🤓 How to prepare for paternity leave, support your partner and set up your team for success?
Thoughts by Ronen Shetelboim, #5・ Mar 30, 2022
I’ve recently become a father. 👶
Yes, people don’t lie, it’s an incredible feeling.
Yet.. The journey can be scary and stressful.
Also, I’ve just got back to work after 4 weeks of paternity leave. 💼
And.. I got a lot of questions from friends and colleagues.
In particular people asked the following:
How did I prepare for my paternity leave?
How did I prepare for the birth and the all hospital experience?
How did I support my wife throughout the entire journey?
How did I prepare my team at work for my paternity leave, and how did I set them up for success?
Since my friends and colleagues found my approach helpful 🙌 , I’ve decided to share it with you.
By no means, I am an expert, I am just starting my journey, and these are my experiences, I hope you’ll find it helpful.
So let’s get into it..
💡 Pro Tip! There is a lot of information in this post, so feel free to skip to the parts that are relevant to you!
Here are the 5 goals I had in mind when starting this journey with my wife:
Support my wife during the pregnancy, be helpful and be present. I wanted to be there for my wife, be present, physically and mentally throughout the entire journey.
Don’t pass out at the hospital. I am not a big fan of hospitals, I don’t like the smell in the hospital, I don’t like needles, yes.. I am the one who passes-out when drawing blood. But.. I wanted to make sure I was there for my wife at the hospital, I wanted to be her rock. I told myself, I am going to do whatever is necessary and in my control to overcome my hospital anxiety.
Support my wife during postpartum. I wanted to ensure I do everything I can, to be helpful during postpartum.
Work needs to work while I am not working. I love my job and my team and work is important for me. I wanted to make sure that I set my team and my boss for success while I am out. I wanted to prepare everything I can before I go on paternity leave so I don’t need to worry about work and I can just be present with my new family.
Get back to work in the best way I can. I wanted to make sure that when I go back to work, I can perform at the same level, support my team and still be helpful at home.
Now, let’s unpack these goals and I’ll explain my strategy, tactics and how I tackled each goal.
Goal 1: Support my wife during pregnancy and be helpful and present (7 things you can do!)
Show up. I asked my wife what is the best thing I did to support her, and she said the main thing was the fact that I was just there.. present, throughout the entire process. So.. my #1 advice is.. show up, be present, experience the journey with your partner. Go with your partner to doctor’s appointments, classes, read the same books they read about pregnancy, watch the same videos, talk to them, simply show up, be present.
Educate yourself and/or get a Doula. We decided to work with a Doula, that is not the only way to do it, but this is what we chose and we were extremely happy with this decision. There are plenty of books, classes, etc.. But, if you are in a position to hire or work with a Doula I’d highly recommend it. The Doula is like your coach. I don’t like to use sports analogies, but I think it’s appropriate here. The Doula trains you to arrive at the most important game of your life (i.e. the birth) in your best shape. Our Doula covered everything from how to prepare for the hospital, what to expect at every stage of the birth, how to be a supportive partner and advocate for your partner at the hospital, how to prepare for parenthood and more. Keep in mind that at the hospital your partner might not be in a position to communicate their preferences or make decisions, you may need to do that, so you should educate yourself, and align with your partner on what’s important to them.
Go on a Babymoon. It doesn’t have to be anything crazy, it can be a weekend getaway close to home, but just do it, go on a babymoon getaway, don’t debate it, just do it. Why?
It is a great opportunity to connect and strengthen your relationship as a couple before parenthood.
Relaxation. The entire process of pregnancy can be stressful on both of you. You probably already acknowledge that life is going to be different after you have the baby. So it’s a good opportunity to change scenery, disconnect from the day to day and relax. Also, hotels might have nice perks when you are letting them know that it’s your babymoon. 💡 Pro Tip! If you are planning to fly somewhere, you might need a note from your doctor, depending on how far along you are into the pregnancy, better early than later.
Discuss post pregnancy roles / responsibilities. Our Doula made us do it. It’s a great exercise. Make a list of all the things you’ll need to do when the baby is here and agree in advance on who’s doing what. For example: Cooking, Cleaning, Changing Diapers, Taking the trash, Sleeping time and etc... You can revisit every few weeks.
Get to know your partner. Your partner is going through a lot. As the pregnancy progresses, the things that you think your partner likes might change. I am referring to what makes them calm, what makes them happy, the type of food that like, all of that can change. Your partner, as you know them, can change. So it's good to talk to your partner and make a list of all the things that make them happy. Don’t make this list by yourself, make it with your partner. And save it on your phone (also print a copy, in case you don’t have internet). Now, when your partner is stressed, anxious, tired, in pain etc.. go down the list and act on it, item by item, till you are able to make them happy / calm and etc..
