Transcript of How To Take Parental Leave When You're an Entrepreneur.... Or a Workaholic

One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future, and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at chime. Com/mnen. When you check out Chime, you'll see you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an O. G. Listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with CHIME. Open your account in just two minutes at chime. Com/mnn. That's CHIME. Com/mnn. Chime. It feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bank Corp Bank NA or Stride Bank NA.

Members FDIC. Spotme eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boots are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to chime. Com/disclosures for details. I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash, but I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full-time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high-quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest friendly.

I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host, so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at airbnb. Com/host. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. So this pregnancy thing is no joke, you guys. I am nine months pregnant, which has felt like 900 months. If you didn't know I was pregnant, by the way, surprise. I did mention it in my episode with Senator Gillibrand. But other than that, I've been keeping it pretty private. I have processed a lot of big life moments publicly, and this totally insane but amazing experience of growing a small human is something that I wanted to just process with me and my husband. But I do need to talk about it now because my My daughter could come truly any second now. Hosting a daily podcast is not so conducive to taking a maternity leave. And beyond this type of work, I do. I'm also someone who has always defined myself by work, so I'm really struggling with the idea of taking time off in general.

So today you're going to hear an episode of the podcast Help Wanted that I co-host with the Editor and Chief of Entrepreneur magazine, Jason Pfeiffer. In this episode, I talk to Jason about how I've been trying to be open-minded about taking Matt leave. And Jason gives me some advice based on his own experience taking leave after he and his wife had their two kids. But before I share that episode, I want to tell you first what Money Rehab is going to look like for the next few weeks. Today and tomorrow are my last episodes of Money Rehab, for now, not forever. Because even though my daughter has not been born yet, I can barely breathe. I can barely get through all of these sentences. I am so pregnant right now. Yes, these are the fun things that nobody tells you about pregnancy, by the way. But even though tomorrow will be my last episode of Money Rehab for a beat, it's not the last episode of Money Rehab. Don't worry, because while I'm out, we're actually doing something that I think you're really going to love. The show, of course, must go on. I would not leave you money rehabbers hanging.

And so the show is going to be guest-hosted by some of the smartest people I know, like Tracy DiNunzio, who built and sold the luxury resale company Tradeze, Peter Tuckman, the stock broker you know and love, a fellow M&N podcast host who reports from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Minda Hart, who's the best-selling author of The Memo and is an expert on workplace culture, Mosha Nune, who's been a journalist with me for 500 years and hosts my favorite daily podcast, Mo News, which is actually joining the M&N family. So yay. Claire Wasserman, who is an expert on pay negotiation, real estate agent extraordinaire, John Graumann, attorney, but a very cool one, Pamela Maz, a. K. A.

Lawmother on Instagram, and our very own ERP, Morgan LaVoy, and more.

You'll hear more about that tomorrow in an episode that is all about budgeting for babies and some more sappiness. But in the meantime, here's my conversation with Jason.

Nicole, how do you feel right now?

Do you want the- The very honest answer?

The very honest answer.

Like the most unvarnished answer?

Yes. I feel so large. I feel like I cannot breathe. I normally can't breathe, as you know, and we swore tips about this, but I extra can't breathe. My pelvis is on fire. There's a thing It's called lightning crouch, which you haven't experienced, but it's a real side effect of pregnancy. If you look up all the side effects of pregnancy, it looks like this crazy fucking disease.

Yeah. Well, I mean, in any other circumstance, You might as well say that it is a terrible disease. You have a thing growing inside of you. Usually, a thing growing inside of you, not a thing you want. I think that sounds bad. Yeah.

You know human life.

This is how it happens. We're a bunch of animals. It's really crazy. Going through pregnancy just shows you we're not elevated in any way. We're a bunch of animals doing animal things. You are beyond nine months pregnant right now, right? Like, literally beyond it? Yeah.

I am.

We were not supposed to be recording today because you were supposed to already be on maternity leave.

