Anne Johnson Landry. Ep 60

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode sixty. Today will be talking with Anne Johnson Landry on running for office as a parent of small children. Not a whole lot of people do that for various reasons that she will talk about. But we are of course interested in all kinds of ways that women in particular are making work in life fit together. And she is showing that it is possible to run for public office as a parent of small children. One small going to get the president of New zeae But yeah, the President of New Zealand is doing that here, you know, thinking about various Next week on off over the map and I say, we're you know, people have their thoughts on on Sarah Palin what she's done with her life, but she remember she was the governor of Alaska, is the mom of five, including born, which is pretty crazy too, and went with this, this is not a political podcast, and and so of course this is neither an endorsement or anything of Landry or her opponent or anything like that. But we do think that you know, the issues that pertain to women and you know, mothers of small kids running for office are you know, can cross party lines in many ways, and and so we're interested in hearing from her. We're interested in hearing from people in various parties. So you know, feel free to write us about your own experiences. We'd love to have more guests on and we'll be you know, she'll be the main segment here for that and I believe her election will be over by the time of years primary, the time that this this will air. We'll see if what happens after that. So we're recording this in August. And Sarah just got back very late last night. She's being such a trooper doing this this podcast today. You got back late from your West coast trip, right, yes, we did, so we spent ten days, flew from Miami to Vancouver and then drove to Whistler, spent three days there with friends, drove to Seattle, spent two days in a hotel there and hanging out in Seattle, and then like four more days after that in Portland with kind of two sets of friends. And it was a lot. There was at least one moment when I think I made a joke. I was like, I'm gonna like, Laura's gonna pay for this or something like that. I didn't make you do it. Yeah you did your book did I booked? Okay? But in the end, I'm actually super glad we went. And I even made some comment that like my my future self is going to thank me for my present self. And during some of those moments, and you know, truth be told, I will say it. It was less hard than I feared, and some of the challenges were different than I expected. Our baby was Jennevie was very good nine eight months. Seems to be a nice sweet spot for traveling, pretty easily occupiable, hung out in the urgo like a champ. I mean, just you know, no, we didn't have any plan naps, but really she doesn't nap well at home either, so there you go. And she did wake up at night, but again she does that at home too, so it wasn't really terribly different from our home routine, and then we had lots of fun diversions during the day. The harder part, I think was that about eight or nine days in, the other two were starting to go bonkers, and I was starting to go bonkers with them, as was my husband, and we were like, maybe we like we've had prior trips where we've taken a little adults only break where Josh and I have like left the weekend and maybe left them with my parents, and that's been so nice, and I was missing that a little bit on this trip. I would have liked to have a little bit more couples time. But the truth is that, you know, with Genevie's still nursing, I wasn't ready to leave all three of them, and it didn't make sense to like bring her along and not the other two for any part of it. So we made it work and we made a lot of really fun memories. We did a lot actually, and I'm really really glad we went again. Good that's good to hear. Yeah, No, this is the travel is definitely one of those things of the anticipating and remembering selves, needing to have some weighing in it, because otherwise, you know, if it's just the experience of traveling with three small kids, I'm not sure we'd ever do it, given the difficulties that there can be in the moment. Although you know, the funny thing is like the airport part and the car parts, like they weren't that bad. Yeah, that's what I was so nervous about. I think the harder part was we stayed in some people's houses that like one of our dear friends. Oh, they were the most amazing hosts, but they're expecting their first so they didn't have like a lot of baby stuff all over the place, so it was sort of like, oh god, our kids are going to break their glass table. And you know, like having environments that weren't you know, quite suited to three rambunctious children and a baby putting everything in her mouth and made it a little bit more challenging the whole like plane and car ride part. I mean, iPads are amazing for any older kid. And again eight months, I think under a year really is a nice sweet spot because she was entertained by just like I would like hand her puffs really slowly, one at a time, and that was like sometimes she would crumple a page from the airplane magazine and that was enough to keep her