Have you ever felt so overwhelmed and burned out in your life that you could not find that work-life balance as a mom? Well, this is for you! In this episode, Camille welcomes Whitney Casares, MD, MPH, FAAP. She is a board-certified pediatrician, author, speaker, and full-time working mom. As an accomplished woman, she commits to being driven and ambitious in chasing her dreams.

I got to those places not because I am the smartest person in the room. But because I’ve always been the hardest working person in the room.

—Whitney Casares

But as she welcomes motherhood, the weight of balancing career and family all at one time often feels so tiring. She recently wrote and released, The Working Mom Blueprint, a guide for working moms to thrive and not just survive. It is a plan for you to learn to cultivate self-care routines and set priorities to have an intentional and vibrant life.

Listen in to learn ways to create a feeling of satisfaction being a mother and in your professional career. Get to know how to transition from a sense of overwhelm and burnout to creating more healthy boundaries as Whitney shares practical-rooted advice to feel supported in your community, within yourself, and with your partner.

The other thing that changed for me which is so practical is just this idea of I deserve, as a person who is doing all of these things and I will be better doing all these things, if I give myself time to reconnect with myself, to re-energize, to remember what it was like before I was a mom.

—Whitney Caseres

Resources:

Create goals and stick with them with Qube Money: www.qubemoney.com/camille

Access the 5-day email sequence to help you discover your purpose: 
www.callmeceopodcast.com

Connect with Modern Mommy Doc:

Follow Whitney on Facebook: www.facebook.com/modernmommydoc

Follow Whitney on Instagram: 
www.instagram.com/modernmommydoc

Connect with Camille Walker:

Follow Camille on Instagram: www.Instagram.com/CamilleWalker.co

Follow Call Me CEO on Instagram: www.Instagram.com/callmeceopodcast

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CAMILLE WALKER [0:03]

If you've ever felt like you've needed a little help with figuring out the mom life balance, well, my guest today is for you. It is Whitney Casares, MD, MPH, FAAP, a board-certified pediatrician, author, speaker and full-time working mom. She just wrote and released The Working Mom Blueprint. And today, we really dive deep into what is it look like to create that balance that you feel not only satisfied and chasing after those dreams and ambitions that you have, but also connected to your kids without feeling the weight and burnout that comes so often from time to do it all at one time. Today, we are also going to dig deeper into what practical expert rooted advice you can have as a mom to feel supported not only in your community, but within yourself and with your partner. So, dive in deep with me because this is a good one. You do not want to miss and grab a paper and pen. I promise you're going to want it.

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CAMILLE [1:13]

So, you want to make an impact. You're thinking about starting a business, sharing your voice. How do women do it that handle motherhood, family and still chase after those dreams? We'll listen each week as we dive into the stories of women who know. This is Call me CEO.

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CAMILLE [1:32]

Welcome back everyone to another episode of Call Me CEO. I am your host, Camille Walker, and today we are talking with Whitney Casares who is an MD, a graduate of Stanford University and Berkeley and I know I'm forgetting another university. She lives in Portland, Oregon, super smart, and is going to dish with us how to find balance of how to be a working mom and not lose our minds. Her most recent book that she has written is The Working Mom Blueprint. And I cannot wait to dig into your story, Whitney today. Thank you so much for being here.

WHITNEY CASARES [2:08]

Sure. Thank you for having me.

CAMILLE [2:10]

So, I want to hear more about your background because we were having a conversation briefly before this and you had mentioned that you were doing all the right things and you still were feeling some loss and confusion and not knowing how to find balance within your own life. Tell us a little bit about your history. My goodness, all these accolades. First to start with, I'm like, "This woman is incredible." Tell us a little bit about that. And then, let's dive in deep into how this book was created.

WHITNEY [2:41]

Yeah. Well, it's funny that you mentioned actually the institutions that I've been at because I got to those places not because I am the smartest person in the room, but because I've always been the hardest working person in the room and, of course, I was afforded some privileges, just I grew up in the suburbs of the US and my parents were supportive and all of those good things. So, I want to remember that.