Be supportive, do things together and show you care. Do things with your partner. Meditate together, go on walks, talk, listen, remember they are going through a lot, ask them how they feel, ask what can you do to be helpful. Tell them how much you love them and that you are there for them. 💡 Pro tip! There are a lot of studies out there that show that supportive partner relationships during pregnancy contribute to improved maternal and infant well-being postpartum.
Take pictures. Take a lot of pictures. It’s pretty incredible how time flies, how the body changes etc.. Make sure you take a lot of pictures so you have memories and you can show it to your baby when they’re older! Bonus: create a photo album with all photos from the 9 months leading to the birth.
Goal 2: Don’t pass out at the hospital (9 Tips).
As I mentioned in the beginning, I am not a big fan of hospitals. I pass out when I need to draw blood. But! I was determined to overcome this fear so I can be present during birth and support my wife.
The key here for me was planning and preparation. My mantra was “worry only about things you can control”.
So without further ado, here are 9 things you can do to ensure you don’t pass out at the hospital.
Review the material from the Doula. The Doula has a lot of useful information, make sure you review everything, ask questions, make sure you understand the process. For me, one of the most useful things was to understand what’s going to happen in the hospital. Knowing what to expect at every stage alleviated some of the stress and made me feel more in control. Keep in mind! Your partner might not be in a position to communicate with the doctor and nurses or make decisions, you should educate yourself and talk to your partner so you can communicate with the hospital’s staff and make decisions according to your partner’s preferences.
Drive to the hospital to make sure you know the road. When it’s time to go to the hospital you are going to be stressed, your partner is likely to be in pain, you don’t want to think about how to get to the hospital, where you should park your car etc.. I highly recommend driving to the hospital with your partner, a couple weeks before the due date, understanding where the parking is, where you need to check-in and etc… It’s a great step to alleviate your stress.
Make sure your car has fuel or is charged. Simply put, make sure your car is ready to go, when your partner is ready to go to the hospital, you don’t want to deal with it on the day of.
Car seat. You can’t leave the hospital with your baby in your car if you don’t have a car seat installed. So.. make sure you have it installed, and you know how to use it. Knowing how to use it is the key! I have to admit, people asked me if I cried when the baby was born? Well.. I was really emotional when the baby was born, but I didn’t cry, there was a different moment when I almost cried and that was in the parking lot of the hospital. After 3 days at the hospital, the nurse told us we can go home. We took our stuff, and the baby, happy but exhausted, and walked towards our car at the hospital’s parking lot. Everything seemed completely fine.. But then.. we couldn’t figure out how to adjust the car seat’s straps, so the baby didn’t fit. We did try to just google it, but.. as you know parking lots don’t have a good wifi. Anyway, it took us about 45 min to figure it out and that was the 2nd time I almost cried. So.. figure out how to use the car seat before you arrive at the hospital, learn from our mistakes 😉.
Bags for the hospital. You should pack bags to take with you to the hospital as if you are going on a long flight. We had 4 bags with us. We brought the following items: music, food, water, coconut water, tea, snacks (nuts, fruits, granola bars), books, kindle, laptop, yoga ball, headphone, chargers, clothes for us, clothes for the baby, toiletries, extra clothes for my wife to give birth in. 💡 Pro tip! Our Doula suggested for us not to give birth in the hospital gown, but to bring comfortable clothes from home. The logic here is, if you wear hospital clothes = you feel like a patient = you are sick, but you are not sick, you are just giving birth, so wear your own clothes. That was a powerful suggestion for us!
Watch birth videos. I was very skeptical about this one, but I found it super helpful. I watched a few birth videos online before the birth and it helped me to better understand the role of the father at the hospital, what to expect, what is going to happen. Here is an example of a positive birth video. If you want to watch more, make sure you search online for positive birth videos only.
Write your birth plan. It’s your birth, you are both in control. The Doula kept repeating that. So long story short, you can work with the Doula on a plan that suits you. Before working with the Doula I was under the assumption that we should say yes to whatever the doctors and nurses suggest, but that’s actually not the case.
One of the most powerful things I learned from the Doula is that it’s our birth so we can be in control. We shouldn’t say Yes to everything the doctors / nurses say. The Doula told me if I don’t understand something during birth I can always ask: “what is it for”, “Is it absolutely necessary”, “what will happen if we decide not to do it”, “please call my doctor to ask for their opinion before we proceed”, “we need time alone”. This advice came super handy during our birth.
A Learning hospital. There is this thing, which I didn't know about called- a learning hospital. We gave birth at a learning hospital. First of all it means that it’s a really good hospital, but it also means that there might be interns accompanying your nurse or doctor while treating your wife. It can get awkward and/or frustrating at times, not a big deal, but it’s good to know about it so you are mentally prepared. You can of course ask the nurses, interns or doctors to leave the room and get time alone with your partner at any point.
