Reading · Kelly Nolan · RSS Amplifier

Each Thursday, the “How I Structure My Day” series features women from different industries, with and without kids, with and without partners, with family living with/near them and not, wfh to 1+ hour commutes, etc. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I do!

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Profession: Director of Enablement at a Pre-IPO Tech Company
WFH
Partner: Yes (Hybrid)
Children: Yes - 1 kid (4 month-old)
Seattle, WA
Mid-30s

I returned to work from maternity leave just a month ago. My daughter is four months old. Daycare in Seattle is competitive to get into, and when a spot opened for her to join at 3 months old, I took it as a sign that heading back to work earlier than planned might make more sense for our family. My husband and I both work in tech and enjoy our careers and we've done a TON of work over the years to reframe our work as getting to solve interesting puzzles all day rather than our only source of self-esteem. Clearly a couple of recovering workaholics over here ;)
Now, I'm still very much getting my rhythm of what it looks like for me to operate as a working mom. Pre-baby and honestly pre-pandemic, I thought that compartmentalization was best for me to show up in different arenas of life. But now, especially with 5 years of working from home under my belt, I aim for things to be not balanced – but integrated.
On workdays, my husband is "on" with the baby when she wakes up so he feeds her, gets her dressed, and does daycare dropoff. I typically wake up around 7 and sometimes push it to 7:30 if we had an overnight wakeup. I work east coast hours and my husband works in Seattle timezones, so this works best for us at the moment.
I pour myself a coffee and respond to slacks from my direct reports on my phone – since they're all on the east coast. I try to hang out in the living room with them while they're getting moving for the day because even though I'm not responsible for getting her out the door, I like to give her a squeeze before she heads off to daycare.
My steps to get ready in the morning are most often not timebound, but instead are in preparation for my first meeting. Often my Zoom phone notification will be the trigger to get a movin to my desk. There are a couple days a week where I may let myself get sucked into my computer communicating with colleagues or doing meeting prep. My colleagues don't need to know that I'm doing that braless with unbrushed teeth, but if you're reading – hi! It's a little messy behind the scenes here still.

I take a look at my calendar the night before and try to decide where in between my meetings I can walk the dog. At the beginning of the week I block time for deep thinking and for scoping projects for my team and some projects I'm carrying solo since we run VERY lean on operational resources as a company. I also use scheduled slacks to communicate ideas with my team when I'm still asleep on the east coast.
I also employed a few systems to keep sane during maternity leave that help even now - I use a daily pill organizer, I get my eyelashes lifted and tinted regularly, and I buy the largest bottle of dry shampoo I possibly can every time. We also have house systems like a landing zone bowl where keys and wallet goes, keep stacks of clean burp clothes in multiple locations, and we have a large wicker basket with handles we call our Wander Basket. As the sole person who tidies and organizes around here, this helps me to keep the house feeling organized and I batch returning things to their rightful place rather than run around ragged.

I don't feel that I'm doing a great job of this right now. Like I said earlier, aiming for integration rather than balance. The tradeoff here is that SOMETIMES I show up working closely with my team less polished than I'd prefer. They each have young children under 5 too, so I'm choosing to believe that the vulnerability helps them to feel confident and safe. To balance this potential overshare, I make an effort to invite them to meetings where I need to have my game face on so they can see how I rise to the occasion.

A big part of my job is driving cross-functional alignment between executives in different departments, so I'm often at the mercy of their god-awful calendars. This is heavier in the beginning and end of the quarter because confidence in my team's ability to execute is high. Once I've gained their commitment to support our team's work from a resourcing and sponsorship perspective, it goes smoother throughout the working days. This means that I'll take meetings regularly at 7am and almost never have mornings free for independent work, which doesn't REALLY align with when I'm most creative in the mornings. Bummer but need to be adaptable.
My team is responsible for running global operating rhythms and continuous improvement projects for our Sales and Account Management organization. I am a major operations nerd and enjoy the process of team building, strategizing, scoping, and finding ways to codify great performance. This means that I spend a lot of time understanding our strategy, analyzing our people and process gaps to get there, and setting up my team for success in driving different teams towards those objectives. Maternity leave revealed my strengths here in that I was able to chunk much of my work into different rituals and processes and hand them off to different members of my team to keep afloat in my absence. That way when I came back, I'm mostly picking up work that is familiar to me and the learning curve is in understanding what happened in the 3 months I was out and trying to squeeze my work into more focused but fewer hours a day.
Because I work from home, I try to batch work – both home and professionally – when I'm not in meetings and parallelize where possible. We upgraded our washer and dryer on Black Friday. As a new parent I've learned that whenever I have a break in the action, there will always be laundry at whatever stage that can be tackled. We centralized our family hamper on the basement landing so that I can easily spot what stage it's in and take 10-15m to tackle. I get notifications on my phone when the washer is done so that I won't leave wet clothes in there. Our vacuum is located on the main floor and can be easily pulled out to use – between the dog dragging things in and life in the PNW, I do this at least once daily.

