Eva: (00:00)
Hey there, you’re listening to the, My Sleeping Baby podcast, which is all about baby and child sleep. I’m so excited to teach you how you can get your little ones sleeping so that you can sleep too and enjoy parenthood to its fullest. I’m Eva Klein, your resident’s sleep expert, mom of three, founder of the Sleep Bible online coaching program, and lover of all things sleep and motherhood. If you’re looking for tangible solutions for your little one sleep woes or you simply want to learn more, this podcast is for you. For more information, check out mysleepingbaby.com and you can follow me on Instagram and Facebook @mysleepingbaby. All right, Shanna. Thank you so much for being here today.

Kinia: (00:43)
Thanks so much for having me. I’m very excited to talk to you. The moms who, who listened to you every week. My name is Kenya. I’m an OSCA, as you mentioned, and I’m an award-winning investigative journalist turned maternity leave strategists and working mom whisper. And what that means is we help brainy, perfectionist moms make leaps and bounds in their personal and professional happiness without compromising family happiness or health. So I know you practice as a lawyer and that kind of means that at the end of the time spent together, the women in the Mamba have the constitution for their life and every single aspect of it. And they can make decisions in alignment with what they really want for their family, happiness, health, and career during motherhood, without incurred, incurring that million dollar wealth gap or the motherhood penalty that we call it. So it’s a community, it’s a learning space. It’s a space to network. And I work with a lot of engineers, lots of brainy moms who want to maximize their mat, leave to springboard their career during motherhood and make the right choices for, for themselves in their lives.

Eva: (01:41)
And that sounds like such an unbelievably amazing resource that you provide to moms. Because I find that when you become a mom, whether it’s for the first time or you have, you know, your second child or your third child, that a lot of the time things change for you in terms of your priorities. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that now you don’t prioritize your career anymore, but suddenly your 8:00 AM to six 30 or seven, 7:30 PM. Job doesn’t really seem as appealing to go back to now that you’ve got, you know, a couple of kids at home or even just your, your first baby, but at the same time while becoming a stay at home, mom might be appealing to some, there are many others who are saying, Hmm, I don’t think I want to be a stay-at-home mom. I think I still want to stay in the workforce, but not in the capacity that I was in before I became a mom, because there wasn’t enough. There isn’t enough flexibility. The work hours are too demanding, and I want to be able to have my cake and eat it too. Right?

Kinia: (02:47)
Absolutely. You nailed it on the head, the priorities change. And that kind of leads me to the number one mistake. I see a new moms who have careers and it’s that they don’t acknowledge change. It’s the biggest identity shift you’re going to face in your life, right? One of, or if not the biggest. So your values change, your priorities, change systems, friendships, relationships. And so I often see moms using their pre-baby brain trying to navigate post-baby life and having those same points of reference. And just trying to squeeze that all in without actually reevaluating, how they changed. Right? And it is somewhat shocking. When I speak to people. When I ask them, what are the foundation for the decisions they’re making? What are their values? And most people don’t know what their values are. They’ve never taken the time to actually acknowledge them. So when a situation like the pandemic hits and you are making decisions based on all the baggage that you have, all the systems, all the values, maybe that come from your parents, your family workplaces, gendered expectations, but you haven’t actually filtered it through your own.

Kinia: (03:51)
What we’d like to call the inner mentor. And you haven’t sat down with your husband or your partner or whoever, the other people who are helping you raise your kids, because we all have some sort of village. And then you’re navigating this world feeling all weird. Like something’s not right, you’re, you’re at work, but you’re thinking about your kids and then you’re with your kids. But you’re thinking about the deadlines at home from that can be so confusing to navigate on your own. So the biggest mistake I see with moms is they don’t honor that change, that change that’s called mattress and your hormones, your, your psychology, your body, your relationship with your spouse. There’s so much to unpack there, your new identity. And once you can get more clarity on that and bounce ideas with other moms on it and make decisions, it can feel so much more empowering and easier to decide what it is that you’re going to do in terms of your career during motherhood. What’s the long game that you’re playing. How would you have to square things off with your partner, your husband, to actually feel happy most of the time and not feel like you’re being pulled in a bunch of different directions and not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel and sight. Yeah.