Things to have at home ready for the baby. One thing that really helped us with hospital stress is actually to make sure we have everything we need at home for when we arrive back from the hospital. It was a good distraction to prepare these things, but also alleviated some of our stress. Here are few of the items we made sure we have at home: baby clothes, diapers, wipes, bassinet, swaddle, pacifier.
Remember to Relax and be proactive about it. As you get closer to your due date (at about week 38), your stress level may rise, especially if it’s your first baby. It’s important to be proactive about managing your own stress. Here are few things we did: we went outside for a lot of walks, meditation (we use the calm app), sleep, exercise, no coffee or alcohol, journaling, we also had a mantra: “don’t worry about things you can’t control”, stay present!
Goal 3: Support my wife during postpartum. (4 things you can do!)
Your partner is going to need time for recovery. The better you are prepared for postpartum, the faster they’ll recover. And yes.. It’s going to take time. Even if the doctor says it's going to take 6 weeks to recover, it doesn’t mean your partner is going to be at full capacity in 6 weeks. You should anticipate that it will take longer.
So.. here is what you can do to support your partner:
Nutrition is key to great recovery. Take care of food, I am talking about Breakfast, Lunch Dinner. Your partner needs to eat, and eat healthy, so they can recover fast. Luckily, you have plenty of options here.
Cooking. Get a list of your partner’s favorite recipes and find healthy recipes that can help with recovery. Learn how to make those recipes. It doesn’t need to be perfect.
Groceries. Prepare a list of all the groceries that you need in advance, save it on a shared file, so you can both access and update if necessary. (we use Google Keep). 💡 Pro tip! you can save time using grocery delivery apps like Amazon or Instacart.
Can’t cook? You have plenty of other options:
You can always order food from your favorite restaurants.
Specialty food delivery services (Mother’s Bee, DailyHarvest).
Private Chef. I was surprised to see how many cheap options you can find on websites like craigslist.
Review the list of things that make your partner happy and act on it. In the first section, I suggested creating a list of all the things that make your partner happy before the birth. Postpartum is the perfect time to go over the list and act on it. Here is an example of 3 things from my wife’s list:
Clean house. It was important for my wife to make sure the house is clean.. and she has a high bar! 😉 So.. in order to set myself up for success, I cleaned the house on a daily basis, but I also hired a cleaning service to come once every 2 weeks and help with cleaning.
Flowers. My wife loves flowers, but I didn’t have time to go and get flowers, so I found flowers subscription service as an alternative.
Photos. My wife told me that she wants to make sure we have enough photos from the pregnancy so we can always look back, and show the photos to the baby when they’re older. I took a lot of photos during the 9 months of her pregnancy. Then, I organized it, printed it out, put it in an album and gave it to my wife a few days after we got home. It made her happy! Success! :)
Friends & Family. I’d divide this part into 2:
People that want to come and help. You’ll need all the help that you can get. If one of your family members can come over, stay with you and help you with errands and chores around the house, that can be a huge relief.
People that just want to say hi. You’ll need to be in sync with your partner to decide who can come to say hi and when is the right time. Remember your partner is still recovering and there is a baby to take care of. You and your partner won’t have time or energy to play host for the first few weeks/months.
Social Media. The topic of social media can be stressful. Follow your partner guidance in terms of:
What to share / not to share on social media, related to the pregnancy and the baby. You don’t want to share anything without your partner’s blessing.
There is a lot of good and bad advice out there, follow your partner's guidance on how much exposure to social media they are ok with. We agreed to limit our time on social media while targeting only very specific helpful resources. Being intentional with social media can be a huge benefit for mental recovery.
Goal 4: Work needs to work, while I am not working. How did I prepare my team for my paternity leave and set them up for success. (8 tips).
As I mentioned earlier, I love my job and I love my team. The key here for me was to set them up for success. I wanted to make sure everything works, nothing breaks, everyone knows what they need to do so I can be present during paternity leave and support my wife.
I knew, it’s a good opportunity for my team to shine, which they did. :)
So here is what I did.
You should let your employer know that you are expecting. Talk to your partner and your doctor, as soon as your doctor gives you the green light that you can let the world know, you should let your employer know. Typically, it’s after 3 months into the pregnancy. First tell your manager and then HR. Your HR team will explain the company policy around paternal leave and should advise you on how to communicate with your team and peers. Follow their guidelines.
💡 Pro Tip! your HR team is going to tell you how long of a paternity leave you can take and you might be able to split it. Some people advised me to take the whole period at once, and some advised to split it. Based on my experience, I’d suggest for you to take the maximum amount your employer allows at once. In my experience, my wife needed me and there was a lot to do in the house. For example :cooking, cleaning, taking care of the baby, attempting to sleep, and helping her recover. Remember, the more support you’ll provide, the faster she’ll recover.