happy. She like really didn't cry. She fell asleep a little bit. I will say, I brought a book with me on this trip, as mong page as I read zero zero, so there wasn't a lot of downtime. But that's okay. I wasn't really expecting it. Well, I was gonna say, with the glass table, like you could have you know, could have saved your friends the trouble of their own baby breaking it, So I know, I definitely had that thought. I was like, well, this will be a slow evolution since they have one unborn child that's not mobile yet. It'll take them a few we'll come back in a few years everything exactly, and then you're good, Like you know, I said, yeah, well that's uh, that's great, and people slip it off over the next few days hopefully, and you know, eventually you'll be back to normal more or less. Yes, yeah, I'm not worried about that. The light, you know, it'll do a reset. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. Well, we're excited to welcome Anne Landry to the podcast today and is running for office in the state of Massachusetts. But we'll let her tell you about that. So, Ann, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself. Oh sure, Thank you so much Laura and Sarah for having me on the podcast today. I am an avid follower and very much appreciate this opportunity. My name is Anne Landry, and I'm running for state representative for the thirtieth Middlesex District in Massachusetts, which consists of Precincts two through five and Reading and Wards two through six in Wuburn. I'm doing this as a mom of an almost two year old child. My son turns to this week, but I decided to jump in the race when he was eighteen months old. And what, you have a job other than running for office, right? You are also working in I do. I work as chief counsel to Senator Brownsburger, who's the chair of the Judiciary Committee in Massachusetts. I've worked on actually both the House and Senate sides of the Massachusetts State Legislature and have been in Senator Brownsburger's office as counsel for the past six and a half years, and did you need to scale down your hours in order to take on running for office at the same time. I did, and I don't regret that decision at all. It has made it a manageable, if very intense experience. I ended up when I was considering the run, talked to my boss, the Senator, and he suggested he would be entirely flexible as to how to approach my schedule to make this doable. He was incredibly supportive of my pursuing this opportunity, and so I've dropped to part time half hours eighteen point seven five hours a week exactly, which has made it a more feasible thing to do. Wonderful. So what did you make you decide to throw your hat in the ring a six months or so ago when you decided to jump in? Sure, So I have been interested in running for office for quite a while. About four years ago, I participated in a training program for democratic women who are interested in running for office called Emerge. But I thought after having my son that I would wait until I was out of the phase of life of having a young child or young children, knowing how all consuming it can be. But What transpired was that our current state representative announced he would not be running for reelection, and this was this meant that there was an open seat, something that can come around pretty rarely. And it became a matter of well, do I run for office now or do I wait another twenty years before before taking the plunge. And because it became also became clear that I had the support at home from my husband and the support at work from my boss, I decided that I should do it now and that that way I wouldn't have any regrets about it. Yeah, and I'm sure that. I mean, obviously the logistics of running for office, there's a lot that is involved in that. What does make it particularly complicated for people with young children because I know there aren't a whole lot of parents, particularly mothers of young children, who do decide to run for public office. That is true, and I do think that that has implications at the policy in the policy making arena, but I think that the lack of childcare options can be a challenge for particularly for women and people of color. Now, recently, at the federal LEFE level, a new law has passed that allows candidates to use campaign funds for childcare, which is just this year, I believe, and a great a new opportunity that I hope will lower the barrier barrier to entry for more women to run for office. At the state level, there was legislation introduced this year, but the end of the legislative session formal legislative session has just come and gone and it did not make it across the finish line, although I have no doubt that it will be reintroduced in the next legislative session, as there is quite a bit of interest around this area. But it's not just the childcare. I mean, it's or the funding for childcare. It's stuff like you are meeting with tons of people in the evenings, right like you're going to lots of community events, and it sort of probably things come up that they'd like your parents at, sort of not entirely planned. The things that I mean. Are those logistics involved in it as well? They certainly are. I think that it's interesting I knocked on one of the