Culture

Advice from a Mom in Advertising

Something Magical Recently Happened at Vitro

I celebrated my baby boy Henry Beau’s first birthday on the very same day my colleague Tanya, wonder-gal from VITRO Accounting team gave birth to her baby boy Baby J. With so few ‘child-rearing’ moms in advertising, Tanya and I as pregnant women at VITRO one year apart were like unicorns, rotund rarities in a young, millennial office environment. The odds of us giving birth to our babies one year apart to the exact day must have been crazy. Wish I had put some money on a ‘Guess the Date’ hustle.

This one-in-a-million occurrence gave me a whole week of water-cooler moments as I joked with my millennial female colleagues that ‘there must be something in the water’ and that they should be super careful around late April/early May, lest they too want to be a mom in advertising. “Ha!” they scoffed! “Not me!” or “Not for a long time!”

These aren’t young single ladies I was joking with. These were my early-thirties, recently married co-workers… aka prime target to be the next batch of moms in advertising. And yet the overwhelming consensus was that they were deferring kids until much later in their careers or possibly not having them at all.

Interested to see what the bigger trends were around the subject of kids, I learned that there was a big issue of ‘Childless Millennials’ that could massively impact our culture and economy in twenty years’ time.  According to the Huffington Post, birth rates among 20-something women have declined steeply as millennials delay marriage and having kids in order to focus on things like education, career, personal growth, and financial stability. Many others aren’t having children at all, and the number of women who have chosen to forgo motherhood altogether has doubled since 1970.

Components of change in fertility for women 20 to 29 between 2007 and 2012

The story continues when it comes to the advertising industry specifically as revealed last year by a study conducted by The 3% Movement which champions female talent and leadership in this industry. Their “What Women Want” study revealed that 60% of young females say they believe advertising is a career that doesn’t support young families. And with late nights and long hours perceived as standard in ad agencies, many see advertising as a career they can’t sustain with a young family. The study also found that while 38% of participants were mothers, they said their work environments are not conducive to mothering.

And yet, here I am, a senior manager at VITRO, juggling a 40+ hour week with two kids under five. It’s certainly a hard balance to strike, it’s beyond hectic – but with some smart planning and work-arounds, it is do-able and what’s more, it is extremely rewarding. So, I urge my young, female colleagues to take the leap and GET ON WITH IT! Having kids and working in this industry is an awesome game-changer and here’s some tips to making it work:

1. Being Pregnant in Advertising

Let people take care of you. Yes, we know you can carry that heavy bag but this is the time in life when you need to accept offers of help. This is about being offered to carry something for you, offered up a seat, offered cake or tea… accept it all gladly! People enjoy being chivalrous, and not accepting it makes everyone feel awkward. You should bask in their attention and affections. Once the baby is born that bubble bursts very quickly as all attention falls onto your gorgeous newborn.

2. Ring in the Changes

How do you handle being pregnant with the long hours, fast-paced environment, work-hard play-hard culture–not to mention the schmoozy client dinners and boozy beer bars? Well you don’t. You pivot. You adapt. Take it easier than normal, allow yourself to get out of work on time. Shrug off any professional guilt about leaving on time or missing a work event. Get used to it sweetheart because life as a mom in advertising is full of such compromises. And the boozy side of ad life can be one of the harder ones to switch up. While you’re still in the early stages of your pregnancy, keep your sobriety under-wraps by choosing soft drinks like tonic with ice & lime (aka G&T, hold the G) or a discreet mocktail.

3. Understand and Plan your Maternity Leave

Maternity laws change state by state in the USA but the federal Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave during a 12-month period to care for a newborn, adopted or foster child. Only three states – California, New Jersey and Rhode Island – currently offer paid family leave. The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) provides a good resource for understanding state family medical leave laws.

4. Take More Maternity Leave 

When planning your maternity leave and how you will financially support you and your family, aim to take more maternity leave than you think you should and budget accordingly. Savings, credit cards and paid family leave income (if offered in your state) will all take a hit as you welcome your new baby, but you are legally entitled to take 12 weeks off and that time is crucial for recovery and baby bonding. A number of studies have shown the health benefits of allowing parents, especially mothers, to spend time with their newborns.

“It’s a very exhausting time. A newborn baby is not sleeping through the night. They require frequent feeding that wakes up the mom, who often times will not get themselves back to sleep quickly afterwards,” Dr. Rebecca Starck of the department of regional obstetrics and gynecology at Cleveland Clinic. “Sleep deprivation takes a huge toll on the human body and that physical exhaustion leads to mental exhaustion.”

Not having time off after giving birth can also factor into postpartum depression, a condition which 11 to 20 percent of women who give birth suffer from, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

So, take the time and bond with your baby.