My husband and I use the Fair Play system and he holds ALL of our food related cards. He's a passionate home cook and works in operations himself, so he has his systems and rituals he uses to feed us but...they're (mostly) a mystery to me. That means I almost never have to think about food, plan in advance about what I'm going to eat, or remind him to get something. We have a shared Running Grocery List note in apple notes where in the off-chance I decide I want to add something new to the list. Otherwise, he knows my staples and keeps an eye on making sure they're available.
We're both on our own for breakfast and lunch and eat dinner together as a family. I try to eat the same thing most days just so I don't have to think about it, and usually eat when I'm hungry – this lands around 10am for breakfast and around 2pm for lunch. In the morning he'll request that I eat leftovers if he's worried they're nearing their end, or I'll have one or two of my go-to lunch meals. I'll usually do this in between or during meetings.

I try to identify times to walk the dog the night before, which is how I most consistently take breaks during the work week. I am a BIG walker for both exercise and mental health. Sometimes it’s hard to get myself out there, especially when it's raining, so I pair a podcast I love or the prospect of taking photos of pretty flowers on my walk. Sometimes I'll convert a 1:1 meeting to audio-only on a particularly busy day to ensure I get outside.
In the summer I might sneak in a quick weeding session or other yard work to serve as a break.
I also use exercise as a way to self-regulate on more intense days when my anxiety is peaking or I need a little dopamine moment, so I will hop on the Peloton for a 20 min ride and blast the music loudly.

Because I work east coast hours, my afternoon meetings usually end between 1-2pm. To ease the transition into daycare at such a young age, we have been picking up the baby around 3pm from daycare which is when I want to be present and in mom-mode.

I drive the 10 mins to daycare to pick her up, which is a nice delineator in switching modes. I listen to a lot of podcasts, so sometimes I'll pop one on for the ride over. I will say I feel like due to timezones and the fact that I'm ON with the baby in the evenings, I'm much more intentional of the transitioning OUT of work mode rather than transitioning in.
If my day hasn't been too back-to-back meeting wise, I'll do a "power clean" between 2-3pm where I put on noise cancelling headphones and I will tidy the main floor of our home. I wear an Oura ring throughout the day so this helps to gamify cleaning as exercise. In our family's Fair Play deck, I own all of the house cleaning, tidying, laundry and organizing cards (except dishes and trash) and having a shared Minimum Standard of Care in mind helps motivate me to stay on top of these things.

Because my baby is so little her schedule is based off of cues rather than structured time. This has been a CRITICAL change in how I move throughout the world, and I'm so grateful that my very-easy-going baby has encouraged me to be more flexible and intuitive. My husband jokingly calls it "The Great Softening" and is in awe of how much I've changed. I'd argue that I'm only confident enough to do so because so much of my life is systems, structured, and ritualized. But also, it's so cozy to be perceived and appreciated for personal growth by him. He's a good egg.
When I arrive at daycare I'll peek at the Brightwheel app to see (roughly) when she last ate and how much she slept throughout the day. This helps me to figure out where she is in her wake-window (she'll be awake anywhere from 90mins to 2.5 hours right now) so that I can anticipate what she may need when we get home. When we get home we'll play, diaper, bottle, or put her down for a nap in whatever order makes sense based on her cues and what kind of day she had when she wasn't in my care. She'll nap once for anywhere from 40mins to 2 hours between 3pm and bedtime, so that's when I'll either do laundry, pluck away at a few non-urgent work things, chat with friends, do life admin tasks that are on my plate.
Right now we're in paperwork hell between tax season, parental leave, getting life insurance policies, etc. To keep track of these I'll first put them on my global to-do list in Apple Notes then will immediately create a calendar invite for them in the evenings. The time I tackle this is often not precise, but it allows me to keep track of things like what number do I need to call, what website do I log into, what's the email subject that I need to reply to. Batching, baby. Reading Atomic Habits by James Clear changed my life.
I'm "on" with the baby and whatever she needs from the time she comes home from daycare until bedtime. My husband's work runs into the evenings often, but we're working out our norms now. Currently she's not really aware if we're working while she's on her Lovery play mat entertaining herself. I've asked that he wraps up work by 5:30pm for us to have family time, and then can hop back onto his computer once she goes to sleep. Right now this is more-so that I don't have resentment about the imbalance rather than her awareness of us being present, but it feels like it's easier to make these agreements now versus address later when I'm PISSED. He's been receptive and has found ways to support my ask while also coming back from paternity leave to leading 5 more direct reports than he left with, so I'm giving him a TON of grace with the learning curve.