I know, but I don't have a baby yet.

Right. But just to be really, really clear before we get into this, what we're going to talk about today is we're We're going to talk about stepping back and what you're feeling in this moment because you and I, we work like crazy. You built this company, and now you're going to take a big old break from it. And that's scary. I know, I don't want to. Yeah, you don't want to. It's really scary. Which is why you're here today. So just for context, so everybody understands, the episodes with you and I that people hear every week are recorded every the other week for us. We set aside a bunch of time, and then we record a bunch of episodes in a row. And two weeks ago was supposed to be the last one. And then we were supposed to say, Bye, Nicole. Have a wonderful maternity. And you were like, No, if I haven't had the baby, we're going to make another recording, which is crazy, but also says a lot about how dedicated you are to your work. So how is it staring down, stepping away? How are you feeling about that?

Yeah. So aside from the acid reflux that I forgot to mention, I'm feeling a lot of things. My first baby has always been work. And so it's always been my main focus and my main priority. And it's funny, we had a guest on Money Rehab a few weeks ago. I was like, Oh, you're a mama already. Because on my Instagram bio, it says Mama of Money News or something. And so I've always It felt that way. And especially with M&N, it's my baby. And so I don't want to leave my baby for another baby. And I've never had an actual baby. So it's really weird. And working for yourself and not having a formal maternity leave program. I'm curious what you and Jen did or how much paternity leave if you took any, or what entrepreneurial things you were doing when you were having the boys. But it's confusing. I went through a bunch of rigmarole to try and figure out if there was anything for entrepreneurs.

California is robust, but still it was really hard and complicated, and I never ended up figuring something out with it.

So you're in a position where If you're an entrepreneur who has a bootstrap startup and not a formal mat leave program, you're like, Well, I eat what I kill. And so if I'm not killing anything because I'm trying to keep a human alive, then are we eating stuff? And so it was a lot of that concern and consideration to try and figure out, do I take time off? How much time do I take? I have no idea what's about to happen. So let's just work for as long as I can. But I also had a lot of anxiety around where I would be working, because until a few months ago, we opened beautiful M&N studios, but the studio was in a room in my house. And so I- Do it just to be clear.

The vast majority of the time, almost all the time that people have heard you, you have been on mic in a studio, which was actually just in a bedroom in your home that you would set up as a studio. And now that bedroom is taken over by a baby, so you had to go find another place to put that microphone.

I did.

And It was so convenient. And we had real shoots in there. We had Gary Vee coming by. We had a bunch of celebrities and cool stuff going on. And so it was in my house, but it was also so convenient. And, yeah, it was the only place where we could put a baby. My husband, he's also an entrepreneur. We created a shed for him, basically on the roof for his office. And the baby can't live in a shed outside. No, he cannot. The baby We needed the room inside. And it is currently a nursery. And now we have beautiful actual offices with real big rooms and setups and stuff. And it's awesome. And it's a huge upgrade and a huge testament to all of the work we've done in the last couple of years. But I also was trying to figure out at the time, do we get a bigger house? So we were looking simultaneously at some larger homes that we could have the office in the home, plus a baby room, plus Jared's office, whatever.

Yeah.

And something about it just made me feel like I might need some separation because having baby stuff, work stuff all in the same place felt maybe like I would be having an identity crisis in no time and not really able to step away, and not really able to get back to my first baby, my first love. And so, yeah, I think it ended up working out from that perspective. And I think having that separation is going to be really important. And I think that's setting me up for more success than I would have had otherwise.

