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Work like you’re not a parent.
Parent like you don’t work.
What if that whole system is wrong?
This is Full Stack Moms, and we are Mallory Lee and Shannon Curran, two working moms navigating tech careers, parenting, and everything in between. We talk about why the traditional rules of work don’t fit modern parents and how women in tech are doing things differently. Through honest conversations and behind-the-scenes stories, this show explores careers, caregiving, ambition, and the messy reality of having it all, just not all at once.
Connect with Mallory: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mallorylee/
Connect with Shannon: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-sweeny-curran/
Produced in partnership with Share Your Genius
www.shareyourgenius.com
[00:00:00] Margaret Kelsey: I was on a call and I had to unmute, but I was off camera and I was pumping at the time. And so it was like the work, and he stopped the call. He's like, "I'm so sorry. What is that noise?" And I was like, "It's a breast pump. You have four children. You should know what that noise is." Now we all feel awkward. Thank you.
[00:00:21] Shannon Curran: Because everyone else on the call knew what it was. You were the only one that didn't.
[00:00:25] Mallory Lee: This is Full Stack Moms.
[00:00:27] Shannon Curran: This is not a parenting podcast nor a business podcast, but a place where we talk, building careers in tech, raising kids at home and making it work in public. Welcome back everybody to Full Stack Moms. We are so excited today because I have Margaret Kelsey on who, the myth, the legend, our gal, and we're so excited to talk to her. Margaret, you can tell us a little bit about ... So usually how we start is what's your family structure? So we have to give people context around when we talk about momming, what does that look like? And then also give us the structure of your home and your work. So what does that look like? And then we can value a few of
[00:01:04] Margaret Kelsey: Those things.
[00:01:05] Shannon Curran: I was going to say, you have ... Yeah. So just start and I'll probably ask you some questions along the way.
[00:01:11] Margaret Kelsey: Yeah. I have a unique setup. I am divorced and engaged. So I have one biological son. He's going to be six at the end of the month. He spends half of the time with me and half of the time with his dad. I'm also engaged to a man who lives in Portland, Maine, and he is divorced with two girls. So I'm in Hingham, Massachusetts. He has a place in Portland, Maine. He also splits his time with his girls, with his ex-wife. And so there are some days that I'm down here by myself. There's some days I'm down here solo with Everett, my son. There's some days I'm down here solo with Nick. There's some days that Nick and me are with my son. There's sometimes that I'm up in Maine with Nick and his two girls, and every once in a while we're all together.
[00:02:00] So there is no structural routine in my life. My fiance's a firefighter, so he works two 24-hour shifts every eight days. So it rotates. And then my schedule is that I have Everett every Wednesday pickup to Friday drop off and every other weekend. So we have two households and we're going to have two households until the kids are out of the house where we can combine hopefully into one. And in the meantime, yeah, we just make it work. But I think we see each other more often than a lot of married couples because of that time and because I can work remotely. So we're able to spend a lot of time right now. He's going to get a wheelbarrow right now because a tree fell in my backyard and he's going to chop it down and move it somewhere.
[00:02:46] Shannon Curran: He's so useful. That's kind. I love it. That's amazing. And so you have had a few different setups in terms of work. So you have been full-time, you've also been consultant, you've been advisor, and now you're back full-time. So you work in-house at a software company. You tell us a little bit about it.
[00:03:02] Margaret Kelsey: Yeah. So Kodaris is software for distribution companies and we have a full platform, everything from CRM to anything that you would need to run operationally in your business with more products coming, kind of seems like every day. We also have a payments business as part of that, so we can process all of the payments, both AR and AP. So the company has been bootstrapped and profitable for 11 years now, has not taken any institutional funding, which is an interesting place to be in software. I think it's a fantastic place right now to be in software. And distribution tends to be a little bit late on the technology adoption. That's obviously changing. They tend to be family businesses. So now that the younger generation is coming up into the leadership, that is changing pretty rapidly, but we're really helping modernize distribution as a whole and bringing technology into those companies.