logistical matters of running for office at this level where there's a fine night, I'm not running for president, where there's no way you can knock on the door of every possible voter, But at the level where you're running for state representative. That is the work that the main work of running for office, but you can do quite a bit of that work before bedtime, and then you can take additional meetings after bedtime. And so I have found that, ironically, there is some benefit to running for office being the parent of a young child who has a seven to seven thirty bedtime, because it's possible to go to meetings thereafter. It's also possible to do a lot of the work of running for office in the afternoons. And csay, you also had a lot of support from your husband. What does that mean on a practical level, So let me count the ways. So he has acted as my campaign manager. He was originally supposed to start off as interim campaign manager, but that has He continues as campaign manager with three weeks to go until the primary. He also he is a public school elementary elementary school teacher, and so he with the having the summer off, has dedicated himself to both parenting and campaign management. So he and he does all of the grocery shopping and the cooking. He has been a tremendous partner in every aspect of the word, and so that made it more possible for you to, like I said, go to a meeting at seven thirty p's there exactly and by the way, like i'd say that the idea you were still nursing when you declared your candidacy, right, I did. I did. I think it would have been really difficult for me to have launched this run while my child was in the first year of his life, when he had recurrent ear infections. He wasn't sleeping well at night. We weren't sleeping well at night. And I think that having an uninterrupted sleep is an important piece of running for running for office, to make it manageable. And I am no longer nursing, and that tapered off very soon after I announced that I was running, And I think that that has made made it easier as well. Not that I'm sure it can't be done. Women you know pump and are able, as you know, as you well know, able to do a lot wehle breastfeeding and having fulfilling professional lives. But for me, I have found that I am grateful that that sweet but often draining part of our relationship has come to an end. I will time in here. I've been very quiet. I'm just joking to Laura. I'm very jet lagged and maybe taking not this is fascinating, So I'm definitely not taking the nap that I desperately need right now. But I'm with you. It is if you're all into nursing, which for me, it's sort of like I feel like it's going to be all in and then it's gonna be it's going to be all out, and when I'm ready, that'll definitely be a wonderful thing. It's hard to do a lot of other things. I mean, it's just kind of physically a lot. The sleep takes a toll, especially if you're away during the day. Sleep training or you know, trying to get your night straight is a lot harder. And I love that relationship, but it can also I was using the term ball and chain during your vacation, which is terrible. It's the sweetest ball and chain ever and it's lovely, but it's lovely to be done as well. So thank you for that reminder. And it's good to be real about it, because you know what, you can also feel kind of superhuman if I remember correctly from before, when all of a sudden that's gone, You're like, oh my god, all this time, this is amazing. I may as well run for off exactly exactly so, And I wonder if you could talk us through a day on the campaign track, like what does a day look like for you? Sure is a thick of it right now, we're recording this in late summer, where your primary is in early September. Right it is September fourth, the day after Labor Day, So it's too excuse me, it's three weeks from tomorrow. I spent the morning before recording the podcast knocking on doors. I'll go out again to do some more afterwards, although first I might work a little bit more on a press release that will be going out. I do have this This isn't so much of a day as a week in the life. Upcoming this week, I have a couple of evening events of what we're calling meat and griefs that different neighbors and members of the community host for people to come and hear my stump speech and ask me questions. So there are number of evening events. But then at the level that I'm running, where you're running for state representative, which is where i'd be running to serve a community of forty thousand people, but where they're probably going to be only a handful of thousands. Probably, I think they're predicting maybe a four thousand person turnout in the primary. It is what you might call a door knockable universe of like the voters. So that's how I'm spending much of my time. We're also, you know, going back and forth with the printer to make sure that we're getting the design for the graphic design for the mailers that are going out on target. So there's that kind of correspondence as well when you're knocking on doors, like what do you I'm curious how that works. Is it just you walk it up to the door like the dog is out barking at you. Do they not have that where you live? Because we get a lot of