You know what's interesting is this metaphor that you had has evolved Because so work was your first baby, and that baby had its own little nursery in the form of a studio in your home. That's right. And then the work baby got kicked out for an actual baby, which is forcing the work baby to grow up and to become a work child or a work young adult. And for a while, you were like, well, but maybe they can both be babies, and They can both have their own little nurseries at home. But you're thinking, No, no, no. This is actually to have a child is in some way to accelerate or to force the evolution of the other things in your life, which is exactly what it's worth. What I have found with me, and we've talked about this, I am so deeply frustrated by the thoughts of how much more I might have accomplished or could do or whatever that I can't because I have kids. But at the same time, I have to remind myself that the time of my life in which I have had children, which has been nine years, I have a nine-year-old and a five-year-old, that time has been the time of greatest accomplishment in my life.

I I've built the most during that time. So even as I focus on all the things that I couldn't do, I've also done the most. Why is that? I mean, part of that is just like, if you're doing life correctly, then there should always be new things and you're growing. But another part of it is that I think that just having the kid forced me to put structures around my time in a way that I never had before and to be really intentional about how I'm using my time and to drop things that I enjoyed, but that just weren't as productive a use of my time. And as a result, my work has thrived. And that sounds like what you're setting up here.

Yeah. I mean, you talk very honestly. We did a whole episode about this. This was how I told you I was pregnant after you bashed children for an hour.

Yes. We're going back and listening to that episode.

We'll link it. Yeah, that was classic. You had no idea. I had no idea.

That was amazing. I got a lot of emails. Did I tell you that? No. I got a lot of emails from that episode. People being really... They were really grateful about how honest I was about the challenges of parenthood. In fact, I was just talking with a friend who lives in Montana, and I was being open about how challenging I find parenting. She was shocked because she was like, Nobody in Montana would ever say something like that. I do think it's true that in more work-oriented cultures, like New York where I live. There's probably a bit more comfort with talking like that. But most people are not comfortable talking about it. But I think that it's really important. It'll be important for you as you'll find out. Parenting will be very rewarding, but also you're going to wipe a lot of classes, and you're not going to enjoy any of that. It's okay not to enjoy any of that.

Thanks, Jason. I am duly prepared to have a lot of poop in my life. Thank you so much for the warning. You're welcome. So what did you and Jen do? Or did you have thoughts or anxiety about taking time off?

Well, if we rewind to the times in we were having kids nine years ago and five and a half years ago, I, in both cases, was just fully employed. Like, today, I have a job. A W2 employee. Yeah. Just a W2 employee. Where I drew If not 100% of my income, 90% of my income. That's not the case now. Now, I still have a W2, but I also have a whole lot of entrepreneurial pursuits to make more outside than inside the company. But back then, it was just that. So I had just a regular paternity leave of, I can't remember how much it was. It wasn't that much, a couple of weeks. Then my wife, Jen, she is self-employed, but as a freelancer, so she's really eating what she kills. It's just like project to project to project to project. It was interesting. Jen had more thoughts and feelings on this. Her thoughts and feelings were that for her, work is this dual source of purpose and deep anxiety. She is always thinking about... She drives a lot of value from her work, and she loves her work, and it's a place of passion for her.

But also, she's always thinking about what's coming next, and will this project lead to another project? Am I at the end of my career? Jen's always thinking this, sorry. She'll write a book, and then it'll be like, Oh, is this the last book that I ever get to write? Is this the last article that I ever get to write? So there's a lot of It was an anxiety. She saw maternity leave as an opportunity to take a break from that, to just say, I have another thing to focus on, a bigger, weightier, I don't know, whatever. It's a more important thing. It's an actual human being. It's a meaningful project. It's an actual human being. She was really hoping that that project of taking a break and just focusing on raising a child could eliminate some of the anxiety that she was about work and just give her a break from it. I think that it did in the actual break, the actual few weeks that she gave herself for maternity leave, it certainly did not in the long run. She still has all that work anxiety, even though we have our children. But she really loved that and I think wanted to find a moment to recalibrate from it.

Me, on the other hand, honestly, what I did is that I used my paternity leave both times to just do other work projects. I remember I was working on a podcast five and a half years ago, a solo podcast project. And I spent basically my entire paternity leave at home when I was not helping out with the baby, just working on that thing because I don't really know how to stop. And I don't know what else I would do with my time.