But I was always the person who was the hardest working person in the room, but sometimes lost focus on effectiveness on actually creating something that I was really happy with inside myself. And that commitment to being driven or just being ambitious or being able to just work really, really hard, be committed, it worked really well for me before I had kids because I didn't have anything else that I needed to account for. I could be in my pediatrics office. I work in private practice pediatrics. I've done it for about 12 years. I could be the person that my partners could count on if there was a sick kid at the end of the day or they needed an extra committee member or someone needed to run the company picnic in the summer like, "Sure. Count on me. I'll do it."

CAMILLE [4:03]

I'll do it.

WHITNEY [4:04]

Yeah. And in part because I really absolutely bought into this mentality of, "If I want to be a part of it, I need to be 100% go for it" and put on this mask of, "I'm fine no matter what." Also because the culture of medicine is very much that way of, "Just get it done. Do it. Don't complain." But then, also because I love work. I love taking care of patients. I love making a difference in people's lives. I love connecting with people. I always wanted to be in a career. So, that worked for me. I could lean into my job.

And then, I had a kid and my first baby threw me in a loop. Motherhood hit me so, so hard. She was a hot mess honestly. And I love her, so later on when she listens to this in 20 years, she'll forgive me. But she was such a hot mess. She never slept. She had horrible colic. We would drive around Portland for three hours at night to try to get her to sleep. I had to do work to get her to sleep for more than 45 minutes at a time when she was 13 weeks old in order for me to go back to work at all. And even then, I remember writing a prescription for someone for eyedrops, something that didn't matter at all. Don't worry. I didn't endanger anyone, but when the pharmacist called me back and said, "What? You didn't even make sense in your phone message" because I was so delirious. So, that happened.

And then, I thought, "I'll get over that newborn period. That should be fine." But then, she continued really having a lot of needs. And in fact, as she got older, those needs became bigger. I know now that she has a severe anxiety disorder that caused her dysregulated moments that were way outside the realm of typical. We were concerned she had autism for the first three years of her life. She had trouble potty training. She had trouble when her little sister came along, dealing with that. She had separation anxiety, all the different things and I had to just really dive into her needs as well. And so, I was seeing psychologists and psychiatrists and parent coaches and all the people doing labs, doing all these things. And so, I had to lean, lean, lean into her, but then also at work as I became more senior, they wanted me to lean into further there.

And so, it became this yoyo string where I would just be back and forth, back and forth and I would overcompensate in each area in order to make it so that I felt like I was doing a good job in each part. It never felt like I was doing a good job in either realm. And then, maybe the worst part of it is that as an individual human being, I kept feeling like my needs, my mental health, my physical health, it just got lost in the middle. And that I would do things to try and soothe myself that really weren't that healthy, little things like watching Netflix all night long, 10 episodes of Big Little Lies or whatever.

CAMILLE [7:27]

I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

WHITNEY [7:30]

Or bigger things like eating because I was really conflicted inside not because I was actually hungry, drinking maybe a little too much. At the age of 12 months with my daughter, I had marched into the living room after being up with her for 36 hours. I told my husband, "We're leaving. We're going on a trip. The two of us are going. I got to get out of here." Things as I look back on were just this cry of this inner conflict that I had that was going on.

And so, I started this journey to try to be more centered for myself. And I also hear this cry from other moms too. There was this article just last summer in The New York Times. It was called The Primal Scream. That was about moms and what they're facing with the pandemic, but I think it actually speaks to this bigger internal scream that moms are having, working moms specifically, but all moms really and especially in higher level executive level career driven women of feeling like, "Oh my gosh. I just feel this tightness in my chest as I think about all the things that I'm trying to juggle, but I'm not really effective in any one area of my life."

CAMILLE [8:42]

Ugh. Like everything you're saying, I know that people are listening to this right now nodding their heads. And something I read in your book, specifically you say, "No previous generation has applied more effort in creating a harmonious coexistence between work and life. For baby boomers and Gen X, it was normal to draw a line in the sand and expect family life and work to be separate. But with technology significantly changing the way we work today and into the future, it is increasingly difficult to separate the two." And I think that that is so true. It's a blessing and a curse because we are afforded more opportunities to work from home and to always be available and to always have our phone with us and to always get that text message. I think you're right. It's that confusion, that primal "I can't be everything to everyone all the time."

