Parenting as Professional Development: How the Journey Through Infertility, Traumatic Birth, and Partnership Has Made me a Better Leader - with Annemieke Rice (Transition to Motherhood Series #3)

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:08  

Welcome to the executive coach for moms podcast where we support women who are attempting to find balance and joy, while simultaneously leading people at work and at home. I'm your host Leanna Laskey McGrath, former tech exec turned full time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic, and certified executive coach. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:30  

Hi, everyone, welcome to the Transition to Motherhood Series. I am so excited to share this with you, I decided to create this special series because a lot of women in my orbit are having babies right now. And I remember whenever I was pregnant, and about to become a new mother, I listened to podcasts all the time, and particularly ones where women were telling their stories. One of my favorites was The Birth Hour podcast because it was women telling their birth stories. I just felt so much more empowered, when I knew what to expect. And I heard from people who had done it before me, and telling me what really happened. So that's why I wanted to create this series, I really feel that motherhood widens our range, we experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows, it's just a much wider range than, at least for me what I ever experienced before. And I think a lot of times, we only talk about the highs. And that's really what you see on social media is all of the highlights and all of the wonderful parts of motherhood. And I think that's so wonderful to see. And also, I think it's important that we are open and honest about the full range of the spectrum. And so in this series, we will be talking very openly about some of the challenges of motherhood, particularly for career focused achievement oriented women. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  2:12  

So the first three episodes are going to be interviews with women who are newer moms, they were all very established in their careers before they became mothers. So these are all executive moms. And then the second part of this series falls in May, which is maternal mental health month. And we will be talking to some experts and authors on the topics of postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, and just some of the other challenges of that transition to motherhood. I want to acknowledge that the women in this series are all executive moms with means for childcare with partners who contribute with remote work situations and flexible environments. And that was also my situation when I transitioned to motherhood. And I felt kind of an extra layer of shame and disappointment in myself that I didn't feel that I was doing a good job. Even though I had these circumstances, that should have made it easier for me, even though I had set myself up. And had created a really ideal situation. And I know that not everybody has that. And I think it's important to acknowledge. And I think it's important to acknowledge that even when we have support, and we've set ourselves up well, and we've prepared as much as we can, it's just still a really hard thing. And so if you're feeling that in your transition to motherhood, or if you felt it in your transition to motherhood, I just want to validate that it's just hard. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  3:49  

Also, if you know a new mom, or someone who is about to become a new mother, please share this series with them. My goal is really to help and empower more women to kind of know what to expect, know what to look out for. And also know that they're not alone if they're feeling a certain way, or if they're experiencing certain things. I just think it's so important that we talk about these things. And if you have made that transition to motherhood at some point in your life, I would love to hear from you about what resonated for you or what you also experienced if it was the same or different than what you're going to hear about in these stories. So thank you so much for tuning in. And now on to our episode.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  4:38  

Hi, everyone, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for joining me for episode three of the Transition to Motherhood series. I'm very excited to share the story today with all of you and to share this guest Annemieke Rice who has been with us before on the podcast back in July of 2023, she joined. And we talked about our work selves and all about our lives as tech leaders and how we navigated authentic leadership. And we said afterwards, Next time, let's focus more on personal and parenthood. And so here we are. She also joined me a few weeks ago on the remote working moms panel. And we love hearing Annemieke's voice. So thank you so much for being here again, Annemieke.

Annemieke Rice  5:29  

Great to be here. Thanks, Leanna.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  5:31  

So I'm excited today to learn about more details of your story, because obviously, I've heard about it kind of as it was happening, but you know, whenever you have friends, experiencing things, it's like, you know, you choose to share certain things. And so I'm really excited to dive into it and really focus on it. And also hear about it from your perspective now, like a different vantage point of when you're going through it versus looking back on it. So you are now two almost two and a half years postpartum, right? So you have a bit of perspective on it. For those people who don't know you, can you start off by just kind of introducing yourself, telling us a little bit about you, the work that you do in the world. 

Annemieke Rice  6:13  

Yeah, so I am a SOC new mom, I'm a first time mom of what is now a two and an almost half year old toddler girl named Inika. I live outside of Boston with my husband, Ryan, I have worked in the higher ed tech industry, most of my career and some currently full time working, working mom, my husband is a full time working tech as well. And a lot of my identity, I think right now has a lot to do with those two things like work and my daughter and my partnership with my husband.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  6:46  

So in terms of your relationship with motherhood, had you always wanted to be a mom? Like what was that like for you?