Eva: (04:56)
Yes, because I feel like that guilt that you can experience when you’re at work, but you want to be with your kids. And then when you’re with your kids, you’re feeling this guilt that you should be working, or you should be doing something work-related. And then it just means that you can’t be present wherever you are. You know, if you’re at work, then you’re not going to be able to give 100% of yourself because you’re thinking about your kids. And then when you’re with your kids, half your brain is at work. And so it ends up being that nobody ends up winning. Is that, is that kind of that internal struggle that you find a lot of the moms that you work with have

Kinia: (05:33)
Yes. And guilt is an indication often that one of your core values can be violated. So something’s off. You’re not quite sure what it is, but something’s off and you haven’t evaluated it. So you can use guilt as data, same thing with other emotions like anger, resentment sadness. If, if you have a lot of those strong emotions or states of mind presence in your life, it is often an that those values are being violated. So knowing the blueprint of your decision-making, what your values are as a working mom, can help be that first step to navigate that guilt. And so many moms experience that so many moms experience guilt and shame, shame is the feeling like Bernie brown said, the feeling that you are not enough, and you’re never going to be enough, but guilt is an important data point. So why don’t we turn it around from something that feels unpleasant to a useful piece of information. And it kind of like a little light saying like, Hey, he know there’s more to all of this. Let’s dig a little bit deeper and see what we can find and then build from there one step at a time.

Eva: (06:37)
Right? No, that is very, very powerful stuff. So I want to take a step back here. Let me, I would love to hear a little bit more about you, your background, your family, and kind of how you got into this line of work.

Kinia: (06:52)
Yeah. Okay. I love that question. This, this is where the fun stuff happens. So when I was in my twenties, I loved traveling around the world. I never thought I would settle down and have kids. I just wanted to be all over the map. So I was studying investigate. I was studying journalism, international journalism, doing degrees all over the place. And, uh, and then I met my husband at a conference after a trip to Guatemala. So he lives in Edmonton where I joined him. I grew up in Montreal. So when I got all my traveling, Yaya’s out, I had settled into an investigative journalism job in Montreal. He came to study French in Montreal and, you know, we were both mature and we’re like, okay, let’s, let’s do this. Let’s, let’s build a life together. So here I am moving to Edmonton, getting married, settling into a corporate communications job and, and having my first baby.

Kinia: (07:44)
And so I was involved into, in a lot of women in leadership groups. And I, I thought something’s kind of weird. We never talk about moms. And I had heard about women and leadership, and there was nothing about mothers and leadership, but 90% of women have kids. And so this whole talk about the glass ceiling and, you know, women not climbing into leadership roles. I started scratching my head and I thought pros and babes. That’s kind of like a catchy name. I have to reserve that domain. I’ll do something about it. So I reserved the domain. And when I, my first child was born, I’m like, let’s kick off something for working moms too. And moms on mat leave. So we can talk about other topics than poo and pee, right? Our, we used to be in these high powered careers, we’re craving something else than baby talk.

Kinia: (08:25)
And that’s how frozen beef started. It was a hobby. It was a discussion forum, a structured curriculum and networking where we could meet week after week. You know, you probably used to go to tons of networking events, you’d exchanged business cards, but then like nothing builds from that, right? So I thought what a chance to make new friends and that’s how pros and babes was born slowly. I started building this body of knowledge and getting to know what was on mom’s minds, whether it was back to work planning or being shamed for liking their jobs or intimacy with their husbands. And you know how to bring libido back when like nobody’s vacuuming and so mental load and emotional labor. So that ended up growing and growing and growing into, into a full-time business. And the mom B program and attracting lots of stem professionals who leave their profession after having kids like almost 50% of stem professionals leaves full-time stem after having kids.