We eat dinner at 6:30pm sharp every night. Because my husband tackles all of the food cards, he will often spend his time between 5:30 and dinner time doing food prep and if the baby is awake, we'll hang with him in the adjacent living room while he cooks or I will get her settled in at her infant high-chair to join us at the table. My sister lives with us in our detached tiny home in the backyard and joins us for dinner each night, so he'll ping our group chat a bell emoji when it's ready and she'll come over. Even though some days we both work from home, we try not to talk about our days when we bump into each other so that we have something to discuss over dinner. Exciting times lol.

After dinner, my sister takes her dog and my dog for a walk. My husband does all of the food cleanup, dishes, and wiping down the counter, and he'll often watch a show on his iPad while he does it. I'm still on with the baby, so if it's a bath night I'll bathe the baby or just play, read books, etc until it's bedtime, which is somewhere between 7:30-8pm depending on her sleepy cues. Our bedtime ritual is pretty flexible; sleep sack, sing three songs, paci and rock her to sleep in the rocker. It usually only takes 10-15 mins for her to get drowsy and then I'll lay her down in her crib. I'm experimenting more with sleep training and letting her fuss it out so sometimes I'll lay her down drowsy, leave the room, set a 10 min timer, and stare intensely into the baby monitor. I'm writing this on a Friday morning and I've committed to move from experimenting to executing the sleep training plan starting tonight so WISH ME LUCK!
After she's down, I'm not typically doing housework if I can avoid it. I'll usually watch a tv show – I'm currently into Paradise and Summer House or read my book. During maternity leave I got into the habit of having a glass of wine with dinner and I'll often pour myself another while chilling. I've ramped this down from every night to one weeknight per week and swapped that ritual with tea or a bitters and soda. I know I'm newly postpartum but I'm trying to get my eating habits back since breastfeeding had me RAVENOUS, so dialing back my brain being like "I deserve a little treat" is something I'm being intentional about. Baby steps.

The baby still wakes up 1-2x in the night, so we still shift sleep. Once she's put down at bedtime my husband takes the monitor and is "on" until 2am if she needs anything. This has helped me TREMENDOUSLY so that my ears aren't constantly perked to noises from her room (truly 15ft away from our bed) and I can fall asleep without being afraid it'll get disrupted right away. I usually fall asleep with noise cancelling headphones and listen to a podcast called Sleep Magic which offers visualizations that can help me get to sleep if my brain is running amuck.
Then, if she sleeps past 2am but wakes up between 2-6am, I'm on. My husband will nudge me and hand the monitor over, and I'll get up with her. We've both been gradually moving away from feeding as a comfort mechanism. Instead will typically change her diaper, offer her a pacifier, and rock her back to sleep. Sometimes if I walk into her room and it DOESN'T smell like pee, I'll try to simply put her pacifier back in her mouth and see if she can get back to sleep on her own. Occasionally she won't be satisfied with any of those approaches and I'll grab a bottle from the fridge and feed her. She takes it straight from the fridge which is ridiculous and unbelievably convenient. She also has phases where she pees through EVERY layer imaginable so I do my best to ensure there's always another sleep sack and set of sheets ready to swap out in the middle of the night.
Depending on how stressful of a week it is I'll sometimes have a hard time falling back asleep. I've started to only let myself use my kindle and be disciplined by not scrolling to get back to sleep. If work things crop up in my brain, particularly regarding things I want to talk to my team about the next day, I will write them down in my Notes App and will move that stuff over into our 1:1 agenda when I wake up. I'll either slack them in the AM, schedule something in the middle of the night to hit them in the morning, or bring it up in our regular touchpoints. Because I'm still ON with the baby, I can't really put my sleep pod and noise cancelling headphones on, so reading helps a little and not panicking about it is all I can control.