Annemieke Rice  6:54  

I think as a young child, it was somewhat expected. But I got into my career, I was very ambitious very early, and I had a lot of early career success. And I think it's natural to deprioritize like relationships or buying a house or settling down. So I really didn't prioritize that aspect of my identity. For a while I was really enjoying my career and the types of work that I was doing. And so I didn't get married till I was 30. I didn't think I was gonna get married, I thought I would just have a kid without getting married. But, but I knew that I wanted a child, I wanted multiple children if I could. And really the beginning of my journey, I was 30 when I got married 31 and immediately knew I wanted to start conceiving because I knew I had health issues that was going to make getting pregnant really hard. I've had polycystic ovary syndrome my whole life, I've always had trouble ovulating and having menstrual cycles. So I immediately had to navigate, basically help with getting pregnant with a brand new husband who was Catholic and had very new feelings and values around reproductive medicine. And that was actually like the first big challenge in our in our relationship was figuring out how to start a family together. So we went through like a five or six year fertility journey across multiple states and many different methods before we got pregnant with my daughter.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  8:19  

I would love to hear more about that if you're open to sharing. Tell us a little bit more about kind of your journey to becoming a mom, but you said it was a five or six year journey. So what was that like for you?

Annemieke Rice  8:31  

You know, we tried a lot of I would say like low intervention to high intervention, things that we feel very strongly about is like access to good health care. And I think depending on where you live, you get access to better health care. We were living in Indiana at the time. And while the people we're working with were well intentioned, we did not have access to the same type of health care that we ended up having access to when we moved to Massachusetts. So three years into that and still not having been pregnant. We went from drug assisted at home reproduction to IUI. And then finally to IVF, which in the state of Indiana is very, very hard to get access to, out of pocket pay. And then we moved to Massachusetts and basically switched employment situations to try and have a better shot of getting pregnant at better centers with employer covered health care. As we moved for that reason, which was kind of a really big deal for us, changed employers changed healthcare systems changed home states, six months after that, when we started our reproductive care here in Massachusetts, we quickly learned that I had some underlying health issues that were preventing me from getting pregnant in particular had some pre cancer cell development in my uterus, most likely and related to excess hormones from fertility treatments over so long. But we were able to get that taken care of but it caused a really big delay. We were able to get some great eggs harvested, and then the pandemic hit and everything had to stop for a year because IVF was considered elective. And so here we were moved, upgraded ourselves to try and get pregnant. Literally just waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, with fertilized embryos waiting for us, ready to do a transfer. And we couldn't, we had to sit at home. It was a time when I focused on my health and I focused on my relationship. I was too afraid to change careers at the time to be honest, I changed jobs at the time when I knew I wanted to prioritize this pregnancy. And then luckily for us, shortly after the pandemic restarted, we were able to have a successful pregnancy. And I was really lucky. My first positive pregnancy test resulted in a full term birth with no health issues, which is actually very unusual to like, have no history of miscarriages or any type of health issues in your pregnancies. So we had pretty much an idyllic, I would say, wonderful pregnancy experience after a long, long slog and a lot of hard work to get there in the first place.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  11:03  

Yeah, man I can't imagine being like so ready to go. And then suddenly, the pandemic hits and shuts everything down.

Annemieke Rice  11:12  

It was actually a blessing in disguise, I think I was, as you know, talk before, like, anxiety is something I occasionally struggle with. And the way that I cope with it is to prepare and plan and really be productive and research every possible outcome. And that was the mindset that I was bringing to my reproductive journey, and it wasn't working for my body or my mind, you can't actually analyze your way into a pregnancy. Or if you are like I shouldn't 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  11:42  

Unfortunately.

Annemieke Rice  11:43  

Yeah, I should like be the MD not the patient. So those strings of mine were not really serving me very well. And the year we took off, I went for walks in the woods every day, I slept full nights, I worried about what type of banana bread recipe I was going to make the next day, we were lucky enough during the pandemic to like, have a home and be healthy and not be in jobs where we need to be at risk. And it really forced me to slow down. And I think that the like decrease in stress hormones in my body made a huge difference in my ability to get like my health, I was stronger and more rested, and more at peace with myself than I had been my whole life.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  12:24  

Yeah, when we first saw a reproductive endocrinologist to start interventions along our journey, I was like, okay, project managing this out with my checklist and everything. And she was like, Oh, you're a really type a person, huh? And I was like, Yes. And she was like, This is gonna be really hard for you. Because it's, you know, you like don't have control over it. And I think up until that point, I had felt like I had some level of control. So I was like, I'm gonna try and control all of this and plan everything. And she was like, yeah, it's very, very hard for Type A people. 