doorknockers here. Oh yeah, we're running for the commissioner. Yeah, I mean, and I definitely have. I have come into contact with quite a few dogs, and fortunately I am a dog person, so I think if I wasn't a dog person, it could be pretty terrifying experience. But and I do you know, approach with caution absolutely, and you know there's no door worth knocking. That's worth a dog bite. But it is you do surprise people. It is something where you're inherently making people slightly and uncomfortable because you're they're not expecting you at the door. But it is, it is. It is a memorable experience for voters, is what I What I have heard at least is that the no, it totally is. I mean, and I've had some nice conversation, but well, I mean, especially if it's somebody local, and then a lot of times you can kind of make connections with that person and it's as long as no one's sleeping in our house. I think it's I think it's really nice. There is. There have definitely been times where there where a parent of a young child has has open the door like this time, go away, please leave, and you're like, I totally get it, and then they love the exactly and if I totally get it, and oh dear, because you would be such a likely voter for up for me. But I hope that I haven't messed it up. But by interrupting Knaftime, which I know is so precious. Yeah, we all know that that's precious. Yes, Now, I was really annoyed last night when the phone rang at like nine o'clock. I've just gotten a three year old whose kai is? You know, telemarketing. I got to get myself off the list of these places. I don't know how they have me, but no, So you just talk about I mean, the the issues that you're running on, asking them, you know what they're interested and I'm curious how those Yeah, Well, I will knock and I will let people know that I'm running. I'll give them a you know, a thirty second. If they seem like they're receptive to this length of time, I'll give them kind of a twenty to thirty second intro to who I am, what I stand for. I give them a pamphlet of information about me, and then I invite them to ask me any questions they might have, or if there are any concerns they'd like our next state rep to address. I say that I'm happy to listen, and sometimes people are interested in talking more about the concerns and the issues on their mind. And I do think that that in and of itself has allowed me to learn a lot about the community in which I live and to feel very connected to that community in a way that I think will serve me well. As the next state representative. I hope, but oftentimes people don't have a question off the top of their head, particularly because I've surprised them at the door. But I always tell people that they're welcome to call me on my personal cell phone with questions that they might have later, acknowledging that I have put them a bit on the spot asking if they might have any questions. That's great. And so you're doing the door knocking in the days and you know, talking at events at night, I'm curious if you've been surprised by anything that's come up a lot, that's a good question. One thing that some folks who were advising me had different kinds of opinions on was how much to talk about being a parent of a young child, and whether that would hurt me in the campaign that people would say, oh, she can't possibly do this being a parent of a young child, or whether I should highlight that because because it sets me apart, it makes me different, it makes me memorable, and I think at the end of the day, I've come to realize I need to talk about it in a way that is genuine and authentic to who I am, because that is people will see right through that. If you're trying to use your child or your parenting as a political tool, people will see right through that. Or but if you try to hide that you're a parent because you're afraid people will doubt you, people will notice that too. I think you just have to be authentic and true to who you are. And I do think being a parent of a young child does shape my perspective and will bring will allow me to bring the concerns of working families and parents of young children who are trying to manage their jobs and their their lives. I think that that will allow me to bring that perspective to the job that I'm seeking. But I think that it's not because I'm trying to use that so that that has been interesting. I've had people, I've had people say I had one person say I will vote for you, but I hope that you lose so that you can spend more time with your husband than your baby, which was an interesting Okay, well, thank you for your thank you for the vote. Yeah, I think that's the thing that would drive me nuts why I will never run for public office, and I wouldn't be sitting there being like, yeah, thank you for your votes, vote, and that people don't necessarily think about is that both being a candidate and being an elected official are both very time consuming and intense endeavors, but they are also ones in which you effectively act as your own boss and have a lot of flexibility over your schedule in a way that is actually very conducive to working parenthood. In my day job, I have a wonderful boss, but I do have a boss. So when when the Senator is interested