Ever had tough decisions to make as a new parent? Andrea and I discuss her experience changing careers as a new mom. Stay tuned to see the steps to take when you need to make a big decision with your family.
Andrea Barr is a certified career coach for parents, the host of the “All Figured Out” podcast, and most importantly a mom (with one on the way!). She offers support and solutions for parents who want to achieve new career heights without sacrificing family time.
IG: @andreabarrcoaching www.andreabarr.com
The All Figured Out Podcast can be found wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can also listen online or read detailed show recaps at www.andreabarr.com/podcast – Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1KmVuA9kpMBqLPxdJRKlF3 – Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-figured-out/id1650815494 – Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hcHAua2FqYWJpLmNvbS9wb2RjYXN0cy8yMTQ3NTA2OTA4L2ZlZWQ
Lacy Reason 00:00
Hi mamas. I’m Lacey, your lactation counselor. And you’re listening to the early motherhood guide podcast, where motherhood is simply supported. And today I have the opportunity to talk with Andrea. So why don’t you introduce yourself?
Andrea 00:18
Thanks for having me, Lacy. It’s so good to be here. And I love the mission of what you do. So awesome. And as a pregnant woman myself with our second, I am very excited come April to tune back into all the things that you do and all the support you provide, because I didn’t have that with my first two years ago. Totally, I know, I think the breastfeeding thing could go could go smoother, for sure. Yeah, so my name is Andrea bar. Thanks again for having me. I am a certified coach. So I’m a certified executive coach with the International Coach Federation, but actually specifically really niched down into being a career coach for parents specifically. So used to work in the advertising industry, and in different corporate formats, did a couple of career changes went into HR learning and development, I won’t bore you with all those details. But through that journey, I realized that a I have a huge passion for changing careers and career changes, and how incredible that can be on your soul when you find work that you actually enjoy doing. And I also learned along the way in having my daughter that there are so few resources out there to support working parents or working moms. And I just want to fill that gap. And so I created a career coaching practice that’s niched, down into that space. And I also have a podcast. Lately, now we’re swapping podcast, new podcast stories. And so I have a podcast called all figured out, where we just basically talk about things that we’re trying to figure out, I don’t have it all figured out, a lot of people don’t. And so I share some of the wisdom of just how you can navigate your career as a parent. And then I have guests, experts on who share their wisdom on all sorts of different topics, like huge variety of topics, whether it’s from resumes, or the winter solstice, like all over the place, but it’s really fascinating and been a lot of fun. So thanks again for having me.
Lacy Reason 02:04
ochres. Well, let’s get into. So there’s just so many decisions to make as a parent, right? And so do you have any like steps that you have to go through those tough decisions? Like, do I go back to work? Do I switch a career? Do I work from home any of that?
Andrea 02:23
It’s such a good question. And I wish there was a silver bullet, I wish there was like one, here’s the one thing you can do to just figure it all out, I would say it’s kind of I would say, if you think about it, like a toolbox, it’s kind of curating a toolbox for yourself of things that you know, work really well for you. So that would be kind of like the umbrella, kind of the annoying answer that I’ll give. And then I can get into some actual like steps that a person can take. So if you really think about that toolbox, and think about the times in your life where things have been challenging, or you’ve just required a bit more support, whether it was becoming a parent, or if you have a sick family member, or anything like that, and you think back, okay, what really helped me at that time, or you had a big decision that you had to make, even if it was just a decision, like going to college? And what program would you study. And if you really look back into your own history, it can give you a lot of information that can help you for the future. And so things like going back and saying, How do I like to make decisions? Do I like to talk it out with friends and family members? Do I like to go inward and really reflect and journal? And if you’re a summon person of faith? Is it prayer like, you know, whatever it might be for you look back on, like, some of the history and what supported you in the past, and add that to your toolbox. And if we create these kind of proverbial toolboxes, then whenever life hits us with a question or a decision or a hard time, we’ve already got this armor that can really support us. And sometimes we can feel lonely in certain situations. And so you can always kind of come back to this toolbox that is totally in your control. And so that’s kind of like the broad stroke answer. And then the really simple way of looking at any sort of decision that you might be facing, is first just gathering the information. So what’s the decision? Like if you could really write it very simply down? Or speak it out loud? Very simply, like, what is the decision that you’re facing? Sometimes that is, the hardest part is being like, Oh, wait, I actually don’t know what the question is. that I’m that I’m asking, or that I’m looking for? If it’s around going back to work, after having kids is the question just quite simply, do I want to go back to work? Or not? Or do I want to work or not? Or do I want to go back to this particular workplace or not? And so really clarify, like what is the question because if you don’t know what the question is, it’s very hard to find the answer.
