven them around in a car?
09:42
Oh yes, we tried that. That's the baby equivalent of how you restarted your computer. She also had silent reflex, which is essentially baby heartburn, except that you don't actually see the spit up as much and she refused a bottle for a long time. None of these boded well
10:00
for a seamless transition back to work. And as you can see from this early photo, for her, strollers were great for carrying everything except the baby. She often would only fall asleep if you went on a long walk and in contrast to how she slept if we tried swaddling her and putting her in a crib or a bassinet,
10:20
she would sleep for a couple hours at a time in a carrier. No problem. The other reality was that I felt more conflicted than I expected. At 12 weeks, I didn't feel ready to just hand her off to daycare.
10:42
I love my job, but I wanted to be there for this and for this and for this. But like I said, I really love my job. So how could I make this work? Well, the engineer in me was like,
11:01
okay, well, this is part of it. I would sit on a yoga ball, which was one of the ways that we could get her to fall asleep was bouncing on a yoga ball in a carrier and work on my laptop. This is actually, I think, when I was still on maternity leave in our chat program as she can come join.
11:26
Hey there. She still seems to think that I'm an okay person to hang around. What a judge of character. We'll have to fix that later. So this, I think, was about two months in.
11:43
So I had to try a bunch of different things. First, remote work. And I've been very fortunate to have a flexible work environment and manager. And that is something that I'm strongly advocating for
12:02
in this talk. Flexible work environments help everyone, especially with retaining talent. And I'll reiterate this point at the end, but if my only choice had been go back to commuting to work five days a week and be in an office at 12 weeks,
12:22
the decision would have been a whole lot harder. I was able to continue working remotely for as long as I felt I needed to after my leave was over. This gave me more time to adjust and figure out what would work for me longer term. I didn't feel any pressure to return to the office
12:42
before I was ready. And this is something that I am very, very grateful for and that is something I just can't express how fortunate I feel to have been able to do that. And I want to strongly advocate,
13:02
if you are an employer, have policies in place like this and you will retain employees. I also was fortunate to have some family support from in-laws who live nearby. So they were able to actually watch Ada
13:21
a couple days a week. And provide a better transition because she was familiar with them already. And last thing that I would say from my story is daycare is not necessarily the only option. It wasn't realistic for me to,
13:42
especially as Ada got older and didn't just sleep all the time, it wasn't realistic for me to only work while she slept. She was getting more active and needed more attention. But I was still able to work during her afternoon naps. We looked at daycares full and part-time
14:01
in the Bay Area and really around the country. Those are pretty expensive and have long waiting lists. So we also looked at the cost of a,
14:23
we looked at the cost of a, oh, let's do that. No, she can't see it, it's good. Okay. Consider whether having a part-time babysitter
14:41
or nanny who comes consistently is something that is an option because for me and for other parents that I've talked to, the cost can actually be equivalent. Or for us, it was significantly less than full-time daycare. I was able to work from home and have someone come and watch her in the mornings three days a week.
15:02
So what does this look like today? Okay, I work from home three days a week with part-time childcare in the mornings on those days. So I get up, get her ready, hand her off, I work upstairs and someone else watches her for that time period.
15:23
In the afternoon, I get a little bit of time with her and work during her afternoon nap. I commute to the office two days a week now. That will probably continue to change. Like I said, I work during her afternoon nap. I also work evenings after bedtime
15:43
and on weekends if needed. I don't advocate anyone work on weekends in general but that's what's been working for me to be able to spend time with my daughter. And this evolved over time and continues to change.
16:01
I started only going into the office one day a week when I felt comfortable. I moved to two days when I felt comfortable with that. At some point, she probably will go into full-time childcare but it's something that we're taking a day at a time. And that still seems hard so how do I actually do it?
16:25
So this is probably the slide that a lot of you were hoping to see is some time management tips that I've come across. So the first one is I can't do it all. I have put some things on hold.
16:41
I realize that this is a temporary thing and that things will change. She's not gonna be this size forever. Five months ago, she couldn't even crawl so this all goes by very quickly. Second thing is you have to sleep.
17:02
I relied heavily on caffeine before I got pregnant. Cut it out almost completely because you're not supposed to drink caffeine when you're pregnant. Also with nursing, the last thing that anyone wants is a caffeinated baby so I still don't drink much caffeine. I had to find something that let me sleep.
17:23
And when I was only getting, when she was four days old, I was very adamant about the baby will never sleep with us. And I learned how to do it more. I learned some things about doing it more safely. The official recommendation from the American Academy
17:42
of Pediatrics is to never go to sleep but they did revise the recommendations and say that if you do, they provide ways to do it. Or at least more safely.
18:02
And as you know, things never go quite as planned with kids. See, that's, and the last point on this is be kind to yourself because things don't always go according to plan and having help is important.
18:22
Learning to get in the zone fast. This is probably something that anyone can use regardless of parenting status. Taking notes all the time and planning up front is something that I do much better now. I thought it was important before I became a parent but now if I'm trying to get in the zone
18:42
and I know I only have two hours to work, I've developed strategies for keeping track of what I've been working on. So the basic way that works is matching work to the situation.
19:01
What I've been doing is instead of tackling a coding problem like I might have in the past where I would write down a general outline and map out what I wanted to do but maybe leave out some details, I now map out in much more detail up front
19:23
what I want to do and don't, and I try not to do it as I'm coding which is always good practice but when I had more slack time, I guess I would put it, I could get away with not planning up front as much.