Annemieke Rice  12:55  

Yeah.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  12:56  

I love the idea of like, of stepping out into nature. I think that's one of the unforeseen benefits of COVID kind of shutting things down and stopping things. It was not a benefit if you had small children at home, sometimes, but also like it just like forced everyone to kind of stop a little bit, right and take a break and take a breath. And I think you mentioned that you changed your employment situation around that time, too. Can you talk a little bit more about that? 

Annemieke Rice  13:28  

At the time we were trying to get pregnant, I was very nervous about what that information meant to at my job I was in, I would say a pretty stressful work environment like high pressure for performance work environment.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  13:39  

You were an executive running the company. 

Annemieke Rice  13:41  

Yeah, I was an executive over customer success at a tech company that was like merging and acquiring and growing and trying to exit and lots of I was a pressure cooker type situations. And I was working at least 10 or 11 hours a day, traveling a lot. And concurrently, I still remember like traveling to a board meeting and like giving myself a shot in the bathroom for my fertility cycle and then trying to pretend I wasn't going through all of those hormones and trying to do it on no sleep. And I knew that the pace and more so like the way that I was feeling in my work was not conducive to me getting pregnant. I was way too stressed out and none of the like convince yourself it doesn't matter techniques were working for me. So I knew that I needed to step out of that environment. So I moved into a different type of role and renegotiated what I was able to give for my personal life for work, whereas before there was zero boundaries. It wasn't like I had boundaries and they were violated. I just didn't have any. I personally chose to set none because I wanted that success so badly. But really, I was like I can either be happy and get what I want in my life or I can have just my pride in my career. And I knew what that was going to do. And it wasn't working out for me. So I think that made a huge difference like that ability to, I chose a job that I knew I could manage more than just my work in my life. It was still an important, strategic, cognitively interesting job. But it really gave me the freedom and the ability to focus on myself. That was a really tough decision for me. But it was the best decision I made, I think.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  15:26  

Again, obviously, being side by side at the time, and then it kind of like looking back, would you have done anything different? Like, would you have gone to maybe a different company, as an executive with a different kind of culture? Or do you think that was what was needed at the time, and that was you feel good about that?

Annemieke Rice  15:46  

I think there's many routes to happiness and success and fulfillment in our lives. So I try now, not to worry as much about the right decision and just pick one that feels like it might work out for me and not stress, I'm kind of the like, unless I've looked at every option, I can't make any choice. Like don't take me to Cheesecake Factory. Like, I don't want to just read a book, I want to read the best book after looking at reviews of 42 different books.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  16:12  

You've read an entire book by the time you pick the book.

Annemieke Rice  16:14  

Right. And that doesn't serve you very, very well when you have lots of options available to you. And I think in my career at that time, I had lots of options. Mostly I needed like a break in order to make a conscious choice about what I wanted in my career. So I think what I needed was the fastest way to perspective. And that's what I got, I think if I had gone right from where I was as an exec to another place, I would have taken with me a lot of the baggage that I ended up being able to let go of with time, because I'm now in another exact role I thought I would never go back to and my experience is fundamentally different, not just because my experience is different, but because I have actually changed my biological reactions to external stimulus. I have convinced myself to change I actually my like innate reactions are different than they used to be. I don't really regret anything of it. And I also think that sometimes like sharp changes are what we need in life to move on and have perspective.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  17:15  

Yeah, I think it's so important to recognize that sometimes what society might view or even we might view as like a step back, is actually a step forward, it gets us to where we want to be, even though in the moment it feels like kind of this convoluted path to get there. So I love hearing from you, that was what was best for your journey for you to get what you want. 

Annemieke Rice  17:37  

I had a lot of fear about it, I thought I was making a large sacrifice. And it turns out, it wasn't at all, like My pay is better. My job satisfaction is better. I don't feel in any way limited in my career by that decision. But I was already afraid that I was very afraid that I would be. And so I often say like, I actually feel like I started some of the sacrifice of motherhood well before I became a mother between my fertility journey, and the choices I made to deprioritize some of my career ambitions, I didn't do those things for the first time after I had an EP, I definitely did a lot of that well before I actually brought a child into the world.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  18:12  

That's interesting, because I do think sometimes it's like a child coming into the world is the first time that we realize like we don't have control, literally, unless we have a scheduled C section. It's we're at the mercy of this baby growing inside of us. And then we learn very quickly how much we don't have control. And so yeah, I think that journey to motherhood, when it's longer kind of conditions us for it a little bit and gets us ready for what's to come. So you have a successful pregnancy, and Inika comes into the world was delivery similar to the pregnancy.

Annemieke Rice  18:47  

I had the best pregnancy ever. And I think you know that because I was texting me the whole time. Of course, I interviewed all of my friends about their pregnancies, about their births, about the things that they felt like they most needed, and most didn'tneed from their registries. And I documented all of these interviews. And what I learned from that is birth, and postpartum and pregnancy are highly personal as much as they are this like incredible shared experience where you can look in the eyes of another person who's gone through that and feel like they know parts of your soul. There's also so little in common with the nuances of it from one person to the next. 