Lacy Reason 04:42
That’s true. I never thought about that. Like you get so like, in your own space, so you kind of don’t even realize that you don’t even know what to ask yourself. A totally
Andrea 04:51
totally and it’s it’s normal. We all do it. We all do it all the time. You know, here’s like, I’m hungry. There’s no question. They’re like, I’m hungry. What should I have for lunch? Okay, and you can like really boil it down. Okay, what are some good lunch foods? Like? It’s just it’s, it seems so obvious, but we forget, we’re busy. And so then the next phase would be just so just gathering kind of like the information that’s at play, like, what are the factors, getting some information perhaps on like, finances or chatting with a partner or a family member, thinking about the people in your life that depend on you like little humans, they know that’s relevant to this audience. And setting kind of an intention as well. So if that first step is like gathering the information in the question, that second step would be setting an intention for, like, how do you want to be when you’re making this decision? And I don’t mean that in a woowoo sense, like, truly, like, do you want to really feel powerful and clear, and like, I’ve got this and whatever people say about this decision I’m gonna make, I actually don’t care, because this is the decision that’s best for me, my partner, my family. And that’s a really important piece of the puzzle. And then, obviously, the third piece would be what are your options? And so that’s another hard one, just as hard as it is to come up with like, what’s the question? Sometimes coming up with like, what are the options available to me, and I think we come from a world where things were very binary, it’s either a person works, or they don’t, a mum goes back to work. And they’re a working mom, or they’re a stay at home mom, I kind of call a bit of yes on that. And I want to challenge that there’s a really cool creative ways of having having different work might look just different for everybody. So you can be somebody who stays at home a lot with your kids, but does work, or you can just fully not working like the, you know, traditional sense outside the home. So what are your options, and then you can evaluate from there. And that can be you know, it’s a whole other whole other piece that if you go back to your intention, you go back to what the question is, you go back to who in your life needs to be enrolled in this decision, you can really like boil it down to like, what are those key options that I have available to me, and then it makes things just feel so much more clear. And just like you can take a breath, and really think things through?
Lacy Reason 07:09
Yeah, I love that too, with the intention, because I think a lot of moms have a lot of guilt with everything and feeling empowered on how you really want to feel. And like where you’re coming. And your purpose, I think is very smart.
Andrea 07:23
Really, and having that enrollment with other people to like, being honest about that. Not just keeping it in your head or in your journal or in your prayers. But actually telling people around you like this is this is how I feel this is how I want to feel.
Lacy Reason 07:36
Yeah, I love that. And yeah, there’s so many other options, right? Like, I know, a lot of people are doing Park time. And so they’re able to stay home like Friday through Monday, and then they just have three days a week at work or, you know, working on the computer at home having a babysitter or nanny artist during nap time. So there are a lot of options, which I love.
Andrea 07:57
And it’s not one partner works one person, one partner doesn’t work. Yeah, you could also get creative with that too. Which is really cool.
Lacy Reason 08:05
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so um, yeah. How did you make a big decision? Like going back to work?