WHITNEY [9:33]

Exactly. You cannot. And I think it's interesting because as working women, we really have dug into this idea of we just need to build efficiency or build productivity of ourselves or work in exercise at 5:30 in the morning before everybody else wakes up or stay up a little later to get it all done and really that just burns us out. Adding more is not the answer and also efficiency and productivity are part of the puzzle. They're an important part, but they're not the whole puzzle. If you're just quicker to do things, more efficient at doing things, it just leaves more room if you don't have a sense of yourself, a centered sense of yourself to just add on more then because you finished that task, move on to the next one.

CAMILLE [10:26]

I can relate to this. I don't know if you have done an Enneagram test before. What are you?

WHITNEY [10:33]

I'm the one that's control. I don't know what number that is.

CAMILLE [10:36]

Maybe number 1? I don’t know.

WHITNEY [10:39]

I think so. I don't have it memorized. I've only done it once or twice.

CAMILLE [10:43]

Yeah. Same, same. But what I'm relating to with that is that, "Okay. I did that task, now let's move on to the next." And I think that that's so easy for us as women and mothers especially working moms to be like, "Okay well, that list is done. Give me another one." It's very much like this do mentality which at times can be really fulfilling, but very often can cause burnout. So, how were you able to transition from that sense of overwhelm and burnout and create more of a healthy boundary for yourself?

WHITNEY [11:13]

Well, I think about this framework that actually on my platform on Modern Mommy Doc that we talk about that's called the centered life that talks about if you yourself are a center, all the things you care about the most and everybody has their own center vision. So, mine, the things that matter the most to me, the five most important things would be that I am connected to my family, have good relationships, that I'm contributing specifically to other women, that I'm exploring and traveling, hard to do with COVID this past year, but exploring and traveling, that I have financial freedom, and that I have health and wellness. And I don't just mean I'm a size zero, but I'm mentally at peace.

And then, there's all these other things though that are outside of that circle that have to get done, but that don't have to necessarily define you. So, there are the things like all the laundry and the camp signups and your work emails that aren't actually about your mission of work. They're just things you have to do, appointments you have to make, your pap smear, all of those things that are outside the circle, family obligations, all these things.

But for most of us, push in on the circle and make it so that we absolutely have no room for the things that we actually want to spend our time and energy on. And then, in the very center of the circle, I think about ourselves like taking care of ourselves, knowing ourselves, trusting ourselves, learning to know our own worth so that we can be compassionately assertive with other people, that like "I get it. This is your deal and also here's my boundary."

So, the book, The Working Mom Blueprint that's here talks about different tools and applications of that blueprint, but really having this understanding of every single thing in your life deserves a place and it has to stay in place in order for you to have perspective and to not get pulled outside of your centered circle into all these other things that don't matter at all. I could spend hours on Amazon ordering toilet paper and I would have checked a lot of things off my list, but nothing would have felt very fulfilling at the end of the day.

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CAMILLE [13:43]

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[MUSIC]

CAMILLE [14:19]

What would you say in your transition from going from that overwhelm to that peaceful place, what was the biggest change that you made within you?

WHITNEY [14:30]

I think the biggest change was developing a practice of mindful self-compassion. I don't know if you're familiar with mindful self-compassion, but it's this idea of basically talking to yourself in a way that your best friend would. So, instead of being the mean critical coach that instead you're able to self-reflect on, "I feel guilty right now. My kids want to come at me in this Zoom meeting. I'm in a Zoom meeting. My kids are knocking on the door. My boss is looking at me weird in the Zoom meeting. Wow, okay. How do I feel? I feel guilty. I feel frustrated." And then, validating that feeling, "That makes so much sense that I would feel guilty and frustrated because I have two competing interests coming at me at exactly the same time." And then, that common humanity piece of, "I bet I can fill a colosseum full of working moms that would feel exactly the same way that I do. I'm so not alone." And then, that ability when you come from that pause to be able to make decisions for either that moment like, "Okay. I got to turn off this Zoom meeting because these kids, they need me or I got to tell my kids go watch a movie for 15 minutes."