19:44
Now in order to get in the zone very quickly I have to have broken things up into very small chunks so that I'm able to say, okay, this is the next small chunk that I need to work on in order to accomplish this much bigger project. So I break things up into tiny chunks
20:01
and work on those when I have time anticipating that there will be interruptions and breaks and flows and this is also potentially a good tip for anyone who works in an open office environment or a place where you might get interrupted more frequently than you would like as a programmer because let's face it, we don't all live in ideal conditions, we don't all work in ideal conditions
20:24
regardless of whether you have a child or not. I've also started using something called Personal Kanban which breaks things up into to-do, do-first and done and I have a tool that's a board
20:43
where I break out all the tasks that I need to do and only work on one thing at a time. I used to be very bad at multitasking and I'm not perfect even today but this talk doesn't have enough time
21:00
to go into the details of Personal Kanban but it's been very helpful for me in terms of working as a strategy for keeping track of what I need to do and getting it to a done place. It concentrates mostly on minimizing the number of things that you have in progress so don't multitask.
21:20
I've actually been really surprised when I started taking some of these time management things seriously and not multitasking at how much I was able to get done. I haven't found myself to be significantly worse off. Last thing is be present.
21:41
When I'm with my family, I do my best to concentrate my energy on being there. When I'm working or giving a talk, I do my best to focus on that. I can only do one thing at a time so you notice the two pictures, they're not side by side, they overlapped because you can't do more than one thing at a time.
22:03
So what are the takeaways from this? One, I am instantly grateful for what I have and wanted to take the time to share my story with others in case it might help someone else out there. Everyone wants to contribute in this world.
22:21
I don't know anyone who really just wants to sit back and let things happen to them. We need to figure out ways to make it possible for everyone to contribute. And having flexible work schedules
22:43
and encouraging people that if you're programming, that's a career field where that can be more possible so if you want to have a more flexible work environment, consider programming. Flexible work schedules retain talent so if you're an employer,
23:01
see about giving your employees that option regardless of their career field. It's not possible for every job, I know that. And not everyone wants that either but if you do want that, then look at being a programmer as a career field where there are more opportunities for that.
23:21
And adults are individuals and so are babies. Some of them require a little bit more special handling than others. And lastly, lest anyone think that I have it all figured out and all together, I don't. I have awful days where I wonder
23:41
if I can keep everything going and I question whether I'm doing the right thing for my family or myself or for Ada. But I keep going and I try and do the best I can every day and that's all any of us can do. So thank you, you can find me on Twitter and under, at Jacinda Shelley.
24:01
I'm also on LinkedIn and GitHub and every other social media outlet, I think. My company is also hiring so feel free to reach out if you're interested. And at this point, I'd love to answer questions.
24:21
So just, well that was way too loud, sorry. How many times have you ended up having to deal with, say, baby related things like projectile vomit on the keyboard and things like that? So fortunately, no projectile vomit on the keyboard. That's lucky. Her reflex was silent, so most of her spit up was small.
24:42
As a parent, I have dealt with projectile poop. Oh, fun. But I think the thing that's gotten on the keyboard more often is milk. And everything else just goes on the floor. There's lots of cleanup to do. Awesome, thanks.
25:00
Thank you so much for this talk and for bringing Ada with you. It was really fun to get to spend a little bit of time with her. My question is just kind of a more general question about the second shift that a lot of women wind up having to work. We work our day jobs and then we come home and we do our evening jobs as well. And I know whenever you're working remotely and you have your baby with you, then there's probably sort of a lot of overlap and back and forth with that shift.
25:23
And I don't even know that I have just kind of a specific question other than just do you have general thoughts on being a mom who is also working full time and splitting those duties with your partner and kind of that second shift in general? Probably no tips that haven't already been spouted.
25:42
Communication is key. Figure out what responsibilities you want to divvy up. If you're both working full time and you can afford it and you both agree to getting help for non-baby related activities or baby related activities and paying for it,
26:00
even if it's short term and you're like, okay, we'll do this for the first year and then not do it afterwards can be insanely helpful. There's actually a study, oh. There was actually a study that was done recently where I think they paid people $40
26:22
versus just paying for them to have $40 for takeout or just paying for takeout or paying for someone to clean their house for them and the people who had the service or the takeout or the house cleans were happier with it than the people who just got the $40.
26:42
So the conclusion that they drew from that and all studies are unreliable is that people undervalue how much they would appreciate having some type of service like that. I feel a little weird actually recommending that because so many people have different circumstances
27:00
and that's not possible for a lot of people. But if you're both working full time, then that and you can, that's something you can consider. I know, there are a lot of people, aren't there? Yeah, you don't have to be shy, it's okay. Just wanna thank you so much
27:20
for sharing your personal story with us. I think it's really brave and it's just awesome that you have the confidence to do that. My question about being a new parent and trying to work at the same time is have you noticed that you've come up with more creative solutions to problems in your work
27:40
now being a parent and has it impacted your creativity? It's kind of a vague question, but. Maybe being forced to take some more breaks has helped with that. Also because I've been taking sleep more seriously because I don't have the option to make it up with caffeine, that may be contributing as well
28:08
to me being more creative. I think I undervalued, or actually, I know I undervalued the importance of sleep before I had a child. Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. Thank you. You wanna say something?
28:22
Waiting for the next talk. Okay, and that's it and thank you very much. Thank you all very much.