Kinia: (09:19)
So I work with many women in that field who, who want to stay in their careers during motherhood and who need to develop a new pathway, even though they’re facing challenges, they have to figure out what it’s going to look like in the longterm and get support from other moms who understand the challenges they’re facing. Sometimes they’re the first one taking maternity leave in their company. That kind of sounds crazy in 2021. Right? Gosh. So that’s how it came to be. It was a, an, a, another creative baby in my life. And, uh, it’s, it’s blossomed to something bigger and into the humbling opportunity to work with amazing braining moms and give them support to navigate this challenging time of life and to make the decisions for themselves.

Eva: (10:01)
Right. I am blown away by that. So you’re saying that women in the stem, can you just define what you mean when you say stem,

Kinia: (10:09)
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Got it. Okay.

Eva: (10:13)
Okay. And so you’re saying that more than 50% of women who have, who go on maternity leave in that field ends up leaving the field completely after having children

Kinia: (10:24)
43% end up leaving full-time work and stuff, full-time work in stem. So they might go to part-time, they might quit their field, or they might leave altogether.

Eva: (10:34)
Right. Wow. And is that, do you find, is that because of systemic issues within the system that just prevents these women from having the flexibility that they need to stay in the field? Or do you find that it’s the, is it the women that lose interest? Is it a combination of both? What do you find tends to happen?

Kinia: (10:55)
It’s a really complex question that is quite new, right? It’s pretty new women in engineering is still historically speaking. It’s a tiny blip. So some sites and flexible working hours and the job requirements. I mean, if you’re working in the field and if you’re taking care of certain, I don’t know, like power outages or things like that, right. That the job in itself is very, it can be very inflexible and hive, hive, uh, demanding hours or inflexible deadlines. So that one comes up a lot. So what some of the recent show research shows that it’s, it’s just not family friendly or female friendly. So it’s not just a mom’s problem. I think it’s around 20 to 25% of dads who also leave them after having kids. I know in Alberta where I live, there are lots of fly in, fly out jobs, right? You’re, you’re gone from your family for two, three weeks at a time toll on dads too. So they’re very, very demanding careers in terms of time commitment. So those are, those are a couple of reasons why the women can leave. Like you don’t want to 60 hours per week, or right. It’s just too, or you don’t want to be the only woman, for example,

Eva: (11:58)
A hundred percent. No, that’s all, it’s very legitimate. And so I know that you encourage women to work, use their maternity leave to their advantage as much as possible, whether it means to, you know, protect their jobs, advance their careers during motherhood, maybe start a side business, you know, what kind of advice do you give? You know, step-by-step advice. Do you give women that work with you in terms of how to scale, not even the word scale, what’s the word I’m looking for? I guess, prioritize and take advantage of this 12 month period of time. Um, here in Canada for the record that, you know, they’re off of work taking care of their little ones, but they can still start to, you know, rethink their next step in their career. So what kind of advice do you give these women? Yes,

Kinia: (12:48)
Absolutely. So there are a few things I can start from simple tactical things like being strategic about your maternity leave. So for example, having a plan before you leave your job, even writing a letter to yourself, I did a little visual graphic and my first maternity, like, this is where I am, and this is what I’m coming back to. And then I took, wrote a letter to myself, writing all the reasons why I kicked butt. I was like, this is what you did. This is what you accomplished. This is what you should be proud of. So coming back from mat leave, I would have a document like a year is quite a bit of time. So you can come back and even wonder, what was my job? Like, what did I do? Where was I successful? So that ladder to yourself, to your future self as to where you think you’ll be is a good comparison.

Kinia: (13:31)
One, one thing that’s a huge mystery of life is we have no idea what this child will be like when they come out of our rebellion. So you don’t know how you’ll transform, how you’ll feel as a mom. So that letter to yourself is also a good tool to show that you are a leader, you are proactive. You care about your career. Number two, if you want to be in statue, touch with your employer during your mouth, you have to let them know. They cannot communicate with you. If you don’t give them permission. So I’ve heard women complaining that they weren’t told about restructuring or promote promotion opportunities, but it is on you to let your employer know that you actually want that communication. Many times they’ll tell you, like, have fun, send us a picture of the baby. And then we’ll see in 12 months by there’s no conversation proactively managing that transition and the identity change.

