#117 — Ambitious Entrepreneurship + Parenthood: When Two Moms Co-Found a Startup  What happens when you and your co-founder are both mothers? Can you modify your work schedule without altering your ambition? What type of project is worthy of your precious time and attention?  Sometimes it takes a while to find the career path you really love. For Sonia Chang, it took a while to settle into and really own that entrepreneurship was something she felt called to do. Today, she is the co-founder of a brand new company called Playfully. She spent 10 years in product management and digital consumer products before she finally jumped into the entrepreneurial waters. Sonia is the mom of two young kids and has another one on the way and she is thrilled to be working on building products that make life easier for new parents. Today, we talk about how she took a long-term view of her career. Her advice: don't settle for a job or a career that doesn't feel like it's authentically you. It's also okay to be patient and to wait for the right professional opportunity to come along, even if you have to make short-term sacrifices, like staying in a less an ideal job for longer than you had wanted to. Her background includes a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She has worked for a long time building digital consumer products at companies including Amazon, Zulily, Poshmark and Shutterfly. Just this last year in 2018, she left the corporate world to pursue her longtime dream of becoming an entrepreneur and she co-founded Playfully. One of the fascinating things about the company is not the product, although we'll talk about the product on the show. The fact that it is co-founded by two moms who work a very different schedule by design: they agree to meet three times a week in-person, but the rest of the work that they do is done in and around their kids. Listen in as we talk about Sonia'a career path, her partnership, her fertility story and how IVF (in vitro fertilization) is part of that journey and how she navigates co-parenting and why equal partnerships are, to her, one of the fundamental pieces that make entrepreneurial journeys possible. IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT How Sonia’s first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage and set off a multi-year journey through infertility. The ways in which Sonia reflects with gratitude on her infertility and IVF journey and how that has profoundly shaped and altered the type of parent she is to her children. How Sonia and her partner divide child care and household duties 50/50. How a project manager uses Asana at home to maximize efficiency and enjoyment.  FULL SHOW NOTES Get the complete show notes with episode quotes, photos, and time stamps at http://www.startuppregnant.com/117. LEARN MORE ABOUT SONIA CHANG   Sonia Chang is the co-founder of Playfully, a baby and child development app that provides parents quick, fun, expert-backed activities and tips to promote their child’s development. An accomplished product management leader, she has 10-plus years of experience building digital consumer products at companies including Amazon, Zulily, Poshmark, and Shutterfly. In 2018, she left the cor

#116 — Crossing the Threshold to Motherhood: Ceremony, Ritual, and Healing Rites of Passage How do you prepare for birthing another child when your first birth experience was traumatic? Can new mothers be realistically expected to process and integrate their birth and transformation experience when they work up until 40 weeks and are back just a few weeks later? How can we create space, ceremony, and ritual to promote healing, integration, and to fully honor women crossing the threshold into motherhood? Kari Azuma was a successful leadership coach for five years before the traumatic birth of her son in 2015. Navigating and healing from her postpartum depression and “full-blown identity crisis” were among the most challenging experiences of her life, but also inform what she views as her life’s work: reigniting the view of motherhood as a rite of passage—full of ceremony, healing, and powerful ritual—for Western mothers. She also makes the spiritual case for paid leave: motherhood is a profound transition that we simply cannot prepare for when working up until we give birth. Kari believes that much of the trauma we experience in birth as well as the postpartum depression and anxiety is at least partly to blame on the negligible space we give women on either side of their births. In other cultures, rites of passages are demarcated by space leading up to the transition to emotionally and spiritually prepare. This time is filled with ceremony and ritual and ideally, allows the woman to cross the threshold to new mother and give birth in a fully embodied, empowered way. We speak to Kari at 37 weeks pregnant with her second child, a daughter, and learn about all of the healing work she has done personally over the past three years and how that has profoundly influenced the type of coaching work she does now. We get to hear about the ritual and ceremony she is creating in her own life leading up to her second birth and how we might incorporate this type of slow, quiet, space for ourselves. IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT How Kari is creating space in her life for ceremony leading up to the birth of her second child. How her desire to have a home birth and her birth expectations with her first child turned deeply traumatic when she ended up with her “worst nightmare” of a hospital c-section. The ways in which having a traumatic birth opened a new portal for her and the work she feels called to do, guiding women through the passage to motherhood. How she spent three years healing, processing, integrating the birth experience, the death of her old self, and her own birth as a mother. The ways in which she is navigating holding hope and setting intentions for the birth of her daughter with a planned VBAC at home, while simultaneously releasing the idea that she can control or fight her way to a preferred birth experience. The spiritual case for paid leave or why Kari believes that some postnatal anxiety and depression can be linked to how little time and space we give mothers to slow down and prepare on deeper levels for the birth of their children. How she helps clients honor this transition to motherhood through traditional rites of passage ceremonies and rituals. How hard it can be to ask for and step into open space before birth when we are used to pushing hard and driving projects forward. The counterintuitive healing power of being in a space with people who aren’t expecting you to heal. How severing one’s past self and incorporating one’s vision for oneself as a mother are some of the crucial parts of becoming a mother that Western culture is missing today. How a coach of pregnant and new mothers balances business with her own pregnancy and maternity leave.