So, in the moment being able to make responsive decisions or the ability to probably even better reflect back, be curious about, "Maybe tomorrow I have five meetings scheduled and my kids are all supposed to be here in the living room bored out of their minds while I have this meeting. What can I do to make it so that they're better entertained or do I need to cancel a meeting or what are the shifts I need to make so that that way I can feel like I'm not feeling this way tomorrow and my kids won't feel this way and that my priorities are in line?"

In my book, I talk a lot about priorities like my priorities are both work and my kids, my mission of work and my kids, that's totally fine. It doesn't have to mean I spend all day every day with my kids, but my kids do deserve at least that puzzle, so how am I going to balance those things? And I think mindful self-compassion is the way that you balance them without just being reactive and going back and forth on that yoyo. It allows you to think thoughtfully through, "What's the decision I need to make either for right now or for the future?"

CAMILLE [16:57]

I love that. Is that a practice that you were able to figure out on your own or did you do therapy that helped you to become more reflective and compassion with yourself?

WHITNEY [17:07]

Yeah. So, mindful self-compassion is Kristin Neff who has a whole book called Mindful Self-Compassion and I found it actually through a therapist, so absolutely. I'm such a huge fan of therapy. I think that therapy is the best way to have someone else reflect back on you the things that you're saying that would be obvious to everyone else in the room, but sometimes you can't see for yourself. So, I definitely did therapy, but my therapist specifically uses mindful self-compassion.

And then, the more that I became connected with other mommy bloggers with other therapists, within the motherhood health space, I started to see this was this common theme that every single person who seems to feel a bit more grounded was using this technique of mindful self-compassion. And now, I see it everywhere. So, mindful self-compassion was for sure not developed for working moms or for being able to deal with this inner conflict.

In the very beginning honestly, it was about me dealing with my super anxious kid having horrible tantrums and spitting in my face where she was in a place where she was really out of control and me having to deal with the fact that I felt so angry and disappointed and embarrassed when I was in the grocery store with her doing these things with her almost eight-year-old body. But then I realized, "Oh, wait. This is one of the huge keys to the rest of this stuff that I'm dealing with too," which you know how it is in life, it's usually the simplest answers that go across all facets of your life that makes the biggest difference.

CAMILLE [19:06]

Yeah. I love that you talked about filling a colosseum with other mothers who would be feeling the same way because I think for any of us who had seen a situation like that about a child losing their minds at a grocery store or a mother carrying a child away under one arm and seeing that parent and being like, "Whoa. What's the problem?" The reason why we didn't understand that or the reason we may have judged that mother or that moment is because we weren't a mother that experienced that yet.

And it's so funny after you've gone through so many different motherhood experiences, you just are in my mind now when I see those things, I'm like, "Solidarity. I send my love to you, my good vibes to you. You are trying your hardest and I see you." And it's almost like sending that hug. And I think that that's so easy to forget when we're the one in that spotlight of really struggling, but to know that those struggles are universal. It doesn’t matter where you are. We all go through those things and it's really perspective and time that I think that we can wrap our heads around that and really have more compassion.

I love that you take that proactive step of really talking to yourself in that way of, "I'm feeling this way and I am feeling this way about myself as a mom or as person, but what else is true about me and what else can I explore about the good things that I'm doing as a mom?" Is that a practice that you look at as well?

WHITNEY [20:42]

Yes, absolutely. And I even see that in my leadership role in my business. I see that with my team members that if something rubs the wrong way or if someone doesn't do something in a way I hoped they would or a project falls flat that we try because, of course, we're always trying new things and trying to push ourselves to say, "Well, maybe our audience would love this." We ask them, but even if we ask them and they say, "Yes, we love it," sometimes it still falls flat, a blog article nobody reads. And so, instead of going down on ourselves as like, "This is a failure moment" to really think about, "Gosh, how could I get curious about what we could change?" I wonder, all these I wonder statements that now I've had to learn over and over and over again.