Kinia: (14:16)
So this is a leadership opportunity for you to say, Hey, I want to be in touch. Please let me have access to my email. If that’s what you want. Not everybody wants to disconnect. It’s fine. Yeah. Um, find, uh, other career minded women in motherthood like you. So that’s why I created this ecosystem. If you have the support of others, the mentorship, the experience you can talk about and brainstorm ideas together from simple things like food planning to your relationship with your spouse, to what kind of books to read. I have a huge reading list of books that are targeted towards working moms. So that can be something to focus on. Right? And then the whole promise of the program. I designed the mum B program. It’s a 12 month program that allows you to think through 12 critical pillars from your mindset, your relationships, to financial planning, to career, life integration on your terms to do a career planning with your spouse.

Kinia: (15:07)
If you both have ambitions, what does that look like? Support systems, health and nutrition. So I just gave a couple and that’s how I encourage moms to leverage their mat. Leave is join a program like this with other moms and start thinking about what you want in every single aspect of your life and the confidence that gives you holy Molly. Like it skyrockets. When you take the time to reflect on what it is that you actually want. You can go back to work and have way more leverage because you’re, you’re willing to walk away from something that won’t serve you so that it’s back in your hands is enormous. But the number one tip I tell moms is you have to know what you want. You can get what you want. If you don’t take the time to reflect on it. The thing is many moms don’t know where to start.

Kinia: (15:55)
And this is why designed that framework to help you look at the holistic aspect of life. The personal becomes professional and the professional becomes personal. You can’t look at these things in a vacuum. You have to envision what you want in your personal life. What is sacred? Where are you going to set your boundaries? And then you have to envision what you want in your professional life and decide, okay, perhaps I’m going to coast in my career during motherhood for the next few years. And I don’t care about promotions. I care about being home at four. I care about keeping the gas on my job, but I want to focus on my little guys wiser. When they’re a little, then they’re going to go run off with other friends, play in the mud, go on their bikes. Maybe you’ll have a little bit more time for my career.

Kinia: (16:33)
But then when they’re teenagers, it’s a time where you really want to be present for them, right? Like that’s a critical, critical time. So taking that long picture of you, we can work for a really long time. We have a longer life expectancy now. So just being strategic and knowing what you want and writing it down, like writing the constitution of your life and leveraging the fact that now you’ve given life to another being to redefine who you are, your sense of purpose is transformed. So the possibilities are endless, but it starts with knowing what you want, giving accountability to work through it. Having a network of women who support you and tapping into your inner mentor. I believe in looking at external experts and then tapping into the inner expert

Eva: (17:12)
That we all have. No, I love this all because I did leverage my maternity leave, you know, to a huge extent. So I, in terms of, I’ll tell, I’ll share with you guys, you know, a couple of things that I did. So when I was pregnant with my second baby, one of I, one of my goals in terms of coming back to work a year later was for me to be able to come back part time. Um, and then the other goal was to be able to prove to my boss, that the job that I was doing was able to also be done from home. Now, for the record, we recording this in 2021, where this pandemic has proving to everyone that whether you like it or not many, many jobs that were ordinarily impossible to do from home, suddenly the pandemic made it possible for their jobs to be done from home.

Eva: (18:04)
But this isn’t 2021. We’re going to go back in a time machine back to 2014 where you gotta be in the office. And yes, of course, you know, some people were working from home at that point, but it was more the exception than it was the rule. And my job was no different. And so what happened was I had my baby, I was in touch with some of my colleagues from work, you know, just via email, how’s everything going. And they’re telling me, oh my gosh, Eva, we’re, we’re drowning here. We’ve got so many more files coming through when there’s just so much happening. And so when I, when I got my baby’s sleeping, so again, a lot of people know, you know, my story like this is the baby that got me into this business. I’m a lawyer by training. This is, this is my, my legal job that I was on maternity leave from.

Eva: (18:49)
And so those first, you know, six months I was a zombie, there was no concept of, of getting work done from home at this point. But I was just kind of hearing from my colleagues, how bogged down they were, I got my little one sleeping. And then one of the things that pops into my mind was, Hey, you know what? They are so bogged down with files there. I should approach my boss and see if he’ll let me do a few hours a week of work from home. I’m not going to come into the office because I’m on maternity leave. He can’t make me do that. And plus I have a baby, so I can’t, but they’re so desperate for work. And to train someone to do this particular job would just take way, way, way too long. Here I am a capable body that can step in and take on 10 hours a week worth of work.