#115 — The Myths of Miscarriage, The Lean In Fallacy, and Mothers’ Rage What happens when you get pregnant as you are trying to launch a podcast about bias in the workplace against mothers? Why is the dominant cultural story about miscarriage and fertility trauma that if you end up with a kid, it's all okay? And who should you be looking for in a company when you're considering a new job? Today we get to hear from Katherine Goldstein, award winning journalist and host of the inimitable, brilliant new podcast: The Double Shift. Goldstein created The Double Shift to tell diverse, three dimensional, powerful stories of mothers as complete humans. At every turn she was forced to explain that, no, this is not a podcast about parenting. No, this podcast will not hit the single note of just how hard it is to be a working mother. This podcast will, finally, allow us all to see working mothers as people with their own stories, ambitions, and struggles beyond their children. Before podcasting, Goldstein spent several years researching bias and discrimination against mothers in the workplace. It seemed to her the deepest irony that she became pregnant while in immersed in the hectic world of pitching media companies and just how vulnerable that pregnancy made her professional ambitions feel. Her pregnancy ultimately ended in a miscarriage, and Goldstein goes deep here, talking about all of the ways we as a culture fail to understand and help parents process their grief and trauma around pregnancy loss. Today we also hear from Goldstein about: the blatant bias and discrimination against women in the workplace, why people in power love to push the myth of personal responsibility and “leaning in” to workers rather than deal with just how broken our working culture is, and why she feels uniquely positioned to tell diverse, meaningful stories of motherhood in order to highlight and shift just how marginalized mothers are in America. IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT How Katherine navigated the experience of early pregnancy while shopping her podcast pilot to major media networks. Her experience with miscarriage and her desire to change how we speak about miscarriage and fertility struggles as a culture, moving away from the myth that if you end up with a child, everything worked out. She believes this edits out women whose experiences don’t end with a child from the whole conversation and forces women who’ve experienced real and meaningful trauma to act as though nothing happened. Goldstein’s decision to share her audio recordings of her pregnancy and miscarriage with The Double Shift audience as an episode in order to show just one of the three-dimensional, complex experiences that so many mothers have. The $2,500 bill Goldstein got from her insurance company to pay for the D&C procedure she needed to have after her miscarriage and her realization of just how harmful our entire healthcare system is to the working poor. Her biggest takeaways after spending a year reporting as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard on the open secret of anti-mother discrimination in American workplaces. How mothers, but not fathers, are punished for having children in their prime childbearing years and are never able to recover from the massive hit their earnings take as new mothers.