5. Returning to Work

Treat yourself to some new work clothes that fit you nicely before you head back to work. Don’t have time to go shopping? Do what I did and join a subscription clothing club like StitchFix or Bungalow Clothing. I had the most fantastic experience with Bungalow Clothing; I set myself a generous budget of $1,000 (gulp) and filled out the personality profile before being sent a beautifully-packaged selection of gorgeous clothes, all very ‘me’, all very pricey ($225 for jeans! Oh my!) but once I tried everything on I looked and felt great. I knew I would need that confidence boost when I returned to work so I splurged on a dress, jeans, two shirts and a skirt. Try StitchFix for a more sensible price point.

6. Sort your Childcare out Early On

You can never be too early to organize who will take care of baby when you go back to work. Get on the waiting list of your local day cares, do some deep Google searching for home daycares that will suit your needs. A long-tail search query like “bilingual home daycare yoga organic vegetarian” found me my daycare. Another tip – do a dry run with daycare / childcare. The day before you actually go back to work, plan a 1-2 hour (a day if possible) drop-off with daycare so that you can prepare what you need for the school crib, pumping/feeding and work supplies. This will also allow you to cry your heart out without having to go into work with mascara smeared.

7. Be Prepared to be Pushed

The sleep deprivation is real, the schedule is crazy, the amount that you as a single human being will need to accomplish to be both a full time ad exec and a full time momma is almost laughable. But you are a super woman. As one Vitro colleague surveyed put it: “Being a working mom is hard. The end.”

Sample Schedule of a Nursing Mom in Advertising (Aka, Me). 

• Midnight – sleeping
• 1am – nursing / changing
• 2am – sleeping
• 3am – Vivi (Henry’s sister)
• 4am – sleeping
• 5am – nursing / changing
• 6am – waking
• 7am – eating
• 8am – hurrying
• 9am – working
• 10am – meeting
• 11am – meeting
• 12pm – pumping
• 1pm – meeting
• 2pm – meeting
• 3pm – pumping
• 4pm – working
• 5pm – driving
• 6pm – playing
• 7pm – eating
• 8pm – bedtime
• 9pm – shagging
• 10pm – sleeping
• 11pm – sleeping

8. No, You Can’t Have It All

How could you possibly? You are only one person, there are only 24 hours in a day. You are doing the job of 2.5 people and trying to make the most of every crack of time you have to achieve the 50 million things you need to. So go easy on yourself, demand less of yourself and be happy with half measures and half successes. There’s a reason there’s an online community of working moms against guilt.  If I’ve been in a client meeting all day, selling in a new campaign, winning the trust of new clients, it has made me late for pick-up, so I need to rely more on my husband and accept a take-out dinner and a late night for the kiddos with no bath. As a mom in advertising, you’ve got to celebrate the successes, embrace the chaos and roll with the punches, and in my opinion our kids are more flexible and resilient for it.

9. Know Your Rights

With the crazy chaos that ensues as a full-time working mom in advertising, the need to be hyper-organized becomes even greater. And that extends to knowing your rights especially when it comes to expressing breastmilk in the workplace. Become extremely familiar with Employment Laws and use them sensibly. And good news! There’s support for working moms. Here’s a good resource from the US Department of Labor about Break Times for nursing moms. Along with being organized, you may need to learn how to say “No”. Often, if you have coworkers that aren’t parents, they may not understand the implications of needing time to transition back and/or need to make time to pump if you are breastfeeding.  Make sure you have a discussion with your manager as soon as possible about boundaries and when you feel like it is too much.

10. Be Bold

Ask for exceptions, bring your kid into the office. Take those liberties (yes, you should make an exception for me. No, not everyone’s life is the same, why should the exact rules be?)

Like when, for the first time ever, I strapped my ten month old baby into a baby carrier close to my tummy and I walked into Vitro to work a full day of work attached to my baby. Henry was an angel. I was relatively calm but with even more organization and communication it could have gone even better. I relished the comments from my fellow female coworkers about the lead I was setting about how to be a mom in advertising to young kiddos.

My Youngest Henry Beau and Me

It’s Not for Everyone

Being a mom in advertising is really really hard. Parenting itself is absolutely crazy difficult with the challenges of taking care of entirely helpless human beings while running on zero sleep let alone when you’ve got a client presentation or a pitch to plan. This lifestyle choice is NOT for everyone!! It’s barely surprising that 43% of highly qualified women are leaving their careers or taking time off rather than being a mom in advertising. Colleagues of mine have made sane, sensible choices to just spend life with their partner – and they are very sensible people. But for me, the chaos and challenge of being a mom in advertising keeps me on my toes and makes me a better professional. And a better mom.

• Advertising
• Mom

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