180 Unlocking the Secrets of Maternity Leave Planning with Alyson Caffrey

With the goal of helping moms transition into motherhood with clarity and autonomy, Alyson Caffrey, founder of Operations Agency and Master Maternity Leave, navigates the universal, yet often overlooked, challenge of prepping for maternity leave with humor, grit, and empowering advice.

Alyson Caffrey had been running her own business and prepping for maternity leave when she realized there wasn't much information available for mothers who were in the same position. She decided to take matters into her own hands and create a support system for expecting mothers.

Alyson encourages mothers to be intentional about their maternity leave and to communicate their feelings and needs with their partner and support system. She also encourages them to take care of their physical and mental health by getting enough sleep, drinking enough water, and nourishing their bodies with whole foods. Alyson hopes to create a world where mothers feel supported and empowered during this life-changing time.

In this episode, you will learn the following:
1. Discovering how to plan maternity leave to gain autonomy and creative agency.
2. Understanding how to create clarity and support for expecting employees.
3. Learning how to create a balanced schedule to make the best decisions during maternity leave.

You can connect with Alyson on Instagram @mastermaternityleave and find more information on her website http://mastermaternityleave.com

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

00:00:00
Hey, everyone. I have a new guest for you all today, Alyson. I'm really excited to have her on the show. When Allison and I connected, she really is serving such an important, important part of our society, which is tackling maternity leave, both from the person who's going to be going on maternity leave, but then also for businesses that have employees that are going on maternity leave. I think it's pretty obvious that maybe this is an area that our country as a whole has a lot of room for improvement on. So I was really excited to have Alyson on the show here today, and she's going to be sharing some great tips and strategies for expecting moms, but then also talk about it from the employer side as well. So let's go ahead and get started.

00:00:51
Welcome to the Work+Life Harmony podcast. I'm your host, Megan Sumrell. I'm the creator of the top program and top planner, teaching all things time management, organization, and productivity for women. I'm also a mom and wife, and just like you juggling hashtag all the things while running multiple businesses and a family, guess what? You don't have to feel constantly overwhelmed, exhausted, and stressed out. There is another way. When you have the right systems and tools to plan and manage your time, you can live a life of harmony. This is your show to learn from me and other amazing women how to master your time, planning, and organization, to skyrocket your productivity so you can have Work+Life Harmony. If you're ready to stop feeling overwhelmed, this is the show for you. And if you're new here, I'd love. To get you started with my Work+Life Harmony assessment. All you have to do is DM me on Instagram at Megan Sumrellle with the word Harmony, and my team will send it right over.

00:01:45
All right, everyone. I am really thrilled to introduce you all to Alyson Caffrey here today on the show. We were just chatting ahead of time. I think we could have just probably talked for a good couple of hours, but I am going to let Alyson introduce herself and share with you her zone of genius and what she does. But before I do that, I want you all to start thinking about for those of you listening that have children, think back to when you were pregnant and you were starting to think about as it came closer and closer to that due date, what headspace were you in? How are you feeling when you were thinking about, oh, my gosh, those first three months, especially if you happen to be working or running your own business, but even not kind of think about that. And then I'm going to let Alyson introduce herself and then we're going to get going.

00:02:36
Thanks, Megan. I'm super excited to be on and talk about this topic because I feel like it's such a universal thread between moms, but nobody really takes the time to break down what's going on during leave or before leave as we're prepping. And we all just kind of feel like we need to get through it, right? It's just this thing where we need to put our head down and get through this really hard time and I'm really hoping to change the perspective on that. So I'm Alyson Caffrey. I'm the founder of operations agency and master maternity leave. So my background is in systems and operations for small businesses. And so I love language. It's so undervalued, in my opinion, and it's totally unsexy sometimes, right? People are like, oh, I don't want the gritty. Seriously. It's so funny because we can kind of flip the script a little bit to show folks that some of these systems and some of the structure will actually give you some creative agency over your life and over all the things. And so that's my background. I've been running off the agency for the last five years and as I became a mom, I'm running my own business and I'm prepping for maternity leave. I have female employees who've also taken leave as well. And so I started thinking through this over this past summer. I was like, why isn't there a little bit more available for moms around how to plan their leave, what's even available to them in terms of support, if they're working and they need to take some sort of fmla benefits and all of these things. And so I just got completely inundated with research and I decided to start to help moms through this process. Whether you're a mom preneur, whether you are an expecting employee, whether you're managing expecting employees or an owner of a business with expecting employees, or you're just a mom who's ready to prep her schedule to invite this brand new member into the home, this is a life changing event. This only happens one, two, three times, just a handful of times in your life. And we need to just be super intentional about that and open up the conversation so that we can feel supported through the time instead of really dreading it and feeling like we're just scrambling.