Yeah, because babies are sleeping a lot. I mean, they're pooping and they're eating and they're stuff, but you still have time.

The beginning, the The very beginning is it's the easiest time. The hardest part is sleeping because the baby will be waking you up constantly. But yeah, the baby's not doing much. It doesn't really require that much of your work. You're going to sit around and be bored. I have a feeling that it'll be very interesting to see what you do. Do you find other things to do? Jen really committed to watching a bunch of trashy TV and just checking out and just enjoying being on a break. Whereas I I didn't. I don't know how to do that. So I just worked on something else that wasn't my work. I wonder what you were going to do when you would just have... You have permission to have a break right now, Nicole. You have permission to have a break. No.

And what will you do with it?

I've never watched Trash TV. I've never, not once, not ever seen a Real Housewives show or any of that stuff. I definitely don't think I would be starting now.

Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit to the point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at chime. Com/mnen. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working towards your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at chime. Com/mnen. That's CHIME. Com/mnen.

Chime. It feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank NA or Stride Bank NA. Members FDIC. Spotme eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boots are available to eligible CHIME members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to chime. Com/disclosures for details. I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash, but I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full-time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high-quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest friendly.

I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at airbnb. Com/host. And now for some more money rehab.

I feel like I'm going to be checking in or like, I'm going to... Yeah. I can't imagine being fully checked out. Again, I have no idea. And especially for Jen, for me, we have different physical recovery to go through. And so that's definitely something to be mindful of. I don't think I could, even if I wanted to, record a podcast like you did, right? I would probably be resting. And I'm finding the recordings really challenging. It's just really challenging to breathe. All of my organs are smushed. And so that part of it I found really challenging. So I think staying on email or staying on computery projects that aren't on air would make sense. I want to do that. I don't know how I could just be like, Okay, all right, bye, Martin.

Yeah.

Figure it all out. Goodbye.

Right. Can I tell you, as we were talking, I was just flashing back to this moment. This, to me, was the... I don't know. Maybe I've shared this with you before. I can't remember. Tell me if not. When I think back on this moment of transition from not having children to having children, and just an awareness moment for me, I don't know. I don't know how to categorize this thing. I'll just tell you what it is, which is that I remember nine years ago, Jen is pregnant with her first boy, and she is like you. She's just couldn't be more We were who knows. We were hours to days away from the whole thing going. We were sitting on our living room floor, and I don't know what we were doing. Maybe we were playing a game or something. I don't know what we were doing. It occurred to me, and so what I said to her was, I said, Everyone always says, after having children for a long time, you can't remember life without them. Just because your life is just so different. It's like, what did I do with all my time? You forget.

And I said, We are living right now at the very end of before times. The rest of our life will be divided by this moment. Life is divided by all sorts of moments, but a big one is this one.

Like BK before kids.

Yeah, it literally is BK or Burger King. I was just like, We are at the end of the before times. It's a strange... I didn't know what to do with that thought, but I liked being aware of it. You're in these seasons of life, and sometimes you only realize that you moved from one season to the next in retrospect. I don't know if people in the Middle Ages were like, We're in the Middle Ages. It's only later that you were like, Those are the Middle Ages. But this is a moment where we're like, This is the- Yeah, or the good old days.

Remember the good old days? We're in the good old days. Yeah.

It's like, This is the end of before times. And so the more immediate questions are like, Will I be able to step away? Will I want to step away? I What do they got? What do they got? Those are actually just the hypothetical beginning questions of what it will actually mean to reorient your time and priorities. And everyone does this differently. My guess for you is You tell me if I'm right or wrong, but my guess is that you'll probably do it a lot like I did it and like Jen did it, which is to say the kids are an important part of our lives, but we didn't drop everything to have the kids replace it. There's this always tension about where we're being pulled. A thing that you will need to do in a way that you never did before was to just start to draw lines. And One of them was that very smart thing that you anticipated here already, which is if you were in a house where the baby was and where the work baby was, then you're going to get pulled from both of them. There needs to be separate spaces almost so that you can give each the attention that they deserve.