Andrea 08:14
That’s a good question. I could have followed my own advice. A bit of headache. No, I’m kidding. I actually don’t regret anything. So my story is I, this could be a long one. But I’ll try to keep it short. I was working at a really large Canadian fashion fashion retailer called Earthsea. It’s getting pretty big in the States. So maybe some of your listeners listeners know of it. And so I was working in learning and development there leading a team of a subset of learning and development and had a really thriving in a sense career there and was doing quite well. And when I was pregnant, my husband actually was in the hospital for two months, I think it was like seven and eight or eight, nine months pregnant at the time. He has a congenital heart defect, and we knew there was surgeries involved. But long story short, there was an infection that was dormant for about a year. And all of a sudden, just things went from zero to 100. And it was a really terrifying, scary time. So my workplace was incredible, actually. And they just said, Go, like, drop your work, go, and we’ll see you in a year because in Canada, we have the benefit of having a year off government support, which is really nice. And so I did that and then coming up to, you know, the year it was contemplating like, that’s what you know, everybody does when you go on a mat leave or you have a kid and you’re going back to work and you just have to kind of like sit with it and say okay, what am I doing, it’s been this. For me it was a year of thinking about it and knowing before even having a child that I was like, something’s not quite right in this for me even before becoming apparent. But there’s a factor of I felt, I’m being honest, like I felt they were so kind in giving me that time back. She paid me for two months, I didn’t work a lick like, it was really unbelievable. So I felt this really strange poll. I’m just gonna bear my salt. So I’m going, I’m basically going back to work at irritated made the decision to go back and a piece of that was actually in my husband coming out of the hospital, he was on these really, really, really expensive drugs. And so medical insurance actually played into it hugely, because he was still off work on medical leave. And that was kind of it was interesting. It’s interesting to actually even just, like, reflect that back to you and your audience. And like, fess up to that if you will. But I own it. I own it now. And I actually talked about it. And I’m like, that was when I talked about, you know, having the factors of play, really knowing what the question is like, for me, it was, am I going back to a red car? Am I not? Another question was, am I going back to work? And am I going back to work in a different way? And when then when I looked at the factors of my dependents, I now had a husband I was supporting because he was still off work. I had a daughter. And we had this really massively expensive drug that we had to pay for every single month, like we’re talking over $5,000. So yeah, and then and yeah, so it was just it was crazy. And so I don’t regret my decision to go back. So I did end up going back, I was there for two months. Unbelievably, my husband was able to get off of those drugs, he was doing really well. He found work like it was just all these amazing things happened at once. Which is really interesting. Another thing I can you know, if I’m back to my journal a little bit, and then it allowed me to actually have the freedom of choice. So you know, often we talk about these types of stories from a real place of privilege, like, Oh, should I go back to work? Should I not a lot of people don’t have that option. And at the time, it just, it felt uncomfortable for me to make the decision to not go back to work, it felt very financially irresponsible. So, so yeah, so that was just like, that’s just a story of somebody who kind of knew it wasn’t right. Like I kind of knew going back to my new day one, that it was probably going to be short lived. And, and yeah, and then I eventually decided to leave. And in my husband’s whole health journey, we’ve just talked a lot about how short life is and the life that we want to have and how we want to show up with each other and our daughter. And I was miserable when he was like, you’ve just seemed so unhappy. And I was like, I am so unhappy. So life is short, took a huge financial cut and leaving my corporate job was very lucrative. And I’ve never been happier. I’m now you know, working for myself, which has always been a dream. And so that’s my long story long on my decision to go back to work.
Lacy Reason 12:50
Yeah, that’s such like a such a life change, like the moment like you’re about to have this life change of having this beautiful baby, right. But it’s, it is life changing. And then you also have a husband that now you have to support as well and having health problems. And now you need the health care, obviously, like, in the US, we understand that better than anyone. Yes, yes. I do understand that. Yeah. I know, my husband is still stays at his job, because the healthcare is so good. So then, yeah, so how was it like, when you decided to make that pay cut and go switch to your new career, you’re like, hey, life is short, hey, like, I don’t want to do this job anymore. I want to honor myself, like, how are you? How are you able to do that to feel confident in your decision?