in getting a project done at four o'clock, then sometimes I need to stay late. And it wasn't something that I was counting on or planning on. In my role as a candidate, there is an infinite number of things to do and infinite numbers of community events. I could be at, infinite numbers of people that I could be talking to, But at the end of the day, I have the flexibility to decide and prioritize and decide where I want to be and when I want to be there. And one thing that I do prioritize personally is being able to be home for my son's bedtime. And I don't manage it every night, but it is something that I personally value and I absolutely buy into the things I've heard Laura say about you don't have to be home for every meal or for every dinner. That's not necessary. That's not necessary to be a good parent. But for me personally, I just enjoy being there for my son's bedtime, and so I like to be able to do that. But I do have quite a bit of flexibility as a candidate, and I expect I would, as well as a state representative, to decide that I want to be home for bedtime, but that I'm going out afterwards for meetings and I'll be at various locations throughout the day. Well there you good. Yeah, maybe kind of a patchwork, kind of a schedule. Wis in some ways that would work really well. And you're so right to point out the whole like, even if I want to be home for bed time, being home five nights is pretty great, you know, it doesn't have to be seven out of seven. When I was talking about the ball and chain, like that's that's where I'm like, oh, there really is. No I'm really looking forward to having a little bit of that flexity. Yeah. One thing, and I think that you as a key and actually one area that I haven't mentioned yet about running for office. That takes up some amount of time is filling out these endorsement questionnaires that candidates received from different organizations. And if you're seeking their endorsement and you get so many of them, they take up so much time. And then some of them ask you ask you for interviews, and so that I've found actually has has taken up more time than I than I would like, because I would prefer to be spend the spending the time interacting with voters. And then sometimes they will schedule interviews at times that I don't really have any control over. But other than that, and but that is also the kind of thing I could say yes or no too. But for the most part, I'm able to schedule events as I see fit, which is really nice. So interesting. See these are these sort of like back end of the politicians think about. Very interesting about the surveys. I would never have like come up with that as a responsibility. There are a lot of organizations out there, and I don't know. I guess I can they get you two thousand of the four thousand votes right right right? And unlikely that anyone could. But then you don't want it to You don't want to uh, you don't want to give them the cold shoulder and have them endorse someone else or have them encourage their members to vote for someone else. So I remember there was one evening where I went to an event where an endorsement interview, where effectively all I had to do was speak to the room for two minutes, and it was an hour drive to get there, in an hour drive to get home, and it just felt like such an inefficient use of time. It was very frustrated. But for the most part, I don't have that's really more of the exception than the rule. So you know, we've talked about that for various logistical reasons. There are not so many parents and particularly mothers of young kids running for office, and because they don't run for office, then they're not in public office. That's right, And I'm curious what you think are sort of the policy implications of that, I mean, what winds up happening because we don't see this group of people represented in our legislative bodies. Absolutely. I think one of the most obvious areas where we see the implications of there being few moms, especially of young children at the table, is in the area of paid family and medical leave. Now, Massachusetts actually did just pass in recent months paid family and medical leave, although it has yet to go into effect, and it is considered and lauded by many to be the strongest or one of the strongest programs in the nation, although still falling far fall far short of what other countries offer, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out in terms of whether it provides enough resources for people to actually take a paid leave, and whether it is accessible to people regardless of their of their work structure. I think another area is in terms of the fact that childcare and early education is barely subsidized in the United States of America in a way where the cost of childcare are very high and unaffordable for many families, and at the same time, childcare providers are woefully underpaid. And we see that at this level of our education system because it's so under subsidized or unsubsidized effectively, whereas the K twelve education system and even the higher education system are funded funded at a greater level, whereas it's affordable for families and even free for families, and teachers are are paid more adequately. I think