00:04:32
Yeah. And I love that. And I think back to when I was pregnant with my daughter. I think this is a lot of women with their first they probably can relate what I thought my maternity leave was going to look like versus the reality of what those first three months look like. We could have an entire comedy series on that. And I think both from a pictures that I would see on social media or images or magazines of this woman who could just do everything while her baby was sleeping, whether it was on her in the bathroom, all that stuff that's just not real. And then coupled with and I shared this with you when we were first talking, both when I think back on, my corporate said I have two very interesting things that I found very challenging. One was for years I had a number of women that, quote, reported to me or that I managed in an office building who went on maternity leave, and never once did HR or anyone in the organization sit down with me, their manager, to say, here's how this works, coach me through this. How do we prep for this? If they reach out? What can I say? I felt very unprepared and very unsupported as a manager with the companies that I worked at. And then it was very interesting when I did get pregnant with my daughter, I was working at a company that was 95% male, and I was the first employee to ever need maternity benefits. So when I went into HR and said, I'm expecting, it was a, well, let me figure out what our maternity benefits are. I didn't have the thing that behind the scenes, I could be, like, researching ahead of time to know what my options were. Thankfully, that company was incredibly supportive. Like, it was handled beautifully. But again, just lack of information, lack of tools, all of that. So let's start first with the expecting mom who's in a more corporate, traditional work setting. What tips, tools, recommendations do you have for them on that preparation side?

00:06:48
Yeah, totally. I think a lot of women can kind of be on both sides of the coin, right? We can either start family planning right, and we know ahead of time that we are interested in eager to get pregnant, or if we're in a position where we find out that we are pregnant and we perhaps haven't planned for that, I would say immediately start fact finding on what's available inside of your company policies and under your company procedures. Because my opinion is that most companies have at least some sort of centralized location where you can find some policies and some procedures, some processes, if you're working in a smaller business that might not be totally readily available, which is something that honestly truthfully, we've seen a lot in Operations Agency and we really strive to try to change in small businesses. But let's just say again, corporate, for example, they usually have a bank of resources that you can be taking a look at. So familiarize yourself in the family planning stage before you get pregnant. Really decide, okay, this is what my company offers, and then really just sit down and decide for yourself, especially with your first baby. It was really important to me with my first because I really wanted to transition into motherhood in a way that didn't feel really constrained, and I wanted to take three months. That's exactly what I wanted to do. And I knew that I felt like I could then just reassess from there. And so just be realistic with yourself about what you feel like you really want. I also know a lot of moms, and this was true for my second leave is, I was like, well, that was way too much time. I really felt like I wanted to work, to still feel a little bit like myself, right? Because I love my business, I love my clients, I love my work. And so that could be true for you in either an entrepreneur adventure or in your nine to five job. You might love what you do. And so it's the same thing too, for stay at home moms and moms who are homemakers, if they have something that they love doing, like yoga or a specific activity, like, keep that and plan that like it is your work. I know that it sounds a little crazy, but to me, I think that's fantastic advice.

00:08:47
And I think it's worth repeating. If you are full time at home with your kids, be thinking about those things that make you feel whole, that make you feel you as if this is a job that I need to be accountable for and start preparing and thinking about. When do you want to bring that in and how will you make that happen? Very important.

00:09:09
And communicate that too with the other stakeholders in your life. I mean, similar to your boss at work, communicate with your partner, communicate with your support system that's around you, right? Your mom, your mother in law, your sister, your brother, like any of those people who might be able to help take care of the baby when you are in a position where you're quote, unquote, working or doing yoga or doing the activities that make you excited. So that's probably step number one, is just familiarize yourself with the process. Think about how long you really want to take off and be intentional about that. But it doesn't mean that you can't change it when you're in it, right? If you're six weeks in and you're like, man, I don't feel like me, I really want to start answering some emails, that's totally fine. But just to be able to have the option and the opportunity to be able to choose, I think is absolutely the name of the game here. Because what we don't want to do is we don't want to not plan and then feel like we have to do something on leave that doesn't feel right to us because everything is shifting. Our hormones are shifting, our new self identity is forming. Our child is screaming or super cute, and we want to watch them cuddle. And it's just really, really helpful to be able to have the autonomy over that time to be able to choose for yourself what you feel is right in the moment.