Andrea 13:37
That’s a really good question. I think that there’s this level of motivation. Now this ownership over the work that I do, and a level of pride where I’m like, the input and the effort I put in, I can truly see the outcome of that not only from a financial perspective, but in the clients that I work with, and I coach, like they are making huge bold decisions in their life in a really smart way that allows them to then they email me to be like, I’m never been happier. Or look at the view from my office, I had a client sent me a photo from their, like, a beautiful view of the ocean from their office, and I’m like, Oh, this is, this is so cool. This makes it worth it. And I also just have faith in myself, I think, my toolbox, like I’ve had to really grow my confidence and my faith in myself, it’s decisions that I make. And I just had this like, No, I’m gonna, like, we will be okay, I’m going to be okay. And I just, I always also think about my 95 year old self. And what she would tell me and when I put it in that perspective, she was like screaming at me being like, leave, leave, leave, like you’re never going to regret that. It’s an expensive phase of life, you know, having the littlest little ones. Yeah, and my happiness and how I show up for her and my husband at this time is just so much more important. So just really grounding like in our values, my husband and I’ve talked a lot about just our values and Family and how we want to be together. And it was just so much more important. It’s so much more important to us than money and upgrading our house or things like that.
Lacy Reason 15:09
Right? Yeah. I love that. It’s very bold and exciting. I love how specific it was like 95, like Avigail and
Andrea 15:17
yes, not 9695, my 95 year old.
Lacy Reason 15:22
So how are you balancing going back to work? And in the new mom life? How are you planning on doing that forward? How do you recommend that for other new moms?
Andrea 15:31
The very good question. So, and again, I’m going to be transparent with what’s working for us. And that’s been having a nanny. And knowing that again, though, my income is not what it was in the corporate world. This is a really big investment periods, I’m investing in myself and our business. We’re investing in our ease and calm and the chaos of it all. So like, she’s we, my husband, I both work from home, our daughter is at home with her nanny, they go to this little playgroup for a couple hours, they come back, like we see her five times a day, she sleeps for two and a half, three hours of that. So that’s fine. And yeah, just I there’s a podcast I was listening to for years, it was a business podcast. But I think this is kind of cool advice. And the women on it would always say, I encourage everybody to just get as much help as they can afford. I was like, Oh, that’s so good. And I’m like, that we can like kind of barely afford a full time nanny. For us, and just what we’re trying to build and create in this season of life, it just works really well for us. And so again, it’s like it’s like looking at all the factors. It’s like any decision, kind of like what I was talking about, like looking at all the factors including finances, and what’s just going to work really well. And for us it was it was this setup. Full disclosure, again, my husband is doing really, really well. But he we just want to avoid infection and daycares can be a real breeding ground for protection. So in coming out of everything that we just endured, we were like, You know what, having hair exposed to kids, but like not around kids, nine hours a day is what will make us feel more confident and feel better. So yeah, I would say just, you know, really evaluating, like, I also have like a worksheet, I can share the link with you to that I really love taking clients through that, like, what’s your ideal day? It’s literally a spreadsheet I created. And it’s just going through, like, what do you want your day and your week to look like? And if you can work back from things like that can be really, really helpful. Like, do you want to be working? You know, five or 10 hours today? And what kind of support do you want to be cooking dinner? Do you want your partner to cook dinner? Do you want someone else to cook dinner for you like all these different things to kind of make it all work? And a practical tip is I love Google Calendar. And we have a shared calendar. I think a lot of people do. But that can really help kind of make it all work as well.
Lacy Reason 17:48
Mark? Yeah, I think outsourcing and getting help as much as you can on things that balance really helps my husband a little bit older now to where they can help a little bit. But if I had just littles where it was all on me, I think it would be essential to have some help.