Actually, it was interesting because when you talked about that, you talked about it really from the perspective of you're working, but then the baby needs something, so you have to get drawn to the baby. But it goes the way, too, which is that you could be with the baby, but then feel drawn to work, and so you're not fully present with the kid. But if you create an actual separation, like just the studio is somewhere else, then that's actually an interesting forcing function to be a little more present. And I'm not very good it being present. So I'm making things up right now, but I could imagine that drawing those kinds of lines could be very good for being present.

Yeah. I think it's like the mental health boundary became really clear as we were trying to figure out what the space was, how important that would be. And also, just by nature of our business, we were having guests and stuff come. We didn't have a baby. It was just, Come on in. I think having a baby and a baby nurse and stuff and guests, it felt like my home that I had before I met my baby daddy, was this bachelorette palace. And then he came, and then baby came. And so it changed my interpretation of what that space was and what it should be or how practical it would be to have it be both. And I realized really quickly that I don't think that's going to be beneficial for either of the roles that I'm trying to do well. To your point, yeah. When you're doing one thing and you're thinking about another thing, you're not fully present or doing that thing. You might as well be doing the other thing. I'm sure I'm going to feel pulled in that way and physically, I don't know, I'm going to have to feed a baby.

We ended up finding an office that was in walking distance to the house. So that's nice, but still important separation, I think. And also this identity idea, because I was like, for a while, losing, I felt, my office. I ended up having my dog go to a friend because I was finding it really hard to run after her. She's a little dog, and I was exhausted. And so I felt like this baby was taking this space that was really important to my identity. And my studio, my dog was gone. And here I am, with leaking bones and a baby.

Getting stripped out of the Yeah.

And so I felt like I had to take control of that. And I think we did it in a really impactful way. We took what the studio was and we souped it up. It's a real functioning thing. It's really cool, and I'm really proud of it. And it was a forcing function. And I think it was a net positive for the company, actually.

Because you... I was going to make some weird umbilical cord cut reference here. But because you let it separate- It's so close. I know. It was almost there, and I don't know how to bring it home. Cut the cord. I'm just going to keep going with it. So because you separated it, because you let this work baby grow up and move into its own place. Now it can grow in ways that it never could have when you were treating it like a baby, I guess, is the point, right?

Totally. Yeah, we could rent it out. We could do a lot of things.

Right. Which is a Really great lesson in change, isn't it? What this really is, is just the very beginning. It will be the first of endless. This is like the one from before times that will then be carried over into all the decisions and after times, where you're discovering that the forcing function of separating up parts of life or of having to be more intentional about how you're doing something because it now has to fit into a more complex life with a child. All of that were as crazy making as it can be, if you think about it in a different way, those breaks are the things that allow for growth.

Yeah. If I didn't get pregnant, we would still have our cute little studio in my house. I wouldn't have felt motivated to change that as quickly as I did. And when you and I were talking about it, as we were trying to think through, should we create a studio. We were looking at even bigger studio spaces, more expensive spaces, where we thought we could really rent this out and run a studio business. And you were like, yeah, change the cost center to a profit center. I'm here for it. And that was a whole other business. We ended up finding something that was really nice and not over the top where we needed to rent it out, but we could if we wanted to. We could have other shows and other streams of income at some point. But doing that was never top of the very, very long to-do list until it had to be. And so, yeah, I really, I think it worked out for the better. At the time, I was really conflicted about it. But I think overall, the way the studio boundary was forced ended up being something that we could benefit from.

And also, that will just set me up for some postpartum good mental health. I was really concerned about this identity crisis thing.

Yeah. I want to hear more about that.