00:10:20
Love that. Yeah. So good. Now, for folks that are on the employer side of things, what are some tips and strategies? What are some resources for them? Like, when I think back to myself as this very young manager, I was in my young twenties with then women coming to me going on my turn leave, and I didn't know what okay. I just felt drowning. What are some things that employers and companies really need to be thinking about as well?

00:10:50
Yeah, great question. I think so there's pretty much this North Star that I keep thinking about. And if you're a manager or an owner of a company that has expecting employees, really what we want to do is create clarity on the process, right? Just an area where they can come to the mom, expecting moms can come to just get information about whatever they need. So expecting moms, like I just talked about, need to be able to access company information. We need to be able to press that company information right. Manager style, owner style, to be able to allow moms to announce that they're pregnant earlier.

00:11:24
Whenever they feel comfortable and the doc says it's good and they feel really excited to share, we want them to be sharing with friends and family and close circles and then to shortly after share with company. Because if they feel excited to announce that the company, they feel comfortable with the support that they're being given, with the access to information, with the clarity they understand. And so that's in everybody's best benefit, because managers have longer time to prepare, moms have longer time to prepare, owners have longer time to prepare. And we can kind of really be in an intentional position about this. The other really big thing that I think that we can do is start to come up with a core process and then we lead owners through this and managers through this as well to redistribute responsibilities among team members. Because I think there's a lot of guilt that comes along with a mom taking leave from a corporate position or a job. And they feel really bad announcing to the team. They feel like they're letting everybody down. They're like, how is everything going to function without me for three months or however long the leave is going to be? And it basically makes them not announced for a long time. And so then that kind of gets added to the whole scrambling mentality of somebody going out on leave. And so just really getting mom to feel comfortable and supported and in a position where there's a clear process to assess what she's doing daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, perhaps, that really can be redistributed or put on hold, right. If she's in a leadership position and we're tackling big projects, just having a way to assess some of those things and redistribute the responsibilities. Because I think every mom who I've talked to who's an employee of a company has been like, I feel bad, I feel really bad announcing to my team. And so that's something that we can do to help mitigate that. Yeah, because it shouldn't be something you.

00:13:06
Feel bad about, right? You're excited about it. We have enough mom guilt when we become moms we don't need it pre actually life.

00:13:18
And it's so funny too, because I almost see this as an opportunity, right. So many people quit positions and outgoes all of the knowledge and outgoes all of the things with them and all of their capabilities and everything they could have created in the business and they'll move on to a better company or a company that feels more aligned to them or however that needs to work. And so owners, actually, I'm trying to kind of reposition how they see leave as really an opportunity to make some more structure and support our employees. There are so many benefits to having an amazing benefits policy under this hood. I mean, the retention alone is incredible, right. You can market this in your recruiting process. And I think that if the Pandemic and all of the things that came through this taught us anything at all at the baseline, it's that people are less after larger salary increases than they are work life balance these days. And so work life harmony is exactly work life harmony. Yes. Because I do love your take on balance, because I think even when I first became a mom, I was like, well, I need to do everything in a given day to make sure that the scales are totally aligned. And when I actually let go of that and I was like, there's going to be five days where I double down on work and I am business owner primary and mom secondary. And then there are other days where I'm mom primary. Like over the two weeks, over the holidays, I was mom primary, didn't touch my computer. I was loving the cookie baking and all the stuff. And so that just warmed my heart and actually primed me to hit January 1 really hard and be entrepreneur business owner again and be in that position. So, just an aside, I do love your take on that, but yeah, so I think overall, being able to be in a position to see this as an opportunity and less of a setback for your business and being able to kind of shepherd your moms through this process right. Like you are another support system, start to think through that. If you're employing an expecting mom, it's a really big deal that she feels supported through this time. And I know that my mom, when I announced that I was going to kind of go this direction with my company, my mom called me and was like, hey, I don't even think I told you, but with your brother. So two brothers. I have four brothers, two brothers younger than me. She was working at a small business in New Jersey where I grew up, and she said that their maternity leave policy was so terrible. She only got four weeks, I think. And she created a system to help basically take care of her work while she was gone. She was in accounting at the time. And she said that the reason she left that organization and moved on. She now works at nbcu. She said that she was like it was because of the maternity leave that I had with them. I just felt really unsupported. I needed something with better benefits and I was willing to take a pay cut in order because I knew that we were still growing our family. I was willing to do that in order to basically move over and have better benefits. So unfortunately, some small businesses are losing really capable women to this transition just because they don't feel supported. And my hope is to allow small businesses to have these types of conversations and really prepare so that they can keep these moms right. And they can make amazing differences for their business.