Andrea 18:07
Yes, totally. And that’s a good point. And like you’re in a different season. So you’re not. I think sometimes we get really wrapped up in taking advice from people without thinking about their context. So you can be like, oh, yeah, maybe I should have a nanny. It’s like, but, but it sounds like you’re like, Well, I don’t really need a full time nanny right now. But I know you get babysitting support, which is great. And like that works for you. And that’s what is most supportive to you right now.
Lacy Reason 18:30
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I love that. So you were talking about, you had some hacks on balancing oil and making it work. I’d love for you to share more about that.
Andrea 18:40
Yes. Okay, so I have an episode that I did on this. I am obsessed with life hacks. I think it’s gone down a little bit now. But definitely in different seasons of life. I actually go camping with my family a lot. And we I would always look on Buzzfeed like camping hacks list, because it’s just so fun or travel hack, like, the things that people come up with are unbelievable. So Anyways, long story short, I absolutely love a good hack. And becoming a parent or, you know, setting my podcast, I was like, Oh my gosh, that just like 10 fold, especially for some reason in the early like that first gear. And I shouldn’t have been on my phone like too much all the time. But like there’s a lot of breastfeeding happening. And there’s a lot of downtime. I could only read my book for so long. So I’m scrolling and I’ve, you know, hit up BuzzFeed anyways. That’s not where these tips came from. That’s just to say that I love a good hack. So the first one I could give would be Google Calendar. But that’s pretty basic. So to take the next the next step further, would be I actually if you go into looking at my calendar right now, if you look at your My calendars on the side, if you have Google Calendar, you can actually create different calendars, ones that are just for yourself. So I have one for my coaching business that’s private. My husband can’t even see that because it’s confidential. I like who I’m working with. And then we have a shared one. And then we also have one that’s called meal planning. That one, because I find when I talk to parents, a lot of times it’s cooking and cleaning. And it sounds like 1950s domestic housewife, but like, that, on both parents can just be so draining, to always be thinking about when are we cleaning, what are we cooking? What are we cooking, when we clean, it’s just a lot, right? So meal planning, if you’re somebody who dislikes to like, visually visualize what’s to come and kind of sort that out in advance the having like, just, I think we’ll probably have this on this day, this on this day can be really nice. If you were really into those meal delivery services, where they kind of give you like HelloFresh, or anything like that, where they give you the ingredients, and then you cook it yourself, or even just pre like already meals that are just being delivered to you or anything like that. That can be super, super helpful. Because we were doing that and we love it, we still do it. Every time we’ve tried to cancel, we’re like, bring it back. It’s so good to so helpful, reduces food waste. And the only thing with it was that we were realizing that if we didn’t like have a scheduled day for when we were going to be making it we’d forget about it. And then we’re like, Ah, you’re supposed to eat it within three days. And it was causing this unnecessary stress for something that was actually supposed to be helping us out. And so anyway, is putting, you know, just the meals that we think we’re going to have just in the calendar. My husband cooks on Tuesday nights, we get our nanny to make one meal, and then I cook the rest of the time because I like the person that opens the fridge. And I’m like, There’s mustard, ham and cheese. Like what can I make with this? And I like to get creative. Like it’s fun. So yeah, that’s what we do for our calendars and meal planning, which has worked really well. Yeah, so that’s fine.
Lacy Reason 21:48
The I think that is true, like the meals can be so consuming. And that is something I’m trying to streamline. Or my goal for 2023 is to just streamline meals, because yeah, it is all consuming. I love that smoothie company they like brought you like is called one here
Andrea 22:12
is called revive. Harvest. Is it different? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay, there’s, I’ve heard of that one in the States. Yeah.
Lacy Reason 22:19
And it was a lifesaver. Like it was just a godsend for just having a baby, as I had my third baby while my husband was deployed. And so having just like Meals already, like, just made where I can literally just throw in a microwave, which just were in a blender, it was just life changing. So I totally agree. So good. Yeah. Oh, good. Yeah. Do you have any other that you’d like to share?