it's also interesting just to look at in terms of the at least the Massachusetts state budget that the if you look at the numbers of children under the age of five, and but the percent and then the percentage of the state budget that goes towards services for children under the age of five, they're just disproportionate and out of whack. And I think we should be investing more in the early years of kids' lives with our with our priorities, and with our dollars. And so if you if there are other you know, parents listening to this podcast for thinking, well, I've been thinking about, you know, throwing my hat in the ring. I you know, someday I would like to run for office, you know, and particularly on a local level like yours. What would you advise them to do? Are there things that you really need to have available to you, things you've learned along the way you'd have would be great. Sure, I would recommend you investing some time and resources before you decide to launch your campaign, if possible. Now, I've been thinking broadly about running and didn't and ended up jumping in without really having a formulated plan or having put aside enough resources. But it is true that it is I do feel like the politics game is stacked against people who are struggling to make ends meet and you need some amount of Until we have publicly financed, entirely publicly financed elections, I feel like people who are independently wealthy are at an advantage. My husband and I we almost made the decision for me not to run based on financial resources, because we weren't sure that we could afford for me to work part time for six months. But at the end of the day we decided, well, we can do it. We we can have We have enough buffers if so that one pipe can burst, but only one this winter, and so so we made we made it work. But I would advise folks who are who are serious about this to think about perhaps setting some money aside in advance. Another thing that we ended up Another possibility would have been me for me to take a six month leave of absence, in which case I would have actually been able to do some of the fundraising work in running for office. But as a public employee, I cannot ask for money, and so that does create a bit of a barrier and hurdle. Although my fund raising team, who has been organized to do the work of raising money for my campaign on my behalf has done a tremendous job and I'm so grateful to them. But it's it's not it's it's a barrier, although not an insurmountable barrier, but it is. It has been striking to me how very much money does, unfortunately matter in politics and in running for office, and it makes me want to see some changes within that respect with respect to policies as well. But before that happens, I would advise anyone interested to probably think about about setting some money aside in preparation, and also to do the work of serving in your communities right now, to connect with your local party committees, to connect with your local government officials, to volunteer your time with your community where you'll get to it can be very rewarding, and you'll get to know quite a few people who are involved as well, which'll set you up great for other things in the future too, because regardless of how the campaign itself turns out, like knowing more people in your community is great for many reasons. I actual and personal networking. Absolutely, I feel incredibly connected to my community as a result of running for office, and have made so many new friends and the concept of who my neighbors are has just expanded exponentially, and that in and of itself has been really rewarding. And I'm really grateful for the opportunity regardless of the outcome of the election. Oh, that's really probably a lot better at handling dogs, exactly so, and this is wonderful. We always ender our segments with a love of the week as a podcast listener, you you know, so I guess Sarah and I will go first, and then you can tell us something that is really you know, exciting for you excellent. So for me, this is, you know, we're going completely away from the politics party. I have a couple of you know, clothing items that I wear over and over again, and of course they wear out at some point. And by the time they wear out, the people who make them aren't putting them on the market anymore. Right. Those companies have new you know, new season and whatever stuff. So I found I just started searching online by the name of these products, and I found a pair of shoes that I really wanted to get on eBay, so I bought them, replacing my old pair. And I found a cardigan like wrap that I was also falling apart that I really wanted to replace. I found on thread up, the second secondhand clothing market, so I'm like, wow, this is really cool. I'm going to keep looking for, you know, items that I know are you no longer being sold by the first people, but that I really like and I can probably find them pretty close to new. Both of these things were pretty much a new condition on the secondary market, so that was very exciting for me. That was my love of the week. Sarah, that's great. That's super smart. I would like to do more of that. Especially Actually, I have a few like designers that I'm following on thread