Annemieke Rice  19:28  

So I had an amazing pregnancy and then I would say like a pretty traumatic birth experience. And nothing I did during my pregnancy to make my birth experience better mattered. And I did a lot did hypno birthing, my partner read like doula manuals, and we had a doula and we were able to negotiate with my OB for me to stay pregnant for longer and some of your other interviews people talk about like being a geriatric parent that there's a lot of medical advice you get to minimize risk and I was really hopingfor a certain birth experience, and my provider was really, really willing to work with me on that. And at the end of the day, my daughter was in distress. And I had to have a C section after two and a half days of induced labor. It was terrible. Let's be frank, like, I have really negative memories of the moment my daughter was brought into the world, um, even to this day, like, I don't feel like I've gave birth to her. I feel like she was born. But I wasn't like an active participant in that process. At the time, as I think like other folks you've interviewed said, like, I couldn't process that. And with time, it has become much less important to me, because I have so many other parenting experiences, in addition to that one, but when she was brand new as a baby, and I was brand new as a mom, it was like an all consuming trauma, and really, really tough for me to get over. And then just the feeling of guilt of like having a healthy baby. And still feeling regret and anger about not having the experience that I wanted, was really tough, there was really no way around it, she was in distress. And we ended up having a C section after many negotiations to try to avoid that. And I needed it, she needed it more importantly, but it was hard. It was really hard on my body. And it was really hard in the moment. And I think it definitely changed how I entered postpartum. 

Annemieke Rice  21:22  

Not necessarily the fact that I had a C section because we definitely like to have another and a scheduled C section is how I think that will go. But the fact that that wasn't what I wanted, and I had convinced myself because not to have a birth plan, but to listen to my body. So I was like, I'm just going to meditate and practice skills, but I'm not going to plan ahead for whether I'm going to have an epidural or not or what position I'm going to be in my body knows what to do. And I had all these mantras, listen to your body, your body knows what to do. And then literally my entire birth, was my body not doing what it was supposed to be doing. It was a bunch of medical intervention decisions like okay, well, you're not dilating. So do you want to do A or B, and I was like, I just wanted to listen to my body. That's not an option. And it was a lot of deciding what interventions doctors could do, or how we were going to manage kind of the duress to my daughter. So I was angry. I had convinced my like, very anxious self to let go. And then the situation forced me back into like the medical research mode and the decision making mode that I wanted to kind of let go of, but again, I had a wonderful partner, I had an amazing doula, I had a great care team. And my daughter and I were both healthy in the end. So I don't regret the outcome. But I do regret the process of getting there.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  22:41  

When you were feeling like, my body's not doing what it's supposed to do, but should be doing this other thing. And like, I just wanna be able to listen to it and tune in. But it's not like Did that have any impact on how you felt about yourself as a mother, or your ability to be successful in that motherhood experience?

Annemieke Rice  23:03  

In the moment in birth, it was hard to get away in some of the birth affirming prep work I did, from the way that we glorify natural pregnancy and natural birth. And I'm using air quotes listeners, I know you can't see me. And coming from an IVF thing where you get asked, Is this a natural pregnancy or not. And I'm like, all pregnancy is natural. I don't think this is artificial, like this thing in my body is made of me. And it's in my body. But a lot of those materials and videos and practitioners are very much like this way is better. And if you're just peaceful enough and strong enough, you can have a home birth or water birth or an unmedicated birth, and I wasn't really prioritizing any particular type of birth, I just wanted to be present and connected to my body and feel like I was participating in it. And so I chose to go to some of those workshops for the skills. 

Annemieke Rice  24:00  

And so of course, during the birth, I was feeling like I'm not doing this well enough, I should breathe differently. Or maybe I didn't meditate enough before I came here. And luckily my doula who is now a friend was like looking me in the eyes just like there is nothing you can do to prevent what is happening to your baby right now. Like what is happening to your baby, you can't avoid that you've done everything you have done every single tool we gave you. And we have to call it and I actually really needed that validation from her in the moment from another person who had given birth, who'd seen lots of people give birth who coached a lot of people through birth, in order for me to like give into the medical intervention at the time. I don't think it affected who I felt like I was as a mother, I do think that birth affected my body. I went without sleep for two and a half days. I went through major medical cutting up of my body and I barely sleep and barely move and I couldn't twist to breastfeed and it was really, really challenging physically. And I was not prepared for that physical challenge. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  25:01  

Yeah, so how was it for you postpartum after that recovering from that traumatic birth and major surgery?