00:16:31
I love that. Now, I know one of your zones of genius is mastering that maternity leave, right. Helping women prepare for that. We talked initially about really the first step is thinking through what you want that to look like ahead of time. But then there's the which is more that kind of 15,000 foot big picture. What are some strategies and tools for helping the actual in the weeds of those three months? Because while we would love to tell the whole world stop, everybody just stop, nobody move forward on anything during my maternity leave and then we can all just regroup when I'm ready to like re enter the world. But the fact is the world goes on without around us. Whether it's our job that the business that we may be running ourselves, the rest of the household responsibilities, there may be other children in the house, what are some things that we can do that allow us to better thrive during that three month window or six weeks revive instead of just survive, right?

00:17:40
Yeah, totally. And honestly, this is a learning I mean, it's a learning process, right. I think as I took my first leave, I did some things that I was happy with and then some things that I wasn't happy with. And so, as you are growing your family, just give yourself some grace and give yourself some opportunity to just listen to your intuition and be able to ad lib wherever you feel like you want to change some stuff. Like for example, with my first, I was very eager to recite exclusively and I put a lot of pressure on myself about that specifically. And I know that a lot of moms tend to do that. And whether it's hormones or whatever it is at play there, I felt like I was failing my son. If I wasn't breastfeeding exclusively, even if I was using the pump, I was like this isn't natural, I don't like this. And I put a lot of pressure on myself. And so the first thing I would say to a mom who is taking leave for the first time is there is no picture perfect way that a leave or the first three months with your baby should look right. There are a thousand million biggest number you can think of, ways to create and raise and grow a family and all of those things. And so your experience is going to be unique. That means that there will be likely threads that connect you with other moms and things that you're going through. So build your network of other supportive women who have gone through this in the past who might be able to help you with information on what you're going through. Like, for me, I remember I was in a natural moms group and I was like, I need help. My baby is really reflexy and all these other things. And so I was like eliminating stuff from my diet and all of that. And so it was just really helpful to hear stories of moms who had went through the same thing. And it always really encouraged me that it was just a season and I was going to get through it and that sort of thing.

00:19:34
So that's something ahead of time, right, is to look at those networks that we feel resonate with us personally.

00:19:41
Yeah, totally. So I think connecting there, additionally speaking, there is probably nothing more simple and more elegant in terms of keeping yourself just mentally calm than sleep, diet and water intake. I know it sounds very, very basic and probably it's the systems person in me. If you are drinking enough water, getting as much sleep as humanly possible. I know that's hard in the beginning with the baby and eating well, right, whole foods and being in a position to actually nourish your body, I think that's another big thing you can count on ahead of time. But speak with your partner and speak with your support system and just let them know, hey, listen, I love a meal schedule. I tell this to all my moms. Make sure that there's a meal schedule, even if you can prepare some frozen meals ahead of time that you are really excited to eat. Because I think oftentimes, especially with my first, I would always forget and then we would order a bunch of take out and it just wasn't good for me. And I remember being like super tired and sluggish and even I wasn't getting a lot of sleep. So those three basic pillars, the sleep, the water, and the nourishing food, those are basically the three biggest things, I feel like, that help us make the best, most capable decisions in our life, as if we're nourished on those three levels. And if one needs to kind of.

00:20:59
I want to touch on the meal thing particularly because I can remember a couple of neighbors bringing us like frozen meals and it was a godsend. And ladies, here's what I want you to think about. Think back to or how many times in your life when a big moment like that is coming for you. And people say, what can I do to help? How can I help? And what do we instinctively respond with? I can't think of anything. We're good, right? What a great opportunity. If someone is asking you, like, if I were to go to someone and say, is there anything I can do to help? If they were to come back to me and say, you know what?

00:21:38
If you could just make a healthy.