And I wanted to come back to your other question because you asked about what are the things that really changed my perspective. The other thing that changed for me which is so practical and less lulu is just this idea of, "I deserve as a person who is doing all of these things and in fact I will be better doing all these things if I actually give myself time to reconnect with myself, to reenergize, to remember what it was like before I was a mom." The things that I loved to listen to, my Justin Bieber music in my air pods really loud, to dance around the house to Dua Lipa, all those things, I got to have time to do those things. And if I only give myself five minutes in between appointments or if at the end of the day, if I rub myself ragged and I don't have any space at the end of the day, then I won't have time to do that like, "Oh yeah, this is the thing that makes me feel good. Oh, this is the time when I do feel centered." So, then I can call on I'm out of alignment when I'm not in that good space.

And so, I'm always encouraging people. I say, "At least an hour three days a week, you deserve that." I know for some moms that sounds like so much time. I had a mom the other day that I was working with who I said, "What's your goal for the next quarter in terms of this effectiveness balance stuff between work and life?" And she goes, "It's 10 more minutes to myself a week." That is an amazing starting place if you had a newborn. I'll give you that if you have a newborn, but if you're a mother of three, your youngest child is four years old like, "No. let me challenge you a tiny bit."

You don’t have to spend money during the time that you're by yourself. You don't have to do something fancy. You don't have to travel, none of that. I'm just talking about simply you're reading a book that you want to read. You are exercising. You are meeting up with a friend, maybe distanced right now, for a glass of wine. You are watching a show that you really want to watch like anything that's not about you being productive and anything that's not about you performing. Just you being that you deserve that.

CAMILLE [24:02]

I love that. I think that's so easy. I went to a conference this last weekend with my daughter. It was called Dear Daughter and Alison Faulkner was one of the speakers. She does The Alison Show. And one of the things she had us repeat to our daughter and our daughter say to us was, "You're here to be you, not do, do, do." And we would chant that back and forth to each other, "You're here to be you, not do, do, do." And then she would say it to me, "You're here to be you, not do, do, do." And I was like, "That is such a simple statement." And yet, it was so impactful to me because I think often I do get wrapped up in what needs to be done and what I can produce or what I can achieve in the time that I'm awake. I think that that's what you're speaking to exactly is just that time to just be you and to appreciate that uniqueness and what it is that you have to bring to the world and your relationships.

And one thing that I'm a big advocate of is purposeful time spent with your kids. I wrote a journal that's called Time for Us. It's a daily prompt journal for parents and children to do together to spend purposeful time. And I loved that in your book, you actually had a list of specific ways to connect with your kids and how to purposefully spend time at least 20 minutes a day with your children. And I would love to hear some of your thoughts on that because I know that that's a big part of your equation to success as a working mom.

WHITNEY [25:32]

Yes. 100%. They've done all these studies that show that we could spend all day everyday with our kids and if the time was spent with us on our phones or just doing chores around the house or half listening to our kids, that's actually not as good for them as them having discreet periods of time where they know they have our full attention.

CAMILLE [26:01]

Which is hard, which is hard.

WHITNEY [26:03]

Very hard. Real talk, I have to set a timer to give my kids 20 minutes of undivided attention because we talked about I have a lot going on. And especially right now, there's a ton going on. So, I have to set a timer and then I say to them, "Let's spend 20 minutes together" because now I've made this promise that I really don't want to break and now they know. They call it their special time. They go, "Can we have special time together?" which is so rad. I mention in the book Ken Ginsburg is one of my favorite people, so if people don't know about him, he is an author with the American Academy of Pediatrics and he talks about The 7 C's of resilience he calls it, all these seven things that really make kids strong when they become adults.

And he talks about the idea of connection with our kids. And he says it really is important to have that focused time with our kids, but our kids also can't have the focused time if it's like, "Okay. We're rushing to have the focused time. Okay. Hurry up. Have the focused time. Okay. Mommy's got to go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go." during the focus time. If my mind in the 20 minutes is thinking about, "Okay. Let's make this quick. Please don’t make a mess in the kitchen because then I'd have to pick up and then I can't blah, blah, blah." We do need some of that quantity and we need it to be often enough with our kids that we're not in a rush when we are trying to spend that focused time connecting with our kids.