Annemieke Rice  25:10  

I was really lucky that I had a co parent at home with me, I think there are many days in every version of parenting where I'm like, how do people do this? How do people do this without someone, as a co parent without income without extra support without free government programs? I don't even know I can barely do this with all of those things. So I had a lot of support. But it was tough. Like, as I mentioned, physically, I couldn't get up from the couch myself. Every time I had to breastfeed my daughter, my husband had to put like, eight pillows underneath my arms and put her in place and, you know, my abdomen being set up, like I couldn't twist my body or what's going on weight that was really unexpectedly challenging. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  25:50  

Yeah.

Annemieke Rice  25:51  

I think that the adjustment to being a parent of anewborn was obviously really, really hard. I have focused a lot on the birth process. And caring for a baby. I do think like, you figure it out, of course, they learn things slowly so that you can stay caught up. But it was definitely not my like, in retrospect, it was not my favorite period of being a parent at all. And I'm really glad to be through it now and to feel, you know, my husband often will look at me and say, like, you were just in your element right now, like, I have instincts and confidence. And I can let things go now in ways I definitely did not in the first like six to 12 months of my daughter's life. So sometimes I wish I could go back and give myself a break. And yet everyone around me was telling me to do that. And I didn't. So I'm not really sure why I think I should say so. Otherwise, I think it's just a really tough adjustment for everybody. And to a degree some ways is like the only way through it is through it, maybe yeah, I don't feel like it defined me as a mother. I think one thing I really like about the slow growth of these babies is that you get a lot of chances to learn and do something differently and better, like we were talking about traditions for birthdays, and like, well, she's not going to remember what we do on our birthday because she's like, four. So we get three chances to play around with different birthday traditions. And then we're going to pick something that she remembers, like it's kids are a little resilient, right? And so you can give a little time to find your groove as a parent.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  27:24  

What do you think has contributed to like finding your groove? You know, you talked about you feel much different now than you did for the first six to 12 months. So would you attribute that to?

Annemieke Rice  27:33  

Really probably just one thing, which is I am not 100% a mom, when I was home with my daughter 100% of everything was being her mom, there was no space for anything else. And I felt so lost in that I didn't feel like myself, nothing felt familiar. I felt like I was deep, deep, deep, and something I knew nothing about. And none of my skills or experiences were helpful. And there was nothing that I actually enjoyed about it. And theoretically, I liked that I had a daughter. But like, in reality on a minute to minute basis, I didn't like holding a baby. I don't like sitting around. That's not how I spend my time. So it was very, very difficult to find myself at any point in any of those days. And when we went into planning our for our daughter, it was in the pandemic. So we planned this game plan to have like no outside daycare until she was one because at this time, like daycares were just shut down. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  28:33  

Sure. 

Annemieke Rice  28:33  

And so when she was born, I took my leave and then I quit my job. And I plan to stay at home like to take a five month gap between jobs, and then go job hunt for around her first birthday. And we were also sliding in my my husband had leave. So we're doing like a month of his leave a month, two months of my leave to get us cobbled together. And I think it was at three and a half months where I was like, I can't do this, I have to have something else. And really I credit my like mental health and joy with going back to work. It's a huge part of who I am. I like being around other people. I like doing work that has purpose in the world. I like having time to myself. Sometimes I think of work as me time, which is bananas that I think of like going to work as for me, but it is I think because I have a job that I like with people that respect me and I'm in an environment that is really rewarding. I don't think everyone gets that. But that made a huge difference in my ability to appreciate being a mother in addition to a bunch of other things.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  29:38  

Yeah, and you said like in the beginning, it was hard to find yourself. Can you talk more about that? What was that like for you?

Annemieke Rice  29:47  

I feel like when I felt like I lost myself I was like nothing nothing in my day didn't revolve around her and that all consuming feeling. It was repetitive. It was a responsibility and that's kind of all felt like and I, I've heard of people who feel that way about their newborns. Like, of course, I loved her to the moon and I was crying with love all the time. But I was also born out of my mind. And I was exhausted. And so it's like a really, really, really big downpayment on something that I didn't want to, like, start cashing in on until later. Now I'm cashing in on it, it's great. I think when I started going back to work, it wasn't just that it was about work, it was just this ability to go somewhere, and have a conversation with an adult and do something different, and then have the variety. And then I would say, the next moment where I felt like myself fully returned was when my body was repaired enough to enjoy exercise. This was a really, really pivotal moment for me, as I mentioned, going into my pregnancy, I had felt like the healthiest of my entire life, I was exercising regularly. And that C section did such a number on my body, I could barely do anything for a very, very long time. And I'm, I'm a person who hiked nine months pregnant. So like, I was like, you know, wearing compression socks, and whatever to like, climb up a mountain, when most people are like, not able to do that. So I think when I finally was able to start having the time and the physical strength to like, go to yoga and go for walks is when I really started feeling like myself again.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  31:21  

Yeah. A few times, you've talked about kind of your partner, your partnership, and focusing on your relationship, you talked about you did it you know, during the pandemic, that kind of thing. How is that co parenting, being married to the person you're co parenting with that whole experience? What ies that like for you and your partner?