00:21:40
Frozen meal like that I could have in my freezer for that, that would be amazingly, that would be awesome. I would be happy to do it because I asked. And so I think this is just a great reminder for us as women to say when someone says, what can I do for help? Tell them, use them. And what a great way to what a great specific thing to ask for help on, because, wow, if you could roll into those first three weeks with a freezer full of healthy meals that you're literally defrosting and heating up. Game changer.

00:22:11
Yeah, absolutely. It'll save you so much time. And also, too, again, you just make better decisions when you're not hungry. That's at least my opinion. And I remember my husband talking with our other dad friends, and he was like, so does your wife get super mad when she's angry? It was so funny. I remember him telling me, he was.

00:22:33
Like, yeah, our one friend, she always.

00:22:34
Gets mad, too, and she's hungry. And I started laughing. I was like, yeah, what a good reminder to feed mom, because, I mean, mom's feeding baby, too. We need roughly 500 additional calories a day to be producing breast milk for the baby. And so sometimes I think, too, we forget, right? We forget to eat, because whatever is happening, or we're eating unhealthy meals and that sort of thing, because we're rushing. So, yeah, I agree. Asking for help there is going to be wonderful. The final thing I'll say to kind of help, kind of moms thrive inside of this first period is really just to be as scheduled as possible, but also know that there's wiggle room. So I love to you all.

00:23:10
I did not pay allison to say that. Had a strong promise.

00:23:15
It's so funny, because I think we forget, right? We're like, oh, well, I'll just take it in stride. Or sometimes you can feel like a victim to your own schedule or your own day, and especially with a baby, right? And especially at first. I remember when my sons were very young, and I have a two and a half year old and a ten month old, so I'm still very much fresh in this right now. And when they first were crying when they were first born, it was like a visceral reaction through my body. I could not focus on anything else. I needed to make sure that my baby was okay. And that's very normal, I've learned so far. Right. And I think that what we can do is help to schedule some things that will help mitigate, like all the things that we need to do plus the needs of the baby. And then we can find these pockets of time where we say, oh cool, I can go take a shower or ooh, cool, I'm going to do these sorts of things. And I think that making sure to prioritize time for yourself, right? So if showering is for you, that's like my me time, I need to take a shower and I need to just be for a second. And that's the time where I feel like I always need it, especially during maternity leave. Because you have to take care of all the things you're caring for yourself postpartum and it just takes a long time and you feel like you move a little bit slower. And if you're in a position where you're recovering from a C section or perhaps some traumatic birth, you really might just need that time for you and explain that to your partner and say, hey, listen, I don't know what's going to happen here, but I've heard that there might be some self care requirements for me. And let your partner know, let your support system know. That's another big thing. Like, if someone could come over for an hour a day so that you can just go take a hot shower, like, dress your wounds and do all the postpartum care and then just lay down for 20 minutes or whatever that needs to look like. That was what I needed, and I just needed my husband to know that. I needed an hour about mid morning at 10:00 a.m.. And that was really life changing for us in the second leave, because I didn't know that in the first leave and nobody told me that it was going to be that hard. So I think going with a schedule and just creating those milestone non negotiables, right? So if it's self care, for sure it's putting food into your body and then for sure it's obviously feeding your child, right? So that those big things are going to be kind of the pillars of your schedule and then just feel free to readjust. There is no reason to be so attached to a schedule that we get upset when it doesn't work and we throw the baby out with the bathwater proverbially, right? Like schedules aren't the problem. It's just sometimes everyone needs a different schedule. And even with us growing our family over the last few years, we have gone through, I would say, countless amounts of different iterations of our schedule because something will work or something won't work. And so be strong in the schedule in the sense that we know that one is helpful, but also be able to change that if you need, right? I mean, not everybody gets everything right on the first try and. Even if it's right for a time, your baby changes so quickly that the schedule is just going to change. And so married the schedule, but not the actual structure of it, if that makes sense.

00:26:22
And I think what you said about that and I want to make sure that we're both thinking about schedule the same way in this terms because you're the one who said, hey, about mid morning, I was going to need about 1 hour. You weren't saying at 945 every day. Right. I think it's important when you and I are both talking schedules, we're intrinsically putting the exact time it happens is not necessarily part of the schedule. These are the events here's. The time frame ish or the order in which I would like to have those happen. But I'm going to acknowledge this is a very uncertain time. There's a lot of unpredictability. The baby might need some extra TLC or whatever, that we're not going to get frustrated or feel like we're failing because we're not getting these schedules where it's set on an alarm clock consistency, but getting these key needs met at times that, you know, work best and serve you best. And to start the day with the plan of, well, I'm going to plan on doing this at around this time, but then give myself the grace to pivot or move it or adjust it because of the realities that happen in the moment. And this is me speaking to my old self, wishing I had given myself more grace to that. I was too married to the clock. And it added a whole layer of stress that I did not need to have certainly in those first three months.