I mean, it was just like run of the mill. I really am concerned about postpartum, how I'm going to be feeling physically and mentally. And my husband's amazing. He's really optimizing for mental health postpartum. And I think that's a really big thing. We've all seen women struggle with that. I want to try to just be mindful of how that might play out and do whatever I can prophylactically or proactively to stave off any postpartum depression or anxiety or whatever happens.

When you were talking about identity, I was reminded of this moment. I'll share it, maybe useful. So when I travel and do keynotes, I often do this thing where I walk people through an exercise to identify a mission statement for themselves. The idea being that we make this mistake of too closely tying our identities to the roles that we occupy or the tasks that we perform. So it's like, if I go around and say, my identity is I'm a magazine editor, the problem with that is it's just so easily changeable. The roles we occupy and the tasks we perform are changeable. And so if that's what our identity is, then our identity is too easily rocked. If I'm a magazine editor as an identity, then all it takes is one guy, Bill, my boss at Entreprene magazine, one guy calling me and firing me to completely obliterate the identity. That's a bad place to be. So I encourage people to create a mission statement for themselves where it's a short sentence. It starts with I, every word carefully selected because it is not anchored to something that's easily changeable. So it's the difference between I am a magazine editor and I tell stories in my own voice.

Because I tell stories in my own voice is like, I can do that anywhere. You could fire me from everything, and I can still do that in any platform.

It's like the IRA of identity. You can take it anywhere you go.

Yeah. Nicely done. So I gave this little talk, as I often do, and I was at a YPO event in Chicago. And afterwards, this woman came up to me. People often come up to me afterwards, and they tell me the mission statement that they came up with. And it's usually stuff like, I help teams achieve greatness, or I solve the most complex problems. They're great. I love hearing them. But This woman said something I'd never heard before. She said that she had built a consultancy, a very successful consultancy. And then she had her first child, and she wanted to be very involved in the child and raising the child. So she decided to just hit pause on the consultancy. Just pause on the business, pause all business, and just stay home and raise the child. Although she is finding the act of being with her child and raising her child to be very personally rewarding, it has given her an identity crisis because she does not think of herself as a stay-at-home mom. That is just not how she identifies. That's not what she would ever say of herself, even though that is very technically what she is right now.

She didn't know how to manage that or how to create a coherence in that. My mission statement thing prompted this thought. She said her mission now is, I help people become the best versions of themselves. Because that applies to the consulting work that she was doing, and it also applies to raising the child. That And that was a really helpful unlock for her to see that the thing that she's doing now is consistent with the thing that she was doing before and is consistent with whatever it else that she does next. And I really loved that. And so I offer you that as a way of thinking. This will absolutely change some way in which you understand yourself. And it has to because you've oriented yourself so much around work. And now there is, not to say that you won't do that in the future, but you will now have another thing to orient yourself around in some way or another. To bring those things into coherence in some way, which I'm certainly not perfect at at all, but to aspire to, I think, is to give yourself a better understanding of your identity instead of shaking your identity.

Yeah. Oh, I love that. Yeah. I like to educate people, whether they're babies or crown-ass adults. It's interesting because I tried to do some of those exercises a couple of years ago when it really wasn't looking like I was going to have kids. I'm jumping into the maternity party at the 11th hour, 59th minute. I'm really- You're not that old. Put my hand in the elevator being like, Don't smush it. Let's get in. So I I just didn't think that it was going to happen, and I really wanted to be comfortable with it. I thought, realistically, my window was closing, and I hadn't found my person and all of that. I did some real work around what is my role as a mother on this planet without human children. I have these journals that I had tried to articulate this idea that I can feel like I'm mothering or teaching people or mentoring people or acting in a motherly way without having actual babies. And so I tried to do that in reverse, where I was like, How can I use the mother role in the work role and be okay with being a stay-at-home workaholic instead of being a stay-at-home mom?