Eva: (19:42)
And that’s exactly what happened. And he was so blown away by this offer that, you know, here I am offering to take just 10 hours a week of work, but what he didn’t realize that, that there was a strategy behind it, right? It was because I knew that for that six month period of time, that I was doing 10 hours a week of work from home, I was proving to him that I can do this job virtually that I don’t have to be going in to the office because one of my big aha moments, I’m a very extroverted individual. And so before I had babies, I was always that person to say, I love getting out of the house. I love to be able to, I need to get out of my house. I can’t be at home all day. I go crazy. And then I have kids.

Eva: (20:31)
And all of a sudden, it’s like, I don’t really want to sit on the subway for 45 minutes, each way, 30 minutes, each way, going to work after I am, you know, picking up my kids, I gotta drop the kids off at school and pick them up. And, you know, being able to drop them off and drive back home in five minutes is significantly more appealing than dropping them off at school or daycare hopping on the subway for 30 minutes just to get to my desk where I can do the exact same kind of work from home. And so that was one of those really, really big changes for me. And so this was my mat leave strategy that worked beautifully because by the time I was about 10 months in, and it was time for me to reach out to him about my back to work plans.

Eva: (21:16)
The conversation went so smoothly because for four months, it’s not like I had been saving their butt, but for four months I was helping them out of my, out of the goodness of my heart. There was, was not something that I had to be doing, but I took on 10 hours of work for them, which helped them, you know, keep their heads above water in terms of all the work that was going on in our department. And so when I was 10 months in and I got on the phone with them, I got on the phone with him. And I was so nervous because I was going to ask him, can I come back three days a week? Sure. And then he was even the one who said, would you want to continue working from home a couple of days a week?

Eva: (21:58)
Oh my gosh. Music to my ears. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. That he was the one offering that to me. Cause I had spent four months proving to him that that was possible. And so that was my return to work arrangement where Mondays and Tuesdays I was working from home, doing all the work from home. And then Wednesdays was when we had our team meeting once a week. So Wednesdays, I went into the office. Now the arrangement didn’t end up panning out. Like my, my, my story. That’s not the end of the story here, obviously, because what ended up also happening on that same maternity leave was in addition to working 10 hours a week. I also launched my side business. And so I had this side business called my sleeping baby. And so the side business started, I launched the side business right around the time I went back to work and the side business grew very, very quickly.

Eva: (22:51)
And then at the same time, they just got more and more busy at work. And so this part-time arrangements only lasted about six months. And so that was when I, I was kind of at this fork in the road and, and I had to choose between going back to work full-time and my business that had all this potential. And so I chose my business and I haven’t looked back ever since, but given that I leverage my maternity leaves so well, it meant that for that six month period of time, I did have the luxury of being able to work two days a week from home. Something that you have to remember, this is like way pre pandemic days we’re working from home was just not the same kind of reality that it is today. And so the end result was that I was able to build this business, have not, not being nearly as exhausted as I would have been if I was commuting five days a week. And I ended up leveraging that mat leave so I could get what I wanted and what I wanted was very, very reasonable. And my boss saw that it was reasonable because of what I did. And so I live and breathe exactly what you preach because I wouldn’t be here today. If I didn’t take those steps,

Kinia: (24:08)
That is such a great story. I love it. And you’re so full of determination and positive, and you just grab the bull by the horns and totally accountability and build the opportunity to have that leverage. So yes, for any mom who’s listening, this is fantastic, but it sounds like a fairy tale story. I’m sure there were bumps in the road, right? It wasn’t that simple