[00:04:02] So it's fun because we're growing really rapidly and we have a fanatical customer base that really loves us. So that also feels good in technology to be organic software company that kind of really does the thing that they're promising. That's a good place as a marketer to live.
[00:04:17] Shannon Curran: Oh yeah.
[00:04:18] Mallory Lee: Absolutely.
[00:04:19] Shannon Curran: It is ideal. So would love to talk a little bit about ... So everything we talk about here is kind of like women of our generation that have big jobs, wanted families, are trying to figure out ... You were actually the first person that ever said to me, "It's fine if you work outside of work hours, as long as you life inside of work hours too." You have to let both of those things combine. Yeah, I'm trying not to cry on the podcast that often, but talking to Margaret will probably make me cry. Just because of the time in my life in which we met and how critical that was. We actually had Courtney Nugen on the podcast last week. So we both worked for Margaret at OpenView, and she was such an amazing example to us of what it could look like to be a complete badass and have a family and what that looks like and not sacrifice either one really.
[00:05:07] Shannon Curran: And so Margaret, I'd love to hear about your decision to have a family while you were working. I know you also had your child at a very pivotal time in March of 2020 and what that looks like. Don't recommend
[00:05:21] Margaret Kelsey: The timing. Recommend
[00:05:23] Shannon Curran: Having
[00:05:23] Margaret Kelsey: A kid, not the timing. Well,
[00:05:25] Shannon Curran: Hopefully that never happens again, so it won't be relevant, but once in a lifetime, hopefully. But want to hear a little bit about that and then your choice to go fractional and what that meant to you, and then maybe your choice to go back in house.
[00:05:35] Margaret Kelsey: Yeah. I always wanted to be a mom. I kind of thought actually even after college that I was going to get married young and have a bunch of kids. And I really weirdly didn't have a lot of career aspirations as I was coming up through my life. And I ended up being not too late, but I think I was 30 or something. He's six. I'm going to turn 38 ... In my early 30s, I finally had over it. And at the time, I was at a company called AppCues. And I remember OpenView reaching out to me and saying, "Hey, we have this open position for a head of marketing. It might be interesting to you." And I remember going home and being like, "Well, I'm six months pregnant. I can't do that." And I remember my ex-husband at the time was like, "Why don't you just have a conversation with them?" So I got hired into OpenView when I was, I believe, eight months pregnant.
[00:06:28] Mallory Lee: Oh, wow.
[00:06:28] Margaret Kelsey: Seven, eight months pregnant. I was waddling already.
[00:06:34] Shannon Curran: Right. So
[00:06:34] Margaret Kelsey: You take an Uber
[00:06:34] Shannon Curran: Every day.
[00:06:38] Margaret Kelsey: Yeah. Thankfully, they were really supportive of me joining for a couple months and then taking my three-month maternity leave. It just so happens that I got sent home before my maternity leave because COVID was afoot. Yeah, had Everett March 29th of 2020, which was the time that we weren't even wearing masks yet because there weren't enough in the hospital
[00:06:59] Shannon Curran: For
[00:07:00] Margaret Kelsey: The healthcare workers. So that was a trip and probably another reason why I was a one and done kind of mom. I don't know if I can repeat that knowing it would be different. But yeah, so at the time, I think I really knew ... I kind of gave myself the maternity leave to be like, "Would I want to go back to work or not?" And I think it was very clear early on in the maternity leave that I really loved work and I really loved feeling like an adult. And I think in that first postpartum period, you feel like a milk cow and a butt wiper and the math that you're doing is just like, okay, well, sleep timetables and eating timetables and stuff like that. And I was really excited to go back and use my brain again in that way. So after a couple years at OpenView, I knew that it was time based on the company's goals and how far I had gotten the team and everyone was ready to kind of ... I didn't feel needed anymore.
[00:08:06] I really loved the coaching aspect of leading a team, but the systems were set up. We were functional, like all systems go. So I thought about leaving and what would be a next step. And I didn't want to go to any tech company.