Annemieke Rice  31:43  

I feel really lucky. The advantage of getting pregnant later is that my partner and I had been together for eight years when we had my daughter. And so we really there was not a lot we experienced that we hadn't been through before together, like there was no hidden negative side of me that he hadn't seen and dealt with. And I think that really equipped us to treat each other very well as co parents, as opposed to like giving up everything in our relationship for our child, which is totally understandable. If you end up having nothing left for the other person, it was really important to me to have a full co parent like we in all of our strategies about leave, it was really important to me to like not be the default parent. And to feel like my husband could literally like leave with our daughter for a week and there was nothing I'd have to explain to him or tell him more. And then that is what we got. I think in the beginning with breastfeeding, it is obviously there's some unevenness, you can't get around. But he also works full time. And so the ability to still relate to each other, I think is really strong. Like we understand the same pressures that we're each under, and that makes it easier to be kind. 

Annemieke Rice  32:55  

I want to be with this man for the rest of my life. But I don't just want to be married, I want to be in love and I want to be loved. I want to feel like I come home and be in a safe place. And that priority is kind of at the front of a lot of the decisions I make for myself and our family. And if we go to make a decision, and it violates that it's not the right one for us. And so I think a lot of how we go through things is together to the point where sometimes I'm like, I just want to do something by myself for a change because we do do a lot together. I can't imagine doing this or enjoying it as as much as I do without him doing it with me in this very even handed way. I'm also as you mentioned, like, I'm ambitious and planful and, and on my negative side, I'm anxious and rigid. And I don't want my daughter having those extreme tendencies. I love that my husband is creative, I love and hate, my husband is creative and spontaneous, and ad hoc and forgetful, and playful, because it makes I think for a better influence on my daughter and influence on me. That's a huge part of I think how I parent is in concert with how he parents.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  34:05  

Yeah, and I think it's so important and beautiful to look at those things that probably drive you nuts sometimes. Right? Because they're different but also as like huge assets to parenting your daughter, right? Because I think sometimes especially when there's like a default parent, it's like this is the way we do things. So it's you know, it's like hard to feel okay about it being like deviating from that so much.

Annemieke Rice  34:31  

I think we still over time have learned how to have specialties without

Leanna Laskey McGrath  34:38  

subject matter experts.

Annemieke Rice  34:40  

Yeah. So it's there's one aspect of a relationship that is the love and the like personal one to one relationship, which I don't try to overly mechanize. I do sometimes because there's some research that say certain things like eye contact is really important like so occasionally I'll be like, well I'll say I need 10 and 20 which is 10 seconds of eye contact and 20 seconds of a hug which scientifically apparently keeps your relationship better connected. But mostly I use that mentality with like the administrative side of our relationship, which is we run a household, we run a budget together, we run family responsibilities together, we raise a kid together. And so we use a lot of our professional skills to do those things. And I find it helpful to have things where like one of us is leading and the other isn't questioning so that the burden is reduced. So in our example, I was the expert on food, and he was the expert on sleep. And there'd be like key things that we would check in with each other on from a values perspective. Like if there's a sleep crisis, my husband is point. And I don't question his decision making unless I'm concerned for the safety of our child. And if it's a food thing, I run point, and he doesn't question my decisions, unless it's because of the safety of our child. Our preferences are not expressed, when it's something that the other person is the specialist on. And I think that has helped a lot in getting it all done, but also having a little bit of a feeling of like pride or expertise in certain areas that we do. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  36:09  

That's interesting. I would love to hear more about this idea of bringing your work self into the relationship, because I think so often, we think like I go to work and show up as like that person. And then I come home, and I'm like my home person. And you're saying, you know, like, yes, of course, we want to have some of that natural organic spontaneity with like, the loving connection. But also like, there's stuff we have to get done. We're managing a household, we're co parenting together. And so it makes sense bringing your business head to that. So tell me more about that. That's really interesting.