ups, so I'll get like cause I don't want to pay full price for like Diane von Furstenberg, but I get there like alerts and every once in a while I'll be like hmmm, so that's a great one. No, my love of the week is the Ergo that I mentioned in the intro. But we did not take a stroller. Well, I take it back. We took the little like car seat attachment to the stroller, mostly just for like going through the airport, but that's not like a real stroller on the trip. But I carried Genevieve around in the ergo basically the whole time, and it was great, so efficient, so much easier to get around on city streets compared to a stroller or even like walking through the narrow aisles of the airplane. And if I had to hold her twenty pound self up for all that time, my back would be broken. So that thing is amazing, and it's actually lasted since it's actually ergonomical enough that you didn't have like back pain from doing this. No, I really didn't, you know if I one day, I think I had it on for like eight hours and I was like, okay, I think, like versus my limit, that's pretty good. Well, especially since it was like ninety grades in Portland for part of the time, right like you were to have this baby strip view. The Portland ninety has nothing on the Miami eighty nine I learned on this trip. It was like, I was like, it's lovely, what is it? Because there's like no humidity and it doesn't get it gets to ninety for like five minutes and then it goes straight back down again. That's all right, and what do you have for us? So I would say that my love of the week is unplugging before bed because although I no longer have a child who I'm breastfeeding, who's keeping me up all night long, or who is keeping me up all night long because the poor thing has ear infections, the campaign stress can keep me up a little bit at nights. But I've discovered that leaving my cell phone downstairs when I go up to bed and giving myself a little bit of space between sending campaign emails or doing campaign work on the computer and going to bed has been really beneficial to allow me to get the sleep that I need to hit the ground running the next day. Excellent. We should probably all do more of that a bit as a reminder to myself of what I need to be doing every night between now and the and the election. Exactly. Well. Wonderful, Well, thank you and so much for coming on. We really appreciate it. Thank you both so much. This has been such a pleasure for me, and I really appreciate the work that you do in delivering this podcast to the world. I really enjoy it and it's an honor to be a participant this week. Excellent, Thank you so much. Well. This brings us to our Q and a part of the podcast. This one is about mommy brain. So our listener wrote and said, hello, Lauren Sarah, I love listening to you. Awesome, Thank you. I have a question. Do you have any tips for dealing with mommy brain, which is really just chronically not getting enough sleep when you're at work. Sorry, that's dealing with mommy brain at work, which mommy brain, being defined here in her words, is not getting enough sleep. For some context, she works as a clinical research manager. She's project managing about twelve to fifteen different studies at any given time. Obviously, this requires a lot of intense work, attention to detail managing teams. She's been doing for over ten years and it fits her strengths well. But she is now also the mom of twin one and a half year old girls. As any twin mom can attest to, the first six months are crazy blur. But we've made it through that she's back at work. She loves her work, she loves her family. How the thing I've noticed is, even now that I'm out of the baby face and have toddlers, I still seem to have what she calls mommy brain. I'm usually very organized, detailed, checkless planner person. Do I find that I'm just not as on as I used to be. I'll blank on a coworker's name who I've known for five years. I totally just missed a conference call last week, despite the calendar reminders I had about it fifteen minutes beforehand, so she says. I checked my sleep since I went back to work, and while it's better than the newborn stage, I should still usually only get an average of five and a half to six hours of interrupted sleep a night. My girls are just not good sleepers. Sometimes they can fall back asleep themselves. Sometimes I can get to them get them right back, but sometimes it takes an hour or two. My husband and I take turns getting up, but even when he's the one getting out of bed to check on them, I still wake up every time they do. I have a really good track record at work, so one or two mistakes can be excused as one offs. So far, I haven't made any huge mistakes, but my work does need to be done at a high level of quality, and I'm worried it might. It bugs me also that I'm not as sharp as I used to be. I wonder if this is the new normal, or if it will ever get back to where it was, and I'll be my usual organized self. Any tips on working long term on less than adequate sleep, well, Sarah, as somebody who has been working on less than adequate sleep, what can you tell us? Yeah? Well, and you know she made some joke. I can't remember if you've answered a similar question already on this podcast. I think