I had to get comfortable asking for support, not just giving it.
After having my son, I noticed I craved connection more than before. It became important for so many reasons. But, the right connections were also more crucial. In broader groups, so much of what I was experiencing could be diminished in big and small ways. People refered to healing while providing continual care for my precious infant as a “vacation”. So many feelings and stressors were glossed over and reduced to “You look like you’re doing fine”.
Despite being minimized, the flurry of thoughts that new moms are left with are real.
A couple of the categories that consume so much thought are childcare and work.
Navigating Childcare and Work with Motherhood Support Systems
Childcare requires figuring out how to pay for quality care if you can manage to find a provider accepting enrollments, at all. Finding childcare requires deciding who to trust, asking clarifying questions, evaluating what rates are normal, and locking-in options before your slot slips away.
Then, there’s work. With an entirely new life and set of priorities, adjusting back to old routines can be unnerving. The combination of physical changes from coming off of an extended period of limited sleep, hormonal changes that can be exacerbated through breastfeeding, (which can continue to adjust sleep patterns), physical exhaustion and healing, especially if there were complications create an unstable foundation to build from. Coordinating commute logistics, planning for sick days, (which occur more often while relying on childcare), and navigating the financial implications of covering care are other factors that affect the reality of how work is impacted for so many moms.
Is it realistic to think you can jump into your old role and execute at the same level? Especially, if your childcare options don’t cover your full work hours.
I’m prefacing these layers of the motherhood experience because I think it’s all glossed over too often. In one setting we talk about work and in another the rest of life, but the spillover makes them hard to contain in separate conversations.
Why Motherhood Support Systems Are Non-Negotiable
In business, people can lead with a ‘what can you do for me?’ mindset. Showing up, being committed, and doing the work, don’t always guarantee your results.
This is why the ability to experiment, iterate, and have a truly supportive community are so important.
Experimentation and iteration because these help you find what works. The right support, both personally and professionally, because they create some ease and help amplify the work, either directly or indirectly.
Space is required to make all three possible. The reality is when your schedule is overloaded you have a silent timer ticking in the back of your mind until your childcare clock runs out; your ability to be free and gracious with your time is affected.
This hurts your ability to be creative and spend enough time on things that are restorative or purely fun.
Whole books could be written on the societal factors connected with this. But here, I’m choosing to focus more on practical action.
Prioritizing Your Time: Strategy for Moms
With everything described above, it can feel easy to chase your days away, clamoring from one task to the next, trying to get as much done as possible. Your default can easily become reactively keeping things running and putting other people’s needs ahead of satisfying even your own baseline needs.
This is why protecting time to define your priorities and having a strategic plan to execute them are, in my opinion, essential.
Once we acknowledge we’re operating with limited time and have much more responsibility to consider than before, we can shift to selecting what makes the most sense to focus on driving forward right now.
Way too often, moms I work with aren’t doing this. Instead they are holding onto their old expectations as what they need to match today. This creates frustration when things aren’t working out and asking themselves ‘how I can do more’, which I wholeheartedly feel is the wrong question.
Instead, I prefer to consider, what new options support the lifestyle you have now? I believe our attention shouldn’t revolve on restoring the past life you’ve outgrown.
This shift of redefining your new normal may seem subtle but it prompts a mindset shift that
releases blame, guilt, and shame. Think of all the energy these emotions drain that can be reallocated to other meaningful parts of your life. Creating space to be clear on what’s realistic for this season can minimize unwarranted pressure as you navigate a uniquely transitional phase of life.
For me, planning with strategy in mind became urgent because I needed to compound my time. The same way compounding interest accrues more overtime, compounding time affords you greater impact with every minute.
Part of my approach to compounding my time was taking a closer look at the Pareto Principle which says 80 percent of your actions are tied to 20 percent of your outcomes. I became diligent about uncovering what’s in my 80 percent and what’s in my 20. To do this, I needed to track what I was spending time on, reflect on my outcomes, and be sure I was using tools that would share metrics when possible. I didn’t want to guess but wanted to collect more factual data. I honestly was not doing this often enough before.
My perpetual goal is to drop my 80 percent lower and increase my 20 percent. Thankfully, this can be done through tiny, intentional actions. The goal is to make consistent changes that last, not to overhaul things overnight in ways that are unsustainable.
How to Build a Supportive Motherhood Community
So much of what’s in the 80 percent category requires deploying people to shift the weight from being entirely on you, if it can’t be eliminated entirely. According to University of BATH research, “Mothers handle 71% of household tasks that require mental effort and 79% of childcare and cleaning.” So it’s important that even when coordinating a strategic plan for our work, we take a closer look at what can be alleviated from our household workload to redistribute to other parts of our lives.
Knowing you need help and receiving it are two different things.
Whether we want to better leverage our support networks, at home or at work, the truth is, sometimes, we don’t always already have the right people in our orbit.
When you find that you’re asking for help and not getting it, this can be a sign you need to expand your relationships to create the community of support you need.
The more time you gradually free up through reducing the 80 percent, the more you can allocate back into your relationships and other meaningful things like prioritizing your wellness and both your personal and professional development.
When things aren’t going my way, I withdraw from others. My mind defaults to saying, ‘I need to go off and figure this out on my own’. I realize this isn’t hardwired into me and I can challenge this initial thought.
Working with others who operate similarly has been enlightening. I see with a fresher perspective that maintaining aligned relationships that are meaningfully supportive generates access to more thought-partners when you most need them.
You can also become more of a connector, bringing great people with common interests together. Despite having less time, I’ve hosted more networking gatherings than before because it allows my community to connect with each other while compounding my time. For example, a coffee meet-up with a group allows me to better protect my calendar. In an instance where one person can’t make it, the rest of the group can still meet.
I can more reliably use that time for connecting regardless of what unexpected thing comes up for someone else.
One-on-ones still hold a natural place but there is more variety in my connection time than before and overall they are more effective uses of time.
Of course, your support network never replaces your own purpose or intuition, which is why I spoke about clarifying your own priorities and forming a strategy first. However, as someone who before having my son, greatly underutilized my support network, I want to emphasize the importance of forming a community who lockstep with you, forming a foundation for you to pursue what’s important across the meaningful parts of your life without feeling guilty, especially if it looks different than anything you’d previously imagined.
As a Community Builder, Work-Life Harmony Coach and Strategist, I truly hope you find intentional spaces for looking inward and the community to support you. This guide shares simple practices guiding your reflection, so you don’t have to navigate alone.
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