Annemieke Rice  36:47  

Yeah, I think I always knew that I would use my like executive skills with my daughter, like the best summer camp research, or that's how I am. So one of the things we're talking about redoing our kitchen right now. And of course, because your day is like a rat race, right? Like we get up at 630 with my daughter, either one of us works out or the other one gets ready, then we're both at work for the day, then you're quickly one is cooking dinner, while the other is picking her up at daycare, then we spent all of our time with her until her bedtime, she goes to bed at 730. And we are like wiped. And that is when we start talking about heavy stuff. I don't know like our parents health, or our finances, or our kitchen renovation, which we have been batting around the idea of for like a year and a half. And I crumble at that time, like the second that there's stress, or even like a little edge in your voice, right, because you lose your patience, especially people close to you. And I'm the most vulnerable at 10pm at night. And so we were just like arguing about stupid things, because we were talking about heavy stuff when we both had like such depleted reserves. So now we do a household administration meeting on Mondays at noon. And we bring our work selves and our work computers. And we like go through a checklist of that kind of stuff. Because we both have great works, I remember saying to my husband, like you are the head of product management, at like a leading educational technology company, I know we're capable of creating a project plan, like this isn't a case of like one of us has the skill and the other doesn't like you have the same or better skills than I do. So that has actually really helped because it like we have dedicated childcare, we have bandwidth, we have attention, and we can separate that. And then at the end of the day, we can just be the like vulnerable, soft version of ourselves with each other instead of always just making our relationship about being parents or being, you know, business partners, which is essentially what we are.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  38:44  

I love that idea and the concept of separating those different parts of your relationship. I think with our partners, we're managing so many different types of relationships with the co parenting and like all the serious stuff, but then also the love and connection and you know, all of those things that we want and need from our relationships. And I think it's really hard whenever we have just a few hours at the end of the day when our reserves are depleted, like you said, and we're tired, and more edgy. And so it can be really, really hard to find connection and to be able to really talk about the heavy stuff that we have to talk about. And so I think that's a really great idea of like bringing it into the work day, taking one hour out of the week on a regular cadence to kind of check in on on those kinds of things.

Annemieke Rice  39:37  

It's easy for me to think of ways that I've used my work skills as a parent, but I think one of the things that's most unexpectedly wonderful to me about being a mom is how parenting has changed me in the other parts of my life. So while I'm very grateful that I don't have to just be a mom all day long, and I think even people who are stay at home moms feel this way like just because you're a stay at home mom doesn't mean you don't get a sense of self, or an ability to do things that are for you. But I bring who I am, as a parent are the skills I developed a parent's will work all the time. And I think it has made me such a better worker, and probably a better boss and a more enjoyable co worker, because I am more creative, I am more decisive my hack of like, How can I do this level of work without doing like last time, I would just work for 80 hours a week. And that's not doable. It's not like I can't work more if I need to. But I'm decisive, I empower people more, I am honestly, more supportive, and more critical at the same time, it's like I need to trust the people that I work with and work for. And I'm not going to question their decisions. And I think a lot of that has to do with either the realities of working in parenting at the same time, or the things that I learned I could do that I never thought I could do as a parent, because babies just take the plan out the door. And so I did learn how to be more spontaneous and creative and how to be more resilient. And I'd never let myself try before, because my planning and organizing and researching skills were so strong, that my way of dealing with just being over prepared, and now I can't, I cannot be over prepared for everything anymore. 

Annemieke Rice  41:17  

So the idea that like this tiny little itty bitty baby, and even the health issues that I went through, to have her and make her and keep her, actually somehow became like job transferable skills is a little bananas to me. But I, I've always felt this way about working with other parents, like I am so impressed by people who parent and work and I never see a deprecation in their skills or their input. It's really the inverse. A lot of the women and men that I've worked with that became parents, I saw that transformation in them. And I, I think that's just how I think about parenting in the workplace is like you're just upskilling, this entire cohort of people to be even better than they were before they were parents. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  42:02  

Yeah, I love that perspective, because I don't think that's the general view of business leaders that we're upskilling our skills, but I totally agree, I've learned so much that I can take into the workplace. And I'm, I'm so much more efficient, because like you said, when I had 80 hours to work, I took it, I spent that time. And now it's like, if I only have this amount of time to work per day, or per week, I'm going to be much more efficient, much more decisive, I'm going to make sure I get things done in that amount of time, because that's what I have.

Annemieke Rice  42:36  

Yeah. And I think to me, again, as I mentioned before, like I was the one not setting boundaries at work, it wasn't like someone else was violating a boundary. But I really like that boundary that my daughter creates for me, she comes home and she literally runs in the room. And she screams my name. She's got these two adorable pigtails. And right now she's really into wearing like a backwards cap. And like she's just the coolest, you know. And all I want to do is run to her and play with her. And because I've had the day working, I can do that without reservation, it feels joyful, and it feels wonderful. And something I can look forward to. And I don't think about work or worry about it or check my phone when I'm with her or any of it. That doesn't mean I'll do that after bed if I need to or over the weekend or early in the morning. But that ability to be fully present is something I've always struggled with as a person, I was never fully present in any aspect of my life I was I was doing that work life thing where you blend everything. And thinking that was better. And I have learned that for me the variety of separation feels like a better balance than the constant blending of everything.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  43:47  

Yeah, and almost it sounds like the ability to really fully focus on each thing allows you to fully focus on the other things too, right?