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, I think I can maybe smush the identity of that with this new identity, whatever that is, together. But I am really worried about how I'm going to find the time in the day because I literally had to put on my calendar. On Monday, we ended up squeezing in some more recordings that I was like, Must shower. I don't know. How am I going to bathe another human and myself and do all the work? We're going to find out, but I'm pretty concerned about that.

Yeah, well.

I feel like I can barely take care of myself, but I don't really have a choice but to keep another human alive however that happens?

The answer is that it just happens. You just grow into it. And then also some days, you also just don't shower. That's also true. You just don't. But It also doesn't matter because whatever. I mean, look, I really like that. That's a really cool thing. I didn't know that you had gone through that first exercise and that you're now almost doing it in reverse. But I think that the real answer is that like anything in life, any big important thing in life, you don't actually... There's no way to actually plan for it. The best you can do is is march into it with open eyes and open ears, and then you just got to figure it out.

Hold on to your wallet. Money Rehab will be right back. And now for some more Money Rehab.

People have asked me for advice on... How do you balance this? And the answer is that you don't start by running. You start in the... Well, I was going to say baby steps, but it says before baby steps, before the baby can even take a step. Baby poops. And you just work your way into it. And you end up working your way into self-discovery, and you work your way into growth. And whatever comes next is going to be awesome. Not that you were asking for my advice. Is it?

Because every time we've talked about this before I was pregnant, you never said it was awesome.

Well, but here's the The thing, here's the thing, is like, okay, there's this podcast called The Longest, Shortest Time, which I think is just the best name for a parenting podcast you could have ever come up with. The thing is that I am often very frustrated about life as a parent, but also I have an awesome life. And I think that's the thing that I'm trying to reconcile. I like everything that I've built here. I have a great marriage, and I do great work, and I'm very proud of that work, and that work keeps growing, and it keeps making me more money, and it keeps being more satisfying. And although I am often frustrated with parenting stuff, also I have great kids. They're great kids. And I can be annoyed at them, but also I spend time with them that I enjoy. And I guess that's just life. Both are true. Both are true. It's like all of it is true at the same time, I think, is the answer. That's the reason why I really hate the parenting talk that is all oriented around how great everything is because it's not true. So many things can be true at the same time.

I can be really frustrated by a lot of things and then also appreciate them. I can say that this is a pain in the ass, but also that the outcome is awesome. All of it can be true. So it's more fun, frankly, to me and more cathartic to me when I have the sympathetic ear of a friend who can be like, yes, that sucks. It's more interesting to me to talk about the challenges of parenthood than to talk about the delights of parenthood. I actually find talking about the delights of parenthood to be completely boring. I can never want to talk about it. But that's not to say that they don't exist. It's just like they're mixed in with all these other things. And I feel like I have to spend more time grappling with the hard stuff because that's where my... Those are the knots that I have to untie. Whereas the awesome stuff, we take for granted something that somebody told me at some point, and I I can't remember the context, but they told me that just a remarkable thing that humans do is that we can return back to a normal state for ourselves.

It's so like, if something is really exciting, it's exciting for a bit, and then it returns to whatever our normalness is. And if something's really sad, it's sad for a bit, and then we return back to normal. We just have a good ability to do that. And yes, things can throw that off. And some things are too dramatic, and it's hard to get back to normal. But generally speaking, that's what we do. And I find that true for myself in basically all circumstances. If I'm really excited about something, it's great, but also the excitement wears off pretty soon. And even the worst things that have happened in my life, I've told myself, you will return to normal. I've seen it happen enough times that it will come back to normal, and it always does. So when When things are really high, I don't have to grapple with them. It's not like, Oh, what is this highness? And what do I do with it? But when I'm feeling frustrated, I do have to grapple with it because that's when I really want to return to normal. That's, I guess, probably why if I'm to self-assess myself here, I think that's why I end up talking a lot about parenting like that.

But the end result is the same, which is you build your normal, and the normal is the thing that matters. In a way, that's what we've been talking about here this episode is like, what is normal? And then what is the new version of normal that you will establish and always be returning to?

