Looking for a great gift for your toddler or little kid? Here’s a round-up of some of our favorite kid toys and gifts—forward this list to your relatives over the holidays if you need to come up with a gift list.
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What To Buy New Parents: Our Holiday Gift Guide For Brand New Parents
Is someone in your family or friend circle expecting a baby? Here’s our guide of the best gifts to get your brand-new parent friends—and what to avoid.
Goal Setting, Making Progress, and Minibook Updates — Episode #130
For the fall podcast hiatus, I’m on a break so I can focus on writing. This is my second writing update, and I have big news for you! We shipped our second minibook and I’m even reading an excerpt out loud on the podcast. Hip hip hooray!
Pivot or Pause: Inside A Hard Decision—Episode #127
As we gear up for Fall, I feel the urge to stop this podcast for a while. To be honest, it scares me a little—I can’t stop, can I? I took this question to the group of smart women in our online Startup Pregnant community group and got a ton of wonderful feedback. Here’s what’s happening with our podcast for the coming season, and why the format (and release dates) are shifting a bit.
The Myth of Equal Partnership in Parenting — Episode #119 With Darcy Lockman
“Two-career couples have the assumption going into having a family, ‘Of course this is equal co-parenting. It’s 2019. What else would we do?’ But it so rarely plays out that way.” Despite the hope for equal partnership, it’s often mothers who are still doing the lion’s share of the unpaid, invisible labor of managing children and the home. Why is this?
If You Work Hard Enough You Can Do Anything, Except Get Pregnant: A Journey Through Infertility — Episode #118 With Lucy Knisley
Her whole life, Lucy Knisley wanted to be a mother, but when it was finally the perfect time for conceiving, it turned out to be harder than anything she’d ever attempted. Fertility problems were followed by miscarriages and her eventual successful pregnancy was plagued by health issues and led to a dramatic near-death experience during labor and delivery. She chronicled this experience and more in the book that she recently wrote called “Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos.” The book is funny and terrifying and informative and useful and real and raw, just like our conversation with Lucy today.
The Myths of Miscarriage, The Lean In Fallacy, and Mothers’ Rage — Episode #115 With Katherine Goldstein
Katherine Goldstein found our she was pregnant as she was trying to launch a podcast about how mothers experience bias and discrimination in the workplace—making the issue front and center in her life. Yet she experienced trauma and blowback despite the knowledge. Today we still force women to wrap their miscarriage and fertility traumas into a bow—“But now I have a baby, so it’s all okay”—to make it palatable to the public. Award-winning journalist and podcast creator Katherine Goldstein goes deep with us on so many of the most pressing topics for working mothers and holds nothing back. Between her research, the data, her own experience, and her reported experience of hundreds of moms, Katherine is waging war against cultural forces holding mothers back from being their fullest, most ambitious, most rage-filled selves.
Data Driven Parenting: An Economist on Breastfeeding, Sleep Training, and Vaccinations — Episode #111 With Emily Oster
After disrupting the fear-based pregnancy advice space with her first book “Expecting Better”, Economist Emily Oster is back, applying her data-driven decision making to parenting with her second book, “Cribsheet”. Many of her conclusions will surprise you: like who is the biggest beneficiary of breast-feeding, who is correct in the sleep train or not debate, and how to understand the full body of research around vaccinations. If you’re like me, you’ll appreciate Oster’s warmth and candor about her own parenting experiences and you’ll leave this interview feeling informed, empowered, and confident in your own parenting choices.
The Perfect Mother Myth — Why You’re Not A “Bad Mom.” Episode #110 with Dr. Alexandra Sacks
In our culture, mothers are divided into two camps: the “Perfect Mother” or the “Bad Mom.” This false dichotomy robs women of a shared language to speak about motherhood as it really is: an expansive, grey emotional zone of swirling, conflicting feelings. Dr. Alexandra Sacks guides us a through a new way of looking at motherhood through the lens of “matrescence” — or the natural psychological experience that is the identity transition into motherhood.
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New Coaching Times Available for The Wise Women’s Council
Quick announcement: we are adding more time slots for the live coaching sessions in The Wise Women’s Council. One of the main emails we’ve been getting is that the program looks wonderful *but* the times are hard to make. We are listening and we’ve added new coaching time options.
The Power of a Network (and Why You Need to Do This One Thing Before You Feel Ready)
Here’s the biggest thing people misunderstand about growing a network and meeting people in business. Rather than trying to be transactional about it, use this strategy that I’ve used throughout my career to form genuine connections, to nurture your tribe and your friendships, and to build your network (long before you need it).
The Wise Women’s Council, the Startup Pregnant Mastermind, Is Now Open for Applications
Last year we launched our first mastermind community for a group of talented, inspiring women entrepreneurs, thinkers, and do-ers. Now, it’s back for our 2019 round and we would love to have you join us. It’s a nine-month program for women change makers to come together to think through the puzzles of what it means to be a woman, a business owner, and a parent all at the same time (or pretty close to the same time).