#114 — From Unexplained Infertility to Planning a Small Business Maternity Leave How can or should entrepreneurship change in order to meet our changing life needs? What does it look like to be a business owner as a person without children versus one with kids? And what does it feel like to go through unexplained secondary infertility? Today we get to hear from Reina Pomeroy, coach, business owner and mother of two, across a breadth of experiences. She shares everything from her experience starting multiple businesses, to her multi-year infertility journey, to how sometimes our professional paths only make sense in hindsight. Through it all, Reina’s openness, vulnerability, and deep passion for her work shine through. Reina Pomeroy is a focus coach for creative entrepreneurs and the founder of Reina & Co. What began as a side hustle is now a business with six team members that can offer her fully paid maternity leave. That being said, her journey, like so many of ours, felt scattered and non-linear as she lived it but now it makes sense in helping her learn important skills. Her signature program, called The Dreamy Client Magnet, helps creative entrepreneurs get laser-focused on who they want to serve and who they want to work with and what their boundaries are so that they can book more dreamy clients with ease, get paid to do what they love, and have the freedom and flexibility to enjoy it all. The program covers how to stop doing things just because you’re good at them, and instead how to focus on what you love doing and creating space for freedom and flexibility. If you want to know where you can focus your business, that’s what today’s chat is all about. We then get to dig into Reina’s very thoughtful and simple Social Glue Strategy, which is all about how to connect with more people one-on-one and how to use connecting authentically with other people as a strategic tool in your business. This is especially useful if you’re an online or a digital entrepreneur and you may be don’t run into a lot of people, because your office happens to be your bedroom, or your closet, or a co-working space. Along the way, Reina also tells us about her own journey. She shares what it was like to be an entrepreneur without kids (hint: you have a lot more time to “hustle” and are a lot less tired), to switching professions after having her first baby after realizing just how precious her time and energy are. And while she is now planning out her fully paid maternity leave, there was a multi-year period in her life where she and her husband dealt with unexplained secondary infertility, or infertility that occurs after having already had a successful pregnancy. Along the way her son tried to ask Alexa for a baby, she and her husband prepared for IVF, and then ultimately conceived just hours before their first in vitro appointment. IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT How Reina helps creative entrepreneurs get laser-focused on who they want to serve and who they want to work with and what their boundaries are so that they can book more dreamy clients with ease, get paid to do what they love, and have the freedom and flexibility to enjoy it all. Her non-linear path to entrepreneurship that might not “make sense on LinkedIn” but helped her gain the skills she needed to run her current, very successful coaching business. How Reina’s natural inclination to check in with and connect with people has become her most valuable trait and a skill she t

#113 — How to Raise Successful Children: Trust and Respect in Parenting, School, and Business Why is so much parenting advice seemingly in direct conflict with others? How do we determine who is correct? How do we make these emotional decisions for ourselves? Esther Wojcicki is considered the most influential educator in contemporary times and her pedagogical and epistemological philosophy is being adapted by local Silicon Valley schools as well as national and global educational programs. She is the pioneer of Moonshot Thinking, a program that she uses in schools, and her influence in technology-enabled schools has been central to the tenants and design of new modern education systems. She is also known as the mother in Silicon Valley who raised three of the most successful women in the United States. You may recognize her as the mother of Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube; of Janet Wojcicki, who has a PhD in medical anthropology and teaches at the University of California San Francisco’s medical center; and Anna Wojcicki, the founder of the biotech and genetics testing company 23andMe. Today on this episode we get to talk to Esther about her core principles in her pedagogical style and her parenting style. How she promotes independence, critical thinking and encourages kids to dive into topics that truly excite them. Her focus and work is on how to help children become young adults by developing the self-sufficiency to take control of their futures. IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT How pregnancy and birth recommendations have changed over the last 40 years. How giving even the youngest children jobs or tasks can increase their feelings of accomplishment and self-worth. The value behind speaking to babies and toddlers like they are a partner and understanding presence.   