Annemieke Rice  43:58  

And enjoy them. I think I just am in a phase of my life where I just want to do what feels fun and enjoyable, natural and easy. And that's a lot of how I make decisions like what looks like it's going to have a bigger impact at work. What looks like it's going to be more fun at home. And that decision making matrix is much easier for me now than it used to be. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  44:22  

Yeah, well, it's like life's too short. Yeah, to choose anything else.

Annemieke Rice  44:26  

I think the other thing about kids that that you learned or I learned through my daughter is I was all about like doing preparation to make things easier later. Like there is no easy road. With kids you just have a lot of hard moments. I don't think you can skip them or avoid them. I think that you have sleep transitions no matter what it's just about when. I think you have tantrum errors no matter what it's just about when they happen. And when I finally realized that I could not engineer my way out of those, no matter how many sacrifices or plans that I made in advance, that is literally what taught me to like go with the flow. It was like, It's gonna be a good day or a bad day. And I have almost no control over that. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  45:07  

Yeah, I love that. I think that is definitely one of the things I've learned as well, from parenting. And like you said before the spontaneity and like just bringing the fun, it just makes everything so much better at home and at work. So you talked about a desire for multiple kids, maybe, if you like, if you're stepping into that, what do you think you'll bring into it the second time around, that maybe like you didn't have or you didn't know, the first time around?

Annemieke Rice  45:35  

I think my greatest hope for a second time around is that I will be kinder to myself in my immediate postpartum stage if it is hard. I think what I also know is that your first experience and your second experience often have nothing in common. So I might have a really tough pregnancy and a really easy postpartum or the opposite, I might experience totally different challenges than I did the first time. So I don't know that I can say like, I'm better prepared. I think just the things that people tell you because they've been through it. But now I know like everything is a phase and you can't control or plan for it. I think I will inherently not question those. I actually talked to my husband about my first pregnancy, I was so grateful to be pregnant at all we like we were at the point of like almost giving up. And so every day, I would wake up with like food aversion and think at least I'm still pregnant. Or like, I didn't care about the negative side effects because I wanted that pregnancy so bad. I had a really good attitude to my pregnancy. And I was like, I think the next one might be like that, too. Because I'll be like, This is my last one. This is the last time I get to do this. And even though I theoretically would like to have more than two children, I think it's really unlikely that I will because of how old I am. And there's just a reality what your body can handle. There's also a reality to how much of my own personal time I'm willing to give up to pregnancy and postpartum. When life is short, I want to enjoy my husband and my kids and my career. But I my hope is that I will be as present and as grateful, but that I will be a little bit kinder to myself and give myself some more shortcuts and grace. Second time around.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  47:12  

I love that. I think that's something that all of us could use, right? Every mother, especially new mothers, because it's so hard to feel like you're so good at everything you do. And then you have a kid and it's just like, how am I so bad at this? I swear I'm a capable person, but I'm not good at this. And it just takes time to adjust to and to start to feel good about what you're doing. 

Annemieke Rice  47:37  

Yeah. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  47:37  

Well, thank you so much, Annemieke, for sharing your story. Is there anything that we missed in your story are any final things that you would love to share?

Annemieke Rice  47:46  

This journey to parenting has been one of the most like rich as a human because of how many of us share this experience and having the ability to like, connect with other people and learn from them and relate to others who are going from it. I just love hearing stories on this podcast about what other women have gone through and even like making friends with the other parents at my kids daycare, like it's, I think an unexpected beauty of it is this feeling of connection and true like empathy for a huge part of our society. And so really appreciate you asking me to share my story even though I never listen to the episodes that you have me in. But I also love hearing from everyone else and they share their stories. So I'm looking forward to many more. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  48:30  

Yeah, well you should really listen to because your episodes are very good, very fun to listen to.. Well thank you so much, Annemieke, for joining me for being so open and honest with your story. I know that so many women will relate to it and will see themselves in your story. And so, thank you so much and thank you everybody for tuning in. And we will see you all next week for week four of the Transition to Motherhood series. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  49:01  

Thanks so much for tuning in to the executive coach for moms podcast. Please like subscribe or follow the show so you'll be notified when the next episode is available. I hope you'll join me again next time. Take care.