Andrea 22:44
Yeah, you know what, the second one I would share is fun. That’s I actually don’t know how or when we came up with this. And I can’t, I would love to give somebody credit because I have a feeling I didn’t just conceive of this myself. But my husband and I fallen off the bandwagon right now. However, we used to do on Thursday nights, because I think Thursday nights, such a fun underrated night. So for me, that’s like a fun night and we don’t go out or anything like that anymore. So we would do alternating, like life admin nights and date nights. And so every other week, we would switch off. And so we would have, we would have like an in house date night where we’re just watching a movie and we’re not working or unplugged. And we can like watch a movie together. Or we get a babysitter and we go out for dinner. And then on the alternating nights, we do something that’s less fun. That is doing life admin. So this was kind of born out of that, just like talking about like meal planning and cleaning and like the how taxing that can be all the life stuff, like I’m looking at actually a pile of papers, because some people still send mail like, I’m actually an American citizen. So I get like IRS statements still and just like that chaos, or, you know, just like booking trips to back home with the family and things like that there was all these things that would pile up. And then what happened is it would get to the weekend, and we’re like, yeah, okay, we’re so motivated, we’ve got these 10 things we want to do this weekend. But then we want to spend time with a family and we want to put up the Christmas lights and we want to go like going for breakfast with Santa this weekend and just like all these fun things, and we weren’t prioritizing it and then Sunday we’re beating ourselves up and we’re like to head and it’s just a cycle and so we were like okay, we need to nip this and that’s where the the life had been night came in. Now I will say at the very beginning it was so arduous and we kind of end the night like not really wanting to look at each other because we’re like I was like so boring and like kind of annoying and we were kind of like that almost always on the same page about certain things or whatever. And but then it got better and better like we really like there was a couple of things we kind of had to clean up like going through our finances and this and that. And then once we created like this little systems it the admin night went for been like three hours the first time to like a lot shorter and a lot easier. And the to do list had lessons. So there was stuff that was on there for three months that we just cleared off the plate. And so it’s just kind of like keeping ahead of some of that stuff can be really helpful. I love that
Lacy Reason 25:15
and mixing it up. So it’s not like you dread Thursday, because like every Thursday, you’re organizing your closet or going through junk mail.
Andrea 25:24
Oh my gosh, no, like, oh, my gosh, I forgot the key piece of that is ordering takeout. Like that would be our takeout, right? So if you have to go through your closet, organize the junk mail, pair it with takeout. And then there’s something in the night that’s like you could look forward do There you
Lacy Reason 25:42
go. Drink?
Andrea 25:46
Yeah. Get crazy.
Lacy Reason 25:48
Yes, that’s fine with it. Just don’t delete anything or throw away something you’re not supposed to.
Andrea 25:53
I know. It’s good that there’s two sets of eyes. I just throw everything out and it causes chaos. Yeah,
Lacy Reason 26:00
I’m the one that just I don’t need it anymore. I haven’t used it in a week. It’s gone. So anyway, um, so when you are making a decision, you’ve made a decision? When do you think it’s a good time to reevaluate how things are going?