Her acronym for success, TRICK, which stands for: trust, respect, independence, collaboration and kindness. That giving young children the space to be independent teaches them that: they are capable and that you trust them. How the single piece of advice Dr. Woj wants to pass on to new mothers is quite simple: trust yourself. No one knows your baby better than you. What Dr. Woj considers to be the main value of sleep training (hint: it’s not sleep). How successful businesses embody the same relationship with their employees that Dr. Woj used to raise her children and currently uses with her students. FULL SHOW NOTES Get the complete show notes with episode quotes, photos, and time stamps at http://www.startuppregnant.com/113. LEARN MORE ABOUT ESTHER WOJCICKI    Wojcicki is a leading American educator, journalist and mother. Leader in Blending Learning and the integration of technology into education, she is the founder of the Media Arts program at Palo Alto High School, where she built a journalism program from a small group of 20 students in 1984 to one of the largest in the nation including 600 students, five additional journalism teachers, and nine award-winning journ

#112 — Universal Paid Family Leave By 2020: Meet One of the Women Pushing for Our Rights Why is the United States the only developed nation without any guaranteed family leave? How did we fall so far behind Europe, Canada and South America? And who is suffering the brunt of the impact from this lack of policy? “One in four people {in the US} who give birth go back to work within two weeks. That’s horrendous.” Fabiola Santiago is on a mission with Paid Leave United States (PL+US) to right that wrong and to provide high quality paid family leave for everyone. Before fighting for this comprehensive leave policy, PL+US had to address several historic blind spots, like: how exactly do we define family to reflect people’s realities and to be more inclusive of “non-traditional” relationships? And how do we expand the type of life events covered in leave policy to accurately serve all types of caretaking and medical needs? And how can we ensure that this type of leave will be universal to all persons in the US? Today we learn from Fabiola how the current lack of paid leave is most harmful to two groups of already vulnerable populations: women of color and low earners. She shares how our staggering maternal death rate for women of color is exacerbated by a systemic lack of leave and support for new mothers and how low-income earners do not have the flexibility to survive on anything short of full wage replacement.     PL+US is fighting for a leave policy that: is 6 months long; includes 100% wage replacement, especially for low earners; Includes job protection; and Expands the definition of family to meet the realities of all Americans. On today’s episode, we get to talk with Fabiola Santiago about how PL+US bases their policy on the experiences and moral authority of the populations they most desire to serve and protect, about how current leave policy is really an elite privilege granted to white collar workers, and about the “race to the top” in portions of the private sector to attract top talent with top leave policies. IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT Why in order to effectively craft a truly universal family leave we must first acknowledge who has historically fallen through the cracks. How the “race to the top” to create top-notch family leave policy in the tech sector is actually serving to increase inequality. Why six months is viewed as a crucial amount of leave time, especially for new parent and infant well-being. How full wage replacement during leave is crucial for the substantial portion of the US living paycheck to paycheck. Who the sandwich generation is and how this will influence the shape of effective leave policies. The surprising ways doulas and doctors of color can impact maternal mortality rates and how powerful organizations like “Roots of Labor” are bridging the chasm in how we provide inclusive care for all populations Why we need to be thinking “more abundantly” in terms of health outcomes for mothers of color. How people in power can most effectively use their position to im

#111 — Data Driven Parenting: An Economist on Breastfeeding, Sleep Training, and Vaccinations Why is so much parenting advice seemingly in direct conflict with others? How do we determine who is correct? How do we make these emotional decisions for ourselves? Emily Oster, author of the wildly popular “Expecting Better” is back to apply her economist’s data-driven lens to the big questions of early childhood parenting: Should I breastfeed? Will sleep training harm my child? What are the real risks and benefits of vaccinations? The data she uncovers is surprising. Some running directly counter to popularly held beliefs, others supporting both sides of a firmly entrenched debate. Oster is relatable and judgment free as she tells stories of how her research impacted her own parenting and which information she mosts wishes she’d had access to before giving birth for the first time eight years ago. In many circumstances, Oster proves that conflicting information from seemingly opposing camps can actually both be correct. If someone tells you to breastfeed and someone else tells you to formula feed, what are you to do with this conflicting information? According to Oster, be informed and empowered by data, then make the best decision for your child, yourself, and your