Let your team know. I decided to let my team know during our 1:1 meetings. I told them as early as I could, I wanted to make sure I allow them enough time to process, think, ask questions, discuss roles, responsibilities and specific projects to work on while I am out.💡 Pro tip! The doctor typically gives a thumbs up to let the world know about 3 months into the pregnancy, so you have at least 5 months to prepare your team for your paternity leave, use the time wisely and don’t wait for the last minute.
Point someone to be in-charge while you are out. This step is really important. You should point someone to be in-charge while you are out. Let them know. Ensure they are ok with it, discuss and explain their new role and responsibilities and your expectations while you are out. Spend time to prep them, allow enough time for them to process and ask questions. Here are a few examples of things that this person can take on: run your weekly meetings, take over your 1:1 with your direct reports, join cross-functional meetings, present in sales kickoff, own the budget and etc..
Planning is everything. Planning is really important. Spend time with your team, ideally in person. Everyone on your team should know what they need to do, their OKRs, targets, who is their new point of contact while you are out. My master plan was to be done with our quarterly planning 2 weeks before I go on paternity leave, so although I was still working during the last 2 weeks, my team operated independently, as if I was already out.
While I am out email. In addition to typical planning documents. I created a shared document called ‘while I am out’ and shared it with my team and key stakeholders. The document highlighted key projects, processes, expectations, roles and responsibilities and etc.. It’s actually became a standard practice for us to share a ‘while I am out’ document with the team when people are out for more than a week.
Details are important, clean your calendar. To make sure my team is ready for my paternity leave and to make it more real, I started removing meetings from my calendar and changed the owner of certain meetings from myself to the new person that I put in-charge. I started this 3 weeks before my actual paternity leave date, so I was able to see if it is working and had enough time to adjust.
How to get in touch. You want to be super clear on who can get in touch with you and how to get in touch with you while you are out. Here are few things you can do.
Stay in touch with 1 specific person. I stayed in touch with my boss. I made sure to give him updates on the baby, and checked in with him once in a while to make sure everything is ok with my team and projects are on track.
Slack Channel. We have a slack channel called ‘ask-marketing’. Everyone has access to this channel. So when people outside of marketing have questions for marketing, they can just post it in the channel and someone from marketing will answer. I highlighted this in my out of the office email.
Out of office email. Don’t forget to set up your out of office for internal and external communication and on slack.
Disconnect, so you can be present. Remove your work apps, or at least turn off notifications. Be present, your partner needs you, your baby needs, and time flies. If you did the prep with your team, it’s an opportunity for them to shine while you are out. It’s also an opportunity for you to really disconnect and come back with new energy, fresh ideas and new perspective.💡 Pro Tip! It’s an opportunity for you to set an example for your team, if you show them that it’s important to disconnect and be with your family, they will do the same when they need to.
Goal 5: Get back to work in the best way I can. (5 tips)
I am sort of right in the middle of all of this, maybe I’ll write a specific post about this topic in a few months. But, here are a few things that I found helpful so far.
Set expectations with your partner. Share your calendar with your partner, discuss the ideal schedule. Who’s getting up at night and when, who feeds the baby, who cleans, who cooks, who runs errands etc.. You should revisit every few weeks.
Sleeping gear. You are not going to sleep a lot, but when you have an opportunity to sleep, you need to make sure you are getting a good sleep, it’s so important. Here is what I do to ensure great sleep: Ear Plugs (link), Eye Mask (link), Calm app, no coffee after 1pm.
Ask for recaps emails. You are most likely going to come back to an inbox with thousands of emails. You probably won’t have time to read all of those emails. So.. something I found very helpful is to ask my team to send me a recap email a few days before I am back at the office. It saved me a lot of time and got me up to speed quickly. I asked the email to include the following info:
what worked well
what didn’t work
where do they need help
what is the 1-3 things I should know about or be aware of from the time I was a way.
Prioritize and be efficient with your team. Now you have a newborn at home, so you’ll have less time in general. You are going to have to train yourself to prioritize your work, protect your time, make sure you focus only on the important stuff, and you need to make decisions fast. No time to overthink or procrastinate.
4am club anyone? There is so much information out there about the benefit of waking up early. Simply put, it works. It doesn’t have to be at 4am. But If you can find the time that works for you, get up early, before everyone else is up. You might find 1-2 hours of quiet time, where you can do creative work, write, meditate, exercise, whatever you like, and have time for yourself. It’s a great hack if you can make it work for you.
I know there is a lot of information here, I hope you’ll find it helpful.
Per usual, let me know if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback.
Good luck!
P.s. if you like my newsletter and find it helpful, it will mean the world to me if you can share it 🙌, so it can help other managers and leaders 💛 .
Great post, thanks for sharing!