A Kind of Freedom — Episode #077 With Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
How do you give yourself the freedom to pursue something you love? Margaret Wilkerson Sexton was working at a prestigious law firm when she took that leap.
Lessons Learned From Launching the Startup Pregnant Mastermind — Episode #068
Today, I’m walking you through what it takes to put together a mastermind and explaining why I chose to do it now—in the middle of my second pregnancy.
Why Listening Well Is More Important Than Giving Advice
It’s fun to brainstorm, to be clever, to solve things. There’s a smattering of satisfaction associated with this—at least for me—because it feels good to solve things. It feels so good, in fact, that I notice sometimes I interrupt, break in, or try to solve something before we’ve even gotten to the root of the question. In our lives, it’s easy to jump right in and propose solutions before we even understand the scope of what’s happening. The trouble is, how do we know that our advice is what really needs to be said? Here’s how and why to listen, instead.
What Is a Mastermind and Should You Join One?
One of the hard parts of being an entrepreneur is the psychological weight of being the key decision-maker. Every decision and metric depends on you. Figuring out how to organize your time, stay accountable, and make everything happen without losing your mind is a real challenge. I don’t say this lightly: Not having people to talk to and bounce ideas around with can be one of the hardest parts of starting your own business. For that reason, many entrepreneurs I know turn to mastermind accountability groups to help them stay focused and successful. But what exactly is a mastermind and why are they so important? Here’s what they are, how they’re structured, and how it works.
Postpartum Recovery: Healing, Being a New Mom, and Nutritional Health — Episode #059 With Lily Nichols
We place a lot of emphasis on planning for the perfect birth and making sure that our bodies are healthy during pregnancy. But what do we need to recover after the baby arrives? Lily Nichols shares her postpartum journey, discussing her extreme caution around physical exertion and the nutrients new moms need to heal damaged tissue and meet the energy demands of breastfeeding.
Three Lists Every Postpartum Mama Needs (an Easier Way to Ask for Help)
The first few days and weeks postpartum are challenging. Not only are you resting and recovering from the massive feat of bringing a baby into the world— but you’re also transforming in your relationships. Alongside this, I found that communicating clearly to others and setting good boundaries was also quite hard. How do you communicate to those around you what you need and want? How do you tell them how to help, and when it’s too much? In this post I want to share a strategy I love for preparing for your postpartum period: writing out to-do lists for other people ahead of time. Here are three lists you can use in your own planning.
Here’s the System I Used to Cut 50% of My Workload This Year
Most of us are taking on an insane amount of work, and we’re stressed, burned out, and over-tired from it. This year, I decided to plan ahead and find a way to do WAY less, but do it strategically. But what would I leave off the plate, and what would I keep? Here’s the three-part strategy I used to evaluate my time and my energy, and the surprising insights that came as a result of the exercise. Also: heads up, this is a lengthy post (4,500 words and counting).
12 Books for Your Little One, Featuring Women and Diverse Characters
As a soon-to-be-parent in the height of the #MeToo movement, I worry about how to cultivate in my child a way of viewing the world that is kind, compassionate and curious. It feels more urgent and important than ever for me to introduce important concepts to my child. While I don’t get to choose to have my first child be born under the first female president, but I do get to choose what topics, ideas, and characters he or she is exposed to at this tender and influential time. These books are meant to inspire all children, to teach lessons like: to never give up; to fight for what you believe in; that genius exists in all races, ages, and gender identities; to ignore those who will doubt or shame you; to believe in yourself and to lift up those around you.
9 Children’s Books to Help You Talk To Your Kids About Emotions
I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of three year olds in my life right now. These sweet, coordinated, hilarious, opinionated little ones blow me away with their personalities, storytelling, and ability to recall exactly what their parents (or potty-mouthed aunties say). But the biggest surprise for me has been just how big the feelings are inside of these small bodies. I don’t mean that as a euphemism for drama or poor behavior, it’s truly that these sweet kids have such big experiences and are working through how to express themselves and process these feelings. For adults and kids of all ages, it can be helpful to hear stories and to know we’re together in this work of being human. Here are nine children’s books to serve as a jumping off points for parents to talk to their little ones about different emotions, what they feel like, and how to process and experience them.
Preparing for the First 30 Days Postpartum After a C-Section
Recovering from a C-Section is worlds different than recovering from a vaginal birth. Here are 9 steps you can take to be prepared before your birth and during your recovery.
Living and Learning Out Loud – Episode #025
If you believe something, does it always have to stay the same? One of the best advantages we have as entrepreneurs, moms or human beings is recognizing when our values need to adapt. Today’s special mini-episode walks through the learning process of how we established the 10 Core Values for Startup Pregnant, and what we learned along the way.
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