We both LOVE the Fair Play system. We're both structured, operations people, and can fall into the trap of being critical or competitive with one another, so having clear lines of delineation in what we OWN versus support works well for us. This has resolved about 90% of the fights we used to get into. That being said, we read each other in on our decisions and approaches during the Conception phase often. When resentment starts to prickle up, we see it as a system failure rather than a personal failure and we can collaborate on how to best support.
At different times we've had both of my sisters living with us. Part of that arrangement is that they are dealt into our Fair Play system. This was CRUCIAL in the last 2 months of my pregnancy and in the first 3 months of our daughter's life – we needed the extra lift and it's reduced the mental load a ton. We are a big commitments must be upheld family, and folding my sisters into those values has made us closer. Self esteem can come from the opportunity to serve others AND depend on them, which was a massive learning for me through therapy in the last decade.
Before I gave birth I made sure that I also had a team of support people that weren't just family and friends. I now work with a therapist every 2 weeks that specializes in maternal mental health and we hired a doula for the first 8 weeks to show us the ropes. We were also very intentional in taking our parental leave at the same time so that we could have the experience together. Many of my friends will take turns taking leave to extend the amount of time before they need childcare. While I totally get the benefits for the baby, I struggled with the idea of full-timing it for too long myself and resentment building up. I went back to work at 3 months, so I still have 5 more weeks of maternity leave. I decided I'm going to take a month this summer when the weather's better and my baby is a bit more interactive and we're out of the newborn trenches.
Which leads me to the hardest decision I made throughout this process to prioritize our FAMILY's needs – how do we feed this baby?! I expected that I would combofeed (breastfeed, pump, and formula) when the baby came. In reality, I breastfed for the first 4 weeks of her life and my husband gave her bottles of breastmilk when we were shift sleeping. I started to resent my girl's big appetite because it meant I was glued to the couch and CONSTANTLY wet. I was able to gather a supply through letdown initially, and then when I thought I couldn't bear it anymore, I started using a handsfree pump during the day. From 4-12 weeks I pumped and bottle fed during the day and breastfed only at night.
During this time, I realized that pumping was weighing on me heavily emotionally. It's NOT fair that I felt predominantly responsible for feeding her, but it was a position I put myself in initially with zero pressure from my husband. That I was constantly leaking and in pain and aware of the clock, whether my pump parts were clean, etc. At the same time my husband was also experiencing pretty intense perinatal depression. Because I was taking on so much of the feeding responsibility, I felt like I had zero patience or room for his feelings during the process. I was ready to be done pumping. I worked through my feelings with my therapist so that by the time I went back to work at 3 months, I was done pumping entirely. For another month she took formula during the day and I breastfed at night.
This meant that during a work trip I had when she was just under 4 months, I just brought my hand pump and pumped and dumped at night to keep my supply up a little. I was so relieved to not have to excuse myself to pump throughout the day. Once I got home from the trip she breastfed at night for another few weeks and then decided she was over it. We sized up the nipple on her bottles and went full formula. It was bittersweet BUT the first night I laid down for bed without a bra was HEAVENLY. Zero regrets and she's still a thriving, growing girl. I'm grateful I trusted my gut and took the leap.

I listen to a lot of podcasts, watch TV, and read.
My neighbors have a sauna that I love to go sweat in for a bit a few times a week.
There's a wine bar in my neighborhood where I'll meet a friend for a glass later in the afternoon on a Friday before daycare pickup.
We have a vibrant friend group, some with kids, some without, so I'll attempt to do at least one social thing a night each week after bedtime. Last night I joined friends I made in our new parents peer group. We got the babies together to roll around, shared a bottle of wine and ordered takeout. Small moments of being in community are important to me. I didn't realize until I became a mom just how extroverted I am, which has been important to prioritize even when things are busy.

I use exercise as a break in the workday! In addition to walks and Peloton, I will do a Yoga with Adrienne video on youtube. When I exercise outside of that, I try to go to workouts with with friends so that it's also filling up my social cup.

Absolutely! I'm currently ctrl+f-ing how many times I mentioned daycare already. This is major in terms of identifying her developmental milestones and giving her the opportunity to build trusting relationships with other adults who are not her parents. AND they provide all diapers and wipes at school for a monthly fee.
I recently upped our house cleaners from once a month to every 3 weeks.
My sister and mother-in-law are always keen to watch the baby for a bit on the weekends, and sometimes for a date night.

I am looking at how much I wrote above! Sorry not sorry Kelly for the overshare. It took me writing this out to realize that DAMN, I'm doing a lot, and it makes complete sense to feel overwhelmed or indecisive from time to time.
I listened to Michelle Obama's pod yesterday with Conan O' Brian and he gave advice to a caller that was like "It's okay to tread water sometimes". And I really needed to hear that. As someone whose identity is ambitious and intentional, I'm focusing my time right now on cultivating an abundance mindset (especially around time) and trusting that my autopilot will steer me in the right direction eventually.

Thank you so much to this woman for generously sharing. These publish every Thursday!

Encouraging comments always welcome!
If you have questions or even hang-ups about what someone shared, you are welcome to ask a question for the sharer in the same kind, genuinely curious way you would if you were looking at that woman in her eyes. She might respond through me.
If comments are judge-y or mean-spirited, I reserve the right to delete comments. I can handle being criticized about my own work here (and even still, to a degree – I’m also a person), but I go into full mama bear mode when people come after my people – including women who are being vulnerable and sharing in the first place.
Thanks to the vast majority of people who are so kind!

HISMD: Director of Enablement at a Pre-IPO Tech Company

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