family. Oster’s goal is not to shock parents with data or make them act counter to their intuition, but rather to help make parents more empowered, comfortable, and confident in their decision making process. Even for her, data only plays a partial role in her decisions. The rest is a careful consideration of what is best for her child, herself, and her family. On today’s episode, we get to talk with Emily Oster about the big topics of debate in early childhood parenting as well as learn about how she coordinates her family’s schedules, how she interprets her personal work vs. stay at home debate, and what she wishes she knew before giving birth for the first time almost a decade ago. IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT Why so many of the conversations around parenting are completely baby-centric and what is missing when we don’t consider parental and familial well-being. Emily’s own struggles with breastfeeding and how the data around the benefits of breastfeeding really surprised her. The ingenious decision Emily made to implement the task management software at home that she uses at work and how that has changed her and her partner’s communication. How to set up an operations manual for your family so that you can travel (for work or pleasure) and someone else can smoothly run your day-to-day family operation. Why we can be more confident about the data on sleep training than other areas of parenting. And importantly, why whether you choose to sleep train your baby or not, you are correct. How Oster herself chooses to use (and not use) data in her own decision making around her family and children, and how you can implement her three-pronged approach to making your own choices. The surprising ways the complex-sounding economic term “decreasing value of marginal utility” is applied to parenting and work. FULL SHOW NOTES Get the complete show notes with episode qu

#110 — Redefining Motherhood: Matrescence and Debunking the Myth of the Perfect Mother What do we call women who experience emotions ranging from completee joy to anxiety to ambivalence in new motherhood? In the words of Dr. Alexandra Sacks: totally normal. In her work studying “matrescence”, or the identity transition to motherhood, Dr. Sacks shines light on the wide range of these normal emotions that tend to be hidden from public view. Some of these very normal and natural feelings include: fear of childbirth, disappointment in learning your child’s sex, not enjoying the work of childrearing, feeling disconnected to your baby or your partner (or both!) during what you thought was supposed to be a deep bonding moment, and much more. If you’re like me, this podcast will leave you feeling much less alone and much more aware of the complexity of your own experience in motherhood.   Alexandra Sacks, MD is the leading expert on “matrescence,” the term that defines and captures the transition to motherhood that is as demanding and transformative as adolescence. She is known for popularizing the concept in her TED talk as well as the New York Times article “The Birth of a Mother.” She is the host of Motherhood Sessions, a podcast released in April 2019 by Gimlet Media, and coauthor of What No One Tells You: A Guide to Your Emotions from Pregnancy to Motherhood. On today’s episode, we get to talk with Dr. Sacks about the range of psychological experiences that women encounter during pregnancy and new motherhood — from joy and bliss to anxiety and guilt. She also tells us why these experiences are totally natural and normal for a period of such dramatic identity shifts as well as hormonal, bodily, and relationship changes. “Going through a diversity of emotions doesn’t necessarily mean you have postpartum depression. It’s the natural course of matrescence,” she explains. She breaks down the harmful myths of motherhood and opens up space for a conversation full of nuance, paradox, and honesty. In our culture, it’s time to redefine motherhood and show the broad range and spectrum of emotions, feelings, and experiences that accompany this huge transition and journey in your life. Becoming a parent means that all of your relationships shift, that a new person is joining your family, and you are responsible in a way that you might not ever have been before. If it feels like a lot, that’s okay, because it is a lot. IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT Dr. Sacks’ transition from studying postpartum depression to focusing on the diversity of emotions experienced naturally in matrescence. Matrescence as an extended phase of all women’s lives, including women who choose not to have children or who experience infertility, and Dr. Sacks focused work on the period of pregnancy and the first year of motherhood. The Bliss Myth and other honest stories we’re missing about motherhood. The harmful trope of the “bad mother” as the cornerstone of evil characters in myth and popular culture. The idea of the “Good Enough Mother” as permission and guiding light f