And in the book, I do talk about age actually ideas for what might be focused special time connection with your kids. The complete benefit of writing a book with the American Academy of Pediatrics is that those publishers vet it like nobody else. And so, every single recommendation that is in my book, we talk about healthy foods. We talk about ways to help your kids have healthy relationships with food. We talk about sleep and exercise recommendations for kids. We talk about finding child care and things to look for in a child care center. And then, we talk about the special time recommendations, all of those things have been vetted by all the policy makers at the AAP. So, you can trust it, which, of course, is a lot of work when you're writing with them, but at the end it's so great to know you've got that seal.

CAMILLE [28:35]

Bravo, good for you. I'm sure that was so much work and it really is. It's like the parenting bible. It covers so much and I really appreciated that that you talk about getting it done, but also not pushing yourself so hard that you want to die.

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CAMILLE [28:54]

Have you been thinking about trying to discover your why and maybe defining your purpose a little more clearly? Well, I created a free five-day email sequence that helps you do just that. It helps you dive into who you are, what your special talents are, and even pushes you a little out of your comfort zone of asking questions of people that are close to you. So, go to callmeceopodcast.com to access that.

And I have a little sneak peek of something up and coming about how to become a virtual assistant. So, if that is something that you would you might want to do in the future, stay tuned, get subscribed to the newsletter so you can hear about all the details because we will have special discounts for those who are subscribed to our email list. You can go there and find more information at callmeceopodcast.com or camillewalker.co.

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CAMILLE [29:44]

Another thing I really appreciate that you talked about in the book was that you don't have to do everything a certain way in your mind that you think you might have to like if you have something you need to talk to a teacher about, you don't have to do that in person. Take advantage of a text or an email or small things like that that can really free up your time. And I think a big life saver for me is grocery delivery. That's one thing. I was doing grocery pickup for a time, but during the pandemic, it ended up that I was waiting sometimes upwards of one to two hours and I thought, "It's really worth the extra five to ten dollars of just having someone bring it to my house."

And I think that there are shortcuts we're afforded now in this day and age where yes, there is so much more complexity, but there are also conveniences that we should take advantage of as moms and not feel guilty about it, not to feel like we have to have in person all of the time. Yes, of course, we should meet and know our teachers, but there are things that we can really do to save ourselves a lot of our sanity. And one of the questions I wanted to ask you is what is one of the number one frustration that you get asked about by mothers in this scenario and how have you helped them dissolve it?

WHITNEY [31:02]

I think one of the biggest things honestly is coparenting with a partner. It's about developing equity within partner relationships and, of course, I'm going to speak to the fact that there are all types of different partnerships. In the book, I talk my own experience in a heterosexual relationship with my husband and the depths that we went where we were in a bad place together. And there's a whole chapter that's devoted to building equity and I see sometimes this misunderstanding that it's supposed to be about equality, but it's a 50/50 split when really you want in your relationship with your coparenting partner is it's just not all scaled toward you, all weighted toward you as the working mom. You don't want to be the default parent on every single thing, the default on bedtime, the default on packing lunches, the default on picking up around the house, the default on every single thing, on decision making even because we know moms carry a lot of this mental load that aren't even to-do tasks, just the mental load.

CAMILLE [32:15]

It's the worst. Yeah.

WHITNEY [32:18]

Exactly. So, we give tips and instructions, solutions for how to address that. The first one really is going through and creating more of a business model for you and your partner, which I know is not sexy, but is totally worthwhile. And it's this idea of just diving up like, "Here are the tasks. These are the things you're responsible for. These are the things I'm responsible for. If they don’t get done and they're on your list, they just don’t get done." And, of course, there's sometimes somebody's going to be out of town or somebody gets sick and you're going to have to pick up the slack, but just having this common understanding so that we're not building this resentment over and over and over as like, "Fine. I'll just do it. Fine. I'll just do it. Fine. I'll just do it." Because then you know what happens, the resentment builds, builds, builds, and you're like, poof, InstaPot, blows all over the kitchen and then you end in a rage or you end up not sleeping as well or short with your kids or whatever. So, that's number one.