Andrea 26:18
Hmm, that’s a really good question. I would say it’s, obviously scale it to the level of the decision or what the decision is all like the nature of the decision, if you will. So if we’re talking about careers, like a career change, for instance, starting a new job. I think that that is one where I don’t know that I would say like, when I talk to clients about this, I wouldn’t say that I’m like, every six months, you should be reevaluating. But I think that that’s where you really have to tap into your intuitive side. And notice for yourself, what are some of the cues when something isn’t working for you in any aspect of your life. So for some people, it’s anxiety rises. For some people, it’s obsessive, like obsession, or like kind of like a hyper fixation on something, like getting too into their work. And it just becomes all consuming all they’re doing all they’re thinking about could be with like, you know, someone with like food or exercise like that could be also like that could be a trigger or a warning sign when you become really hyper obsessed with something that’s like, Okay, what’s happening here? Like, what am I maybe trying to mask or what have you, in so really, like, that’s another one where you kind of have to, like, look inside yourself for a quick second, like, pull up the hood, and be like, Okay, what are some of the warning signs for myself? So for me, definitely, it takes shape and like a little bit of anxiety. And actually, like the mornings, when I wake up in the morning, like, how am I feeling? What does my morning look like? Am I excited for my day, I wake up now when I open my email, like I’m excited to open my email. I can’t say I had felt that in the last 10 years in my corporate life, like, the emails gave me such a sense of dread. And so when you feel that point of friction, or if the convey if you’re a very visual person, if you look at it like a river, and there’s just these like massive boulders in place that are kind of causing these like rapids, like, what is that for you? And when do those boulders come up? And that’s a really good time to just pause and say, Okay, what’s happening here. And, you know, to the best of your ability, try not to regret decisions that you make, and just take them as learning opportunities, like, Whoa, that one decision caused a huge boulder in my life. Very interesting, just like come at it with like a curiosity and like, Oh, that’s really interesting. And then you can learn from it and move on.
Lacy Reason 28:36
I love that. You Yeah. I think sometimes, like, as a parent, you’re just like, there’s so many decisions that you have to make. And so when you set things, and then maybe it’s not like sustainable, you know, so for me, it’s like, I want to have a completely screen free family. Like, most of the time, it could be sustainable. But then other times, if my husband is gone for a month at a time, like it might not be sustainable. So like, sometimes you just really have to like reevaluate, and just be like, Okay, maybe it can’t be some 100% screen free at this moment. But I can always make a plan to make it better than it was last time or something like that, you know?
Andrea 29:20
Give yourself the grace and the permission to change your mind. Yeah, like you’re allowed to change your mind. You’re allowed to have the intention to be less screen oriented. And if you’re like, Oh, but I said we were going to be screen free. You can take that back. Yeah, it’d be like, today, we’re not screen free. Today is all about the screens because I feel very sick. And my husband has been deployed like it can be effectively.
Lacy Reason 29:45
True. Yeah. And I think that’s another thing with a lot of my audience to when they’re breastfeeding, there’s a lot of reevaluating, like, how is this going? Is this sustainable? Is like pumping and breastfeeding sustainable. Is it exclusively The breastfeeding sustainable is exclusively pumping sustainable. So you think every like so often just being like, Okay, this is not so enjoyable like have we reevaluate this? And had we changed going from here? Totally. Yeah. Okay, so tell me a little bit more about your podcast. So you have a podcast for parents as well. I’d love to hear more about that. And sounds like more about you. Oh, so sweet.
Andrea 30:28
Thank you. I, yeah, I think our podcasts go hand in hand very well, like you can, people can really get the support that they need and those breastfeeding days, however long that lasts, and then inevitably, that question about work is going to come up for most of us. So it’s the all figured out podcast, and it’s available, wherever you find your podcasts, just type in all figured out and to the artwork is a photo of me and my, who’s not so little anymore a little baby. And yeah, so it’s, yeah, it’s just a place to just chat about how to make it all work as a working parent. It’s definitely supportive for those who aren’t even parents. It’s just a lot of like life advice and learnings. But with a focus on, you know, supporting those who are naturally supportive in their life who are parents. And if you are interested in connecting with me, my name is Andrea bar. And my instagram handle is Andrea bar coaching. I love answering DMS and things like that, and would love to chat and I also have a website, which is Andreea bar.com. But yeah, those are kind of the three places I hang out. That’s an
Lacy Reason 31:33
easy one to remember. Yes. All right, and I will link all those down in the show notes as well. Amazing. Yes. So thank you so much for being here. And thank you for everyone listening at the early motherhood guide podcast and I will see you guys next week. Thank you so much, Andrea.