00:27:48
Yeah, honestly. And I was the same, I think, as kind of a recovering control freak. That transition into motherhood absolutely made me question like, what do I need to have control over versus what do I want to have control over? Right? And so I need to have control over some of those non negotiables in my day. I need to have my shower time, I need to move my body. Those are the things I want to or need to have control over. Right. The things I want to have control over are the cleanliness state of my home. I don't need my home to be clean. I just want it to be clean. And so I think distinguishing between those two things and I often call them non negotiables are really just going to be so helpful in the transition because like I said, we get so hard on ourselves, it gets so crazy. I think as moms, too, we're like seeing all these photos like you mentioned before, of all these moms who have it all, who do it all and seem to be able to keep the plants watered and the baseboards dusted. And unfortunately, it's not the reality. I had someone actually on my show recently who said that we can have whatever we want. We just can't have everything.

00:28:56
Or you can't have it all at.

00:28:58
The same time or at the same time.

00:29:00
Exactly.

00:29:01
And so I think it's just incredible to start to think through that. And that, I feel like, gives Moms permission to let go of some of that other stuff, right? Like, let go of the fact that there might be some dirty dishes in there right now. If you can go move your body, if that's one of your non negotiables, the dishes can wait. Go move your body, go drink some water, get back to you. And then perhaps later in the day, if baby sleeps an extra 15 minutes, you can tackle those dishes. Right? And I think to ask or not exactly I think asking your partner for help is huge, too, because I know my husband. He's so supportive. And I even had a really hard time in the very beginning of my first leave with my son being in a position to just actually, clearly communicate to him how he could help me. And I think it was really, really challenging for him because he wanted to help, but he just didn't know how, and he didn't know what I was going through on the physical level and through all of my recovery and stuff. And I think he felt a little bit outside of what me and my son Frank were going through. And it wasn't until month two where I was really able to communicate to him that he needed an example. Take my son in the morning so that I could go take a shower and dress my stuff. It always felt like I was putting my needs last, and so it was super unfair because I just didn't know how to communicate. So getting a little bit more comfortable or just letting your partner know I might not know what I need in the very beginning.

00:30:25
Bear with me.

00:30:27
Yeah. Continuing to ask me, like, what I need is going to be huge, because that's what he did. And I remember reflecting back on the postpartum period with my first son after we got pregnant with my second, and I was like, I think the thing that worked really well is that you were super patient with me and that we didn't know what we needed. But now, since we get an opportunity to go through this again, I felt like it was really great. He even took over some of the meal prepping stuff for me. He realized I was hungry and angry, hungry person. So he was constantly just made it his business to make sure that I was nourished. My water bottle was always full. My meals were always prepared for me. I didn't have to touch anything there. He was sweeping the floors, which he knows that, again, is like, a big thing for me. That's, like, my one thing in the house. At the very least, that's clean. So for the most part, he was able to kind of figure that with me. And so just, again, be honest with your partner. Let them know you might not know what you need, but if they can be just available and supportive, I think that's going to be huge.

00:31:24
Such good tips. Things I wish I had thought about more intentionally way back when. So, Alyson, where for anyone that might be needing support planning for this, both whether you are an expectant mom or maybe you are an employer who's wanting to level up some of their, where can everyone find you? Yeah.

00:31:43
So my website is mastermaternityleeve.com. We're also on Facebook and Instagram. Basically, I have two good resources for expecting moms and expecting companies with expecting employees, all on Mastermaternityleave.com. We have a blog as well, which has a lot of really cool tips and tricks for planning for leave overall. And then we have a podcast called Growing pains where I interview mom preneurs who are just growing businesses and families, which is super exciting. A lot of the stories and things that are shared on that show I find super inspiring, and I know that a lot of moms who are listening also do. So that could be a place you tune in as well.

00:32:18
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of your invaluable information with us today, Alyson. It's been a pleasure.

00:32:25
Yeah, likewise, Megan. I had a really nice time. Thanks for having me.

00:32:28
You bet.

00:32:31
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