And then the second is having communication technology that helps you to be in the loop with each other, so shared calendars, shared apps, shared texting. My mother-in-law, bless her, I love her, but she sends me a text every single birthday and holiday asking what the kids want for Christmas and I just add my husband on to it every single time like, "Scott, what do you think?" And I have him weigh in too so in that way, culturally, we're changing things with our older generation of parents. We're not going to change their minds 100%, but I'm just pushing it that way. And that my partner also understands like he's part of this decision making and I want his input.

The third and probably final piece, there's other suggestions within the book, but it's this idea of as moms taking a step back. So Jancee Dunn and her book How Not To Hate Your Husband After Kids, she talks about this idea of maternal gatekeeping that happens when a person, a partner, in the very beginning in a baby's life. They're trying to bathe the baby and maybe the mom is at the back like, "Don't drown him. Do it this way. Do it that way." And then that person backs up from doing the activity because they see, man, they got criticized or it wasn't as good or maybe this person's the expert.

And that happens all the time in my house or has the potential to because I'm a pediatrician. So, I know all the things that my husband has no clue on when it comes to activity, health, eating, bathing, sleeping, all the things. So, I've had to decide to take a step back, remove myself. If I have to walk into another room to let my husband do it his way, to do that because what we see when we remove that maternal gatekeeping that then our partners come in and that they're invested and that they feel like they're part of the team. And that in the end has them take on more.

And this by no means has made my marriage perfect, but it has made it so that when things go wry and I start to feel that resentment that come up, I have something to go back to say, "Okay. I want to talk about our list that we made. I'm feeling like I'm the one doing the things on the list this week. I want to understand. I don't want to feel frustrated together, but I'm feeling this way. So, what do we need to make it so that we're more equitable?" And I think that helps a lot as we wait for society to change and for everyone to recognize that everybody should be treated as equals.

CAMILLE [36:20]

Yeah. Gosh, you just gave so much gold. I feel like there's so much that you just said, that maternal gatekeeping, I could see that a thousand percent and especially as a pediatrician, I have a family and consumer science education background, so adult roles and child development and health and diet is part of my education as well and I could see how physically removing yourself so that even if they think you might be thinking something, you take away that barrier of that perceived judgement. And sometimes that judgment if you say it out loud and say, "Oh, no. Their head, they can't hold it up or whatever that might be," but I love that and the list idea.

I hope everyone's taking note of that because I've noticed in my own relationship that if I hold onto something or feel like if there's any resentment that's building up, it always comes out at some point and typically it's not in the most loving way. So, if you can avoid that by creating a sense of understanding and teamwork, now more than ever, I don't think our partners necessarily saw that modelled in their own homes. And so, we really are creating this new generation of technology and coworking parents and co-tag teaming and all of the things, so I really appreciate that perspective. I think that's going to help a lot of us.

WHITNEY [37:49]

Good, yeah. It's always a work in progress for every single person that I meet, but I think it's one of those things that's absolutely worth it to invest in even if you have to get someone else that helps you along the way to have those conversations and you'll learn how to talk with your partner in a way that is more loving about sharing responsibilities.

CAMILLE [38:08]

Yeah. Oh my goodness. Whitney, this has been so wonderful. Tell our audience where they can find more of you. I know you also have your own podcast. It's called The Modern Mommy Doc podcast. And you also have another book, The New Baby Blueprint. You have so many incredible resources, so tell our audience more about where they can find you.

WHITNEY [38:31]

Yeah. So, find me on the web at modernmommydoc.com and then I hang out on Instagram mostly @modernmommydoc and you can buy the book wherever books are sold. You can head to Amazon. You can go on stores. It's everywhere. I'm so excited for you to read it. We're always happy to get feedback about what you want to also hear about from a working mom perspective, on our Instagram, on our stories, in our highlights. We're always doing Monday highlights where we talk about hot topics that people have had questions about. So, join us there.

CAMILLE [39:09]

Oh, perfect. Well, thank you so much for coming on this show. It's been such a joy to have you.

WHITNEY [39:13]

My pleasure.

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CAMILLE [39:15]

Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of Call Me CEO. If you've found it helpful or inspiring, I would love it if you shared it with a friend and also I would love it if you came and joined me on Instagram @callmeceopodcast where you can join other likeminded mommas like you who are looking to step up in their lives and make it even better. Thank you so much and I will see you next week.

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