I mean, I don't know. I feel like most people talk about the negative stuff. I'm actually... I've struggled to find the positive stories. Now, I'm in the splash zone, I guess, of birth. So I really want to only consume positive birth stories, not the horror stories. But I just tend to see on social media or in mainstream media, nobody likes hearing somebody that's like, Yeah, I had a great birth. It was fine. It wasn't that bad.

Oh, the actual act, the actual act of it. Yeah. We don't report stories about the dog woke up and had a nice bowl of food and went to sleep. Yeah. We report when the dog... Something terrible happened to the dog. So most people have a totally good experience, and then it's just not worth talking about because it was a totally normal experience.

Yeah. And then the people that didn't hate on them, too. And so everybody wants to share that.

Yeah. I'll tell you, the story with Colin was really funny. Colin being my youngest, which was that we went in, Jen went into labor, and it was the day before my dad's birthday. And so the big question was, is Colin going to be born for or on my dad's birthday? And we were waiting around and waiting around and waiting around and waiting around and waiting around. And this baby is just not coming. And so at 11:30 PM, the nurses do a final check and they're like, Yeah, this is going to be a tomorrow baby. And so they tell us to get some shut eye because tomorrow will be a big day. And so we turned the lights off. Jen is in the birthing bed or whatever. And I go and set up this terrible cot in the room. That would be sad for you, Jason. No, I'm not going to be sad for me. I do not expect anyone to be sad for me. But for whatever reason, there was a terrible cot. And then we go lights out. And then truly, five minutes later, there's beeping, and then suddenly everyone's rushing into the room, and they're like, This baby's coming out right now.

And then he was out. It was the craziest thing. And then we had a baby.

Wait, on Roy's birthday?

No, it was minutes before. No, it ended up being the day. It was the day before. He was born the day before my dad. Like, by minutes. That was fine. It was a totally great experience, except that- She really didn't want to sleep in that car.

I don't know what you're inducing.

This baby has got to come out because I got to get off of this cat.

Oh, Jason. What am I doing for maternity leave?

Well, what are you doing? What am I doing? Well, here's- Yeah.

What are you doing? What am I? I don't know what I'm doing.

Okay.

Well, you're- We're figuring it out.

Right.

So you're going to disappear. I'm just going to feel comfortable with the fact that there's not a clear structure. I think shaming myself and being like, I must come up with... And that should work and does work for a lot of people. And that's important advice to create a clear boundary and create what the plan is and to create, here's the time that I'm going to be off and here's what to do. And I think I thought that I should try to do that because that's what I would tell other people to do. But I don't have that. And I I think that's fine. I just need to be okay with the fact that no plan is the plan right now. No clear club plan.

I love that. That's great. Well, okay. On that note, let's talk about the no plan is the plan for help wanted for a moment. So you're going to disappear. Please do, because I can't handle the guilt of- Broadcasting live from. I mean, Jesus, given how pregnant you are, there is at least 50% chance that you're going to go into labor while we're recording this episode. So you're going to disappear for some time and discover the plan and do whatever. I am going to do the following. I'm going to be hosting a bunch of solo episodes. I'm going to bring in some guest co-hosts, which can't hold a candle to Nicole Lappen, but we'll try. We're just going to stumble our way through it until you're back. The seat remains warm, and I'll miss you, and I'm excited to...

We'll have another co-host.

I don't know what happens here. Yeah, that's true. All right. You ready for it?

No. I can't breathe.

All right. Well, before times, end now, and we'll see on the other side. So this is the end for however much- This is BK Helpwanted. This is it. This is BK Helpwanted. And after this, we'll be AK. You're going to be a whole other same person.

That's right. All right. Yeah. All right. Bk out.

All right. Bk out.

Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan LaVoy. Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your moneyquestions, moneyrehab@moneynewsnetwork. Com, to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram @moneynews, and TikTok @moneynewsnetwork for exclusive video content.

And lastly, thank you.

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