[00:08:22] Shannon Curran: Nice.
[00:08:23] Margaret Kelsey: I really was just like, see"I don't think there's a company out there that I would want to go in-house right now." And so I had six months of even just personal savings and I told my now ex-husband that I was going to go and build this advising business. And if I couldn't make it work in six months, then I would go find a job and ended up pretty quickly, thankfully, and luckily and hustly replaced my full-time salary, advising and working many less hours per week. That's awesome. I really feel like my life opened up around that time. So I started creating more art, go to the grocery school-
[00:09:03] Sorry, what year was that? That was 2023, like end of 2023. Yeah. So Everett was in daycare during the days and I was able to have maybe 10 to 15 hours of work per week. And outside of that, I was able to do whatever I wanted during the workday and it was- That's amazing. It was incredible. And actually now coming back in house, the company I work for now is my longest client when I had my advising business. So I joke that the CEO Tony played the long game with me on that and he just really stuck on until I was ready to come back in-house.
[00:09:41] Mallory Lee: That's great. I've had a few fractional consulting fails where I would be the consultant and then go full-time after a few months. I think
[00:09:52] Margaret Kelsey: It's nice though. You can test out the culture. You can make sure that you actually can communicate. And I think about it often too where I think it set up my relationship with the founder, Tony, in a way that I was advising him before now becoming the CMO. And so I think he listens to me in a way that in other organizations, when you just come in as an employee, you kind of tuck your head a little bit and learn stuff and you don't have that ... It's difficult to then transition into the moment of, well, I'm the leader and I have a distinguished perspective on what we're looking at right now and you hired me for a reason because you like how my brain works. And so listen to me.
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[00:11:16] Shannon Curran: So you've grown a lot of teams in your career. Specifically at OpenView, you grew an entire team of women, right? So just a complete Avengers group of really strong women. And a lot of us were in that place where a few people got married in the time that they were working for you. Some of us were thinking about having a family and you were such an example to us about ... I feel like part of your management was like, how do you go into this part of your life? And so how do you think about managing your teams, not just about their current jobs, but about their career and how they think about it when they think about wanting to be parents too? Because I feel like you do a really good job at it.
[00:11:54] Margaret Kelsey: I appreciate you saying that I was a role model or helpful. I, at the time, was just trying to keep it all together, especially when we were still out of the office working from home. These things are so linked together. When I first returned from maternity leave, we were still working from home, obviously, and the daycares were still closed. And I was in a two bedroom apartment that was not able to, for me and my then husband to both work from home and have a nanny there or anything like that. So
[00:12:28] For the first, oh gosh, it was not until October of 2020 that I finally got Everett a nanny, no November of 2020, that we got a nanny because we had moved to Hingham. And at that period of time, I was the most frazzley, so I'm glad you didn't get to see that, Shannon. Those were times where I was just hopping on the call and might even be nursing Everett and just turn my camera off and ... Yeah. Got it. And I remember one time actually, this is kind of a funny ... One time there was somebody at OpenView who didn't last very long, but I remember I was on a call and I had to unmute, but I was off camera and I was pumping at the time. And so it was like there were, were ... And he stopped the call. He's like, "I'm so sorry.
[00:13:13] What is that noise?" And I was like, "It's a breast pump. You have four children. You should know what that noise is." Now we all feel awkward. Thank you.
[00:13:24] Shannon Curran: Because everyone else on the call knew what it was. You were the only one that didn't.
[00:13:27] Margaret Kelsey: Probably just wouldn't have asked, whatever that mechanical noise is. What
[00:13:32] Mallory Lee: Noise is it's necessary, so let's
[00:13:35] Margaret Kelsey: Just
[00:13:37] Mallory Lee: Not worry about it.