#109 — Co-founders Elena Rue and Catherine Orr on being pregnant at the same time The two co-founders were both already parents. They’d done the pregnancy thing before. Then they found out they both were pregnant again, and at the same time. Elena Rue and Catherine Orr are co-founders of StoryMine Media, a company that creates documentary videos for mission-driven organizations. They’d been in business together for years, and were both already parents to young children. Yet they’d been able to balance being co-founders because one was always able to cover for the other one if a pregnancy came up. This time, however, they were due within weeks of each other! Both co-founders pregnant? Use it as a kick in the pants Yet instead of panic and think that business was over, they decided to talk about how to go about planning for pregnancies as entrepreneurs in a different way. They decided to use their joint pregnancies as a kick in the pants to implement changes that they’d been wanting to make as a business for years. The intersection of entrepreneurship and pregnancy is a place I’m fascinated with at Startup Pregnant, and every interview we do shares another story of how to tackle this life design challenge in new and interesting ways. How can we make business better because of pregnancy? What if we looked at our bodies slowing down or our need for rest not as a curse on business, but as a fascinating opportunity for renovation and re-design? Not that we’re saying this is easy None of us are saying that this is easy or wonderful to go through—change sometimes feels like it comes through with a sledgehammer—but it is, in some cases, an opportunity for growth and leveling up. IN THIS EPISODE WE TALK ABOUT: How to unroll your pregnancies and announce them strategically (and where the balance is between being authentic and also being strategic). Using pregnancy as a leverage point and changing project timelines, expectations, and deliverables accordingly. How to build a better team, and get better at building teams. Why they finally took advice they’d been hearing over and over again and actually implemented it (pregnancy was the thing that made them take the advice to heart, and take action). Today you’ll get to hear not just from two pregnant women, but from three pregnant women, all in their third trimesters! Why? I recorded this interview back when I was also 38 weeks pregnant, so you’ll get to hear it all from all of us. Yes, we’ll tell it like it is. Listen in to this joint conversation as we talk about what to do when you find out your co-founder is pregnant at the same time as you. FULL SHOW NOTES Get the complete show notes with episode quotes, photos, and time stamps at http://www.startuppregnant.com/109. LEARN MORE ABOUT STORYMINE MEDIA AND THE CO-FOUNDERS ELENA AND CATHERINE StoryMine creates documentary videos for mission-driven organizations. They capture real stories and human moments, that connect people to a cause. The greatest thing you can do to serve a mission, grow awareness, and inspire action, is to find the real people, specific m

#108 — Optimizing your fertility as the gateway to healing your body As young women, we’re taught about our menstrual cycle in relationship to two things: our periods and pregnancy. In an attempt to avoid pregnancy, fix irregular cycles, or alter heavy periods, we’re often prescribed The Pill in our teens and twenties. We are flummoxed when we come off the pill after years or decades of use to find our old problems return immediately – they’ve not healed themselves, only been hidden by the regulating power of the pill. By only revisiting our cycles when we decide to try to conceive, we miss out on the opportunity to come into deep understanding with our bodies and to heal ourselves rather than mask symptoms. Today, we get to talk to Lisa Hendrickson-Jack about how in taking the time to chart, learn about and understand our cycles, we can not only optimize our fertility but gain crucial information about our bodies.   Lisa is the author of The Fifth Vital Sign: Master Your Cycles & Optimize Your Fertility. She is a certified fertility awareness educator and a holistic reproductive health practitioner. She teaches women how to chart their menstrual cycles for natural birth control, for conception and for monitoring your overall health. Her book, The Fifth Vital Sign is all about why your cycle is one of your vital signs in your body if you are a woman and how it can play a powerful tool in diagnosing and healing our bodies. In this episode we talk about: Being a medical advocate for yourself: why it’s extremely difficult and also crucial to your long-term well-being. The idea that in any examining room there are two experts: the doctor, who is the expert in a field of medicine, and the patient, who is the expert in their body and their experience. How a family history of painful periods, fibroids, and hysterectomies led her to seek out cycle charting from an early age Lisa debunks the myth that regular ovulation is only important when you want children, because we need to recognize that the menstrual cycle is part of our entire biology and physiology. She presents an evidence-based approach to fertility awareness and menstrual cycle optimization. How the body is seen as low—base, even!—and unpredictable. That means that men and women have been culturally conditioned not to experience life through our bodies. This becomes a bigger problem for birthing and postpartum women, who can experience the trauma of birth itself and then can compound that damage by feeling like they can’t or shouldn’t listen to their bodies reaction to trauma in the wake of birth. Join us as we talk about the menstrual cycle, fertility, and the opportunities we all have to learn more about our bodies simply by paying closer attention to them.   FULL SHOW NOTE