Eva: (24:29)
Obviously, obviously, because my male boss may have liked it. The female boss, not so much, not so much, she wasn’t such a big fan of the arrangements. Um, but he had a higher say like he, he was, he was the higher up. And so he was the one that had to approve it. Um, I would bet my bottom dollar, if I had to go through her first, it might not have been as smoothly. So, you know, of course I had to play my cards correctly here and knew to go straight to him to just bypass her because I knew there was a high likelihood that she would have, you know, said, no, this isn’t gonna work. But, um, but I knew, I knew what kind of cards I was I was dealing with here. And, um, and I knew, I mean, listen, I, I took advantage of the fact that they were desperate. They were insanely busy and desperate and drowning. And so I knew that my boss wouldn’t have said no to an offer of, of 10 hours a week. And so yes, you’re absolutely right in that it was, it’s not this, you know, perfect fairytale situation by any means, but it, it, it was definitely something that worked out really, really well.

Kinia: (25:40)
And here you gave a fantastic little tip about negotiation, right? So you knew exactly. I was thinking about some negotiation that I had in my, in my life, in the last few months and how so many women don’t like to negotiate. The, the numbers are on the rise, but you give a couple of examples that reflect the statistics. Often women are harder on other women in negotiation. They don’t like to give raises. They don’t like to. So, and it’s a double-edged sword to negotiate for, for women. We are often, we often as women punish women negotiate, which is quite ironic and sad when, when we see that, but you evaluate it, you evaluated the type of leverage you had. So that is so critical. It’s a tip that any mom listening should. One of the key, key, key career skills that I talk about over and over again is you have to master negotiation and you have to understand accountability, like full ownership of your results and your outcomes.

Kinia: (26:33)
It’s so easy to feel disempowered when you go back to work and you feel like the system is not built for you when it’s easy to put yourself in the victim position. So, right, because we were told when we’re younger that, oh, you can have it all and life can be a fairy tale, but when you become a working mom, you realize that a lot of these things don’t fit. They just don’t square up. They don’t amount to a fulfilling life. What you did is you looked at multiple opportunities, you tried things, you experimented, you, you looked at where you could build leverage and strategize, and then you transitioned into a new career as a business owner. And that’s, that’s a fantastic story. So negotiation and accountability, even though you faced a lack of support on some fronts, you didn’t let that stop you from having an interesting and satisfying career throughout motherhood.

Eva: (27:21)
Yes. Yeah. And, and, and here’s, here’s the one thing that, you know, might seem obvious, but I just want to point this out for the record. None of this would have been possible if my baby wasn’t sleeping, just going to say that. Right. But we, we to just air out the obvious here that if my baby wasn’t sleeping through the night at that point, and if she wasn’t giving me wicked, consistently awesome naps, there is no way that I would have been able to spend that six month period of my, my last part of maternity leave working 10 hours a week from home and the legal capacity for, for my boss, nor would I have been able to complete my certification to become a sleep consultant and launch my side business. There’s absolutely no way. Plus having a baby at home and having a tea as well as a toddler.

Eva: (28:17)
Okay, fine. She was in a full-time nursery program, but nonetheless, it was still, it was a very, very busy time. And I, without that proper night’s sleep. And without that downtime during the day, I would have just been in survival mode. There’s no way I would’ve been able to think critically and think strategically and think outside the box, in terms of leveraging this mat leave regarding starting up a business and returning to work, it would have been absolutely impossible. And I think that it is quite sad for me to think about where I would be if I hadn’t, if I hadn’t leveraged, if I didn’t have the opportunity to leverage my maternity leave like that. So don’t underestimate how important sleep is when it comes to literally every single aspect of your life, including your career. Absolutely.

Kinia: (29:13)
It’s huge. It’s huge. If you want to be thinking critically, and I can think about the, um, my two maternity leaves. So my first one where we didn’t do any sleep training with my son up until we were just falling on the floor. And, you know, we were getting so many guilt trips from people in our surroundings that were, were going to cause irreparable damage. But I thought we were going to cause irreparable damage if my husband crashes on the highway, because we’re waking up six times a right. Yeah. And I was starting up my business in my first maternity leave and sometimes stealing an hour here and there. Um, with my second child was a different temperament, but we were so determined from the start and he was napping like clockwork. And I knew those predictable naps were there and he was sleeping through the night much faster. Right. And so that completely affected the mental capacity. I had to work on my own business and to be a present mom and spouse when I wanted to, again, not always perfect. There’s still some teething, there’s some moments where it’s hard, but there’s night and day difference first mile, even second mile, even in terms of how we approach sleep. Like no comparison at all.