[00:13:37] Margaret Kelsey: I think what's really important for me is you have to see someone do it before you think that it's possible. It's hard to do something for the first time that you just don't even know if you can. And I think what I really want to be is someone that says, "Yeah, this is how you make it work." And I think rejecting ... We're in this era right now where we have to reject previous rules that we all kind of thought were a given. And the more that I can just be an example to like, "Yeah, you can do anything." And the moms that don't go back to work after maternity leave, I totally get it. But if you do want to work, I think it's a shame when women leave because they just can't figure out how to make it work, but they do want to work.
[00:14:28] I think that's a shame. But again, everyone's trying to figure it out themselves.
[00:14:33] Shannon Curran: Yeah.
[00:14:33] Mallory Lee: That's so true.
[00:14:34] Shannon Curran: Yeah. Mallory has three kids and she's done three separate things every time, right?
[00:14:40] Mallory Lee: Never the same. I thought that I would be a stay-at-home mom, so I didn't take the maternity leave with our first. I just kind of resigned and turned into consulting instead and then had part-time nannies and stuff while I had my consulting business. I don't know exactly how many hours I was working, probably in the 10 to 20 range, kind of like what you said. And then I kind of just realized I think I'm happier when I'm part of a team and a company. And so that's kind of where I'm at now, I think for the foreseeable future. But you're trying to figure it out. And for people who do have more than one kid, it's typically the same or it's not the same between the two kids, right? So you've got child number one and a whole set of circumstances you're trying to get through.
[00:15:31] And then the next one, all your circumstances might be different or they might not. And having to just do that math and make that plan every single time I think is hard. I do want to know, I'm very curious, I think there are a lot of women who maybe they are wanting to get pregnant or they are pregnant and they think, "Oh, I couldn't possibly go look for a job right now because who's going to hire someone who's pregnant?" And so I'm wondering how you approached that conversation with OpenView. Obviously they came to you, so that part was perhaps a little different, but I'd love to hear how that all went down with you being pretty pregnant when you were interviewing.
[00:16:15] Margaret Kelsey: Yeah. And I think that it was rare and special. And actually we joked about it because OpenView had done that a couple other times where they poached a pregnant woman from a different job. And so I was like, smart strategy, honestly. You could get some top level talent.
[00:16:30] Shannon Curran: Play the long game. Come
[00:16:31] Margaret Kelsey: On over here, amazing healthcare. You can take your maternity leave and you don't have to vest before you take your maternity leave or whatever. So I do think that was very specific and special. I think that that fear, like we have to say, it's not an unrealistic fear. I think that the world still works in a way that judges women, even when they get married, that sometimes leadership will have private conversations about, "Well, how long do we think we have until she gets pregnant?" We still live in that world. And so my best advice is try to find a company that you really admire their values and the way that they do business and the way that they take care of their people. It's tough. I think especially founders who maybe haven't gotten married or had kids yet, they might just not be able to figure that out.
[00:17:31] So I think the best is probably try to find a company that has leadership that have families too, try to find-
[00:17:42] Mallory Lee: Oh, it's such a good point.
[00:17:43] Margaret Kelsey: Yeah. Yeah. The young kids just don't get it.
[00:17:48] Shannon Curran: They do not. Yeah. I remember finding out I was pregnant a month after starting at Madkoo and I was like, oh no. I was like, I literally went to OpenView to be like, "This is a place where I can have a baby. Margaret did it. Sam did it." All these people. I was seeing all these women do it. So I was like, great. And then I couldn't get pregnant while I was there and not for lack of trying. I just couldn't get pregnant. So then I start this VP of marketing job at a series A, like a psycho that's based in San Francisco that I'm going to have to travel every other month or every quarter or whatever. And I find out literally, no, it was two months after I started that I was pregnant. And I remember being like, oh no. Obviously so happy, right?
[00:18:28] It's the only thing I'd wanted for so long. But also I was like, how ... I just met this leadership team. The CEO had four kids, but he also had a stay at home wife. So I was like, that can be dicey. How is he going to react? And I remember the head of sales, the VP of sales at the time, announced that his wife was pregnant in a leadership team meeting. And I was pregnant at the time. And his wife was less pregnant than I was. And I was like, ooh. I was like- You
[00:18:57] Margaret Kelsey: Probably got to tell him soon.