we actually kind of did, but not quite with the same angle, So I think it's worth revisiting. And to that end, if we can't keep track of our own podcast questions, we certainly can't expect you to. So what I'm saying with that is maybe you have really high standards for yourself, so I bet you're doing better than you think already. But I will say that there are probably a few survival things that might help you. And I'm wondering if perhaps there's a way that you you might need to have some sterile nights, like where you just put your husband in charge and then you could kind of pay him back. Maybe maybe it's just two weeknights and he does two weeknights and you go in another room with white noise so you can't hear me. And if they need you now, I don't know if you're still nursing them at night. If that's the case, then oh god, I don't have a great answer for you. But if it's just more like soothing them, which is that's kind of what it sounded like that could be, and it's probably better for you to each have like two terrible nights and then two like amazing nights of nine hours of sleep rather than kind of like especially if you're hearing them every time, being both kind of partially awoken most of the nights. So that's that's I mean, I would really think about trying to do that. And if you really can't manage doing that in the week, then maybe at least on the weekend, like one of you get Saturday night, one of you get Sunday, something like that. I also would say, you know, I think that you're probably already doing this, but you are absolutely right to realize that it's it's the sleep. It's not like quote unquote mommy brain. It's it's sleep deprivation brain, which is a real thing. I mean, there's study the show when you're operating on significantly less sleep than you need, that you lose that sort of frontal functioning, You are slower, your reaction time is impaired, you know, similar to having some sort of blood alcohol limit that's above the legal limit in some cases if the sleep deprivation is severe enough. So I mean, make sure you're getting rid of any other things that are not essentials that are possibly blocking or sleep. Like if you are watching a show to wind down and you end up going to bed at ten, you may need to cut that out. I'm not saying you're doing that. You may already be not doing that, but you know, you may need to go to bed some nights at some obscene hour, like right after the twins are in bed at eight thirty, in order to get that first good block. Maybe that they sleep until midnight so you can get that restorative part of the night. And then finally, well two more things, save your most important tasks, like those really detail oriented tasks from when you're freshest. Again. You may already be doing that, but you can kind of answer emails in the afternoon, but know that you're sort of super sharp. Stuff could happen in the morning, perhaps after coffee. If you are a caffeine drinker, you may have that sort of period of lucidity before the fatigues that's back in and finally, cut yourself some slack because it most likely is going to get better. And I as I haven't had twins, but I mean I still can't totally wrap my head around how people deal with that, because there is a special challenge in dealing with two that have the same kinds of needs at once. I mean, in some ways, I guess there's the economy of scale, like you would only have to order diapers for a certain number of years and then you could not think about it or something like that. But really, I think that in general, it makes things a lot tougher and you're in kind of the hardest part. I find towler's more challenging than babies personally. So cut yourself some slack because I think that probably things are going to get better and brighter as they get older. Yeah, I totally agree with that, and I would say that, you know, one of the reasons I love reading Sarah Sara's blog and her Instagram post. She's very you know, real and authentic about what she's been going through. And read these posts of Sarah, you're like, oh, I haven't you know, done the best I could possibly do this year at work or something like, you know, what you consider bad. I think it's what a normal person would consider like firing on all cylinders, and I suspect it is the same thing for our listener here that you know, she's like, I missed a conference call. Oh my goodness, right, Like yeah, and she people didn't miss like nine thousand other conference calls. Forgotten about stuff. Not because they are mommies with toddler twins. They've forgotten of stuff because like they just forgot, or like you know, they were in traffic and they forgot, and they you know, were on another call and they forgot, or you know, I don't know. There's all kinds of reasons that people let things slide, and again it's small things. Might help to just realize that you are probably doing great. What you consider as being subpar is probably not subpar for anyone who is actually working with you. So it's gonna get better and you're doing great already. So this has been best of both worlds. This has been episode sixty. We have been talking with Anne Johnson Landry on running for office, and we will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.