Eva: (30:24)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, when I talk about helping exhausted moms get their little one sleeping through the night so they can be functioning humans, you know, we’re talking about functioning in every aspect of your life. We’re talking about your physical health, your mental health, you know, being able to take care of yourself and then being able to think about you and your future. You, you, you can’t, you can’t get yourself into that kind of mindset when you are barely making it through the day, falling on your face. So I’m sure there are many people that can relate to your first maternity leave story, for sure, because those are the people that reach out and, you know, and come and join my programs to get help fixing that big, massive problem. That’s taking a toll on every area of their life, um, including their job, including motherhood and their career.

Eva: (31:19)
I mean, listen, I, I work with, I get a lot of Americans reaching out to me who don’t have 12 months of maternity leave. They have six months and a story, six weeks, six weeks, gosh, they probably wish they would have six months there. They on average have six weeks. And so they’re back at work and a lot of them are barely keeping their eyes open. They are barely functioning while their infants are waking them up multiple times at night and they have to get dressed the next morning and go off to work. And they’re freaking out that they’re going to lose their job, that they’re so freaking exhausted that they’re going to get fired. And so a number of them have, have told me, have, you know, confessed to me that that specific aspects of COVID has been such a blessing for them because, you know, for these moms in particular, who were in corporate roles who are able to do their job from home, it means that they can they’re, they’re, bleary-eyed don’t get me wrong, but at least they don’t have to get in their car and put on clothes and drive to work.

Eva: (32:20)
You know, you can roll over and, and do their work or their yoga pants, but, but they’re still afraid that they’re going to mess up something and make some kind of stupid mistake over and over again, and ended up getting fired. And, and it a, it’s a real legitimate concern of theirs. And so, you know, let’s not forget about the American moms either who, you know, don’t have that, that maternity leave and, you know, they’re, they’re holding on for dear life just trying to make it through that way. Right.

Kinia: (32:49)
Absolutely. Yeah. We often have discussions about how lucky we are in Canada to have that longer maternity leave, um, versus the woman in the states who six weeks, like, especially after your first baby it’s you are just physically and emotionally and mentally. It’s really hard. It can be really hard to go back to where you’re just still healing and learning who you

Eva: (33:11)
Are. Sure. I’m sure. Gosh, well, Kenya, if anyone wants to reach out to you and get more support from you, where can they find you and learn more about you and what you offer? Absolutely.

Kinia: (33:24)
Thanks for the question. So the quickest ways to find us in our Facebook group, facebook.com forward slash groups forward slash pros and babes, P R O S a N D B a B E S, or a website pros and leads.com, where you can be redirected to our workshop page. We host these work like other workshops that help you think about what you want. It’s a free workshop. You get your mini working mom plan. At the end of that, you answer the fundamental questions as to who you want to be. What’s important to you as a working mom and your relationships and your mindset and your money and the support system. So people like you, you’re part of those support systems for moms, right? And just being able to say yes to yourself, a lot of moms don’t feel, feel guilty about doing any sleep training or accessing any support systems. So we worked through that and actually two, the mindset blocks that keep a lot of moms from getting the support they need, that they so desperately need. And then having that vision, what are you building? Why are you a working mom that really can help with a guilt once you know what you’re teaching your kids through being a working mom, then that can help release that guilt and shame that you might be feeling from being away from your kids, because you know, you’re creating something precious for them.

Eva: (34:35)
Yeah. I’m sure that’s amazing. Well, can you thank you so much for coming on and giving us all your time? This was fantastic.

Kinia: (34:43)
Thank you for this opportunity for the important work you’re doing and how you reinvented yourself in a business. And you’re, you’re helping a lot of moms fulfill their full potential of being both working moms and loving moms and loving partners. That’s huge. The gift of sleep is huge.

Eva: (34:57)
Amazing. Thank you. Thank you again.