[00:18:59] Shannon Curran: Whoops. And we were like going- Me too. Me too. Me too. I almost said that. I almost was like, "Hey, so while we're on the topic, it does seem like I will also be taking a leave." And our parental policy for men was, or the non-birthing parent I think was less than, but only one person had ever had a baby in this company and they were French. So you're dealing with French laws, which is totally different. So I think they ended up moving to the US. So I think there was some version of a maternity leave. The previous head of marketing had had baby, but there was no policy. It was kind of like, "Well, we'll figure it out." But I do remember telling him being so nervous and him just jumping out of his seat excited for me. And
[00:19:44] I was like, wow, I did not see this going that way, which is sad that that's the way I went into that conversation. But he was like, "Shannon, I could not be more excited for you. This is the best thing you'll ever do." Just totally took the CEO hat off and really like ... Yeah, Maury, you know Sam. He's just such a good person. So he talks about his kids all the time and talked so highly about how his wife has managed their lives with all four of their kids. And so it was actually a very positive experience. And they tried really hard to have me have a good leave experience, come back. There was just a lot of business stuff that was going on that was different at the time. But yeah, I remember being terrified to tell them.
[00:20:28] Margaret Kelsey: And I want to point out, you had no data that it was going to go any other way except for I'm so happy for you and you were still terrified, right? I know. It's still the fear that lives in our head of like, is this going to change the way ... And the statistics back it up, right? For every kid a man has, his salary goes up. For every child, a woman has her salary goes down. It's happening in the biggest data. Yeah.
[00:20:56] Mallory Lee: It's that real.
[00:20:56] Margaret Kelsey: Yeah. Women's earning potential lowers with every child she has and men's will increase with every child that they have.
[00:21:03] Mallory Lee: Oh my God.
[00:21:04] Margaret Kelsey: I mean, fact check me on that, but I'm pretty sure. We were pretty sure I read this one. I'm just going to trust you.
[00:21:10] Mallory Lee: I want to find the stat so that we can inform people of how mad that is, how crazy that is.
[00:21:16] Margaret Kelsey: Because the expectation is that the mom is going to handle the sick days, is going to be less reliable, is going to need to take them to doctor's appointments and things like that. We've set up this expectation that the husbands, if there is a husband in the house, is going to not be the primary caregiver. And it's absurd because employers aren't asking like, "Well, how do you set up your household?"
[00:21:47] Shannon Curran: It is. How you decide
[00:21:48] Mallory Lee: Who's going to do the dishes?
[00:21:50] Shannon Curran: Yeah. Well, whoever's standing near them, that is his coaching.
[00:21:55] Margaret Kelsey: Egalitarian is your household. Okay. We will
[00:21:58] Shannon Curran: Keep
[00:21:58] Margaret Kelsey: Your pay the same.
[00:22:00] Shannon Curran: I know. And I think it is fascinating because I navigated through this with Sebastian a little bit different than we are with two, because two is like, Jesus, it's just like a lot of a lot. Mallory, I don't know how you're doing it. I'm hanging out by a thread over here. And so all your kids are alive. I saw them all eating snacks, so I know they're there. It was interesting to talk to some of my friends that have a primary parent and a non-primary parent kind of in their setup, which definitely works for some people because of the nature of your relationship. But for us, we just didn't have that. There wasn't a primary parent. So it did require a lot of talking all the time because the expectation that one or the other would take something was really different. And I think it was the nature of our jobs at the time too.
[00:22:48] And now my husband is back to work at a more, he's a union electrician. His hours are very strict and he has no service on his phone when he's at work. I just have the more flexible job and I have service on my phone during the day. That's kind of how it's like, that's just like practically, right? But then we figured out how to make the nighttime a little less heavy on me and stuff like that. And it's a constant negotiation. So the fact that any employer could just assume that this is not going to change throughout your life too is like ... I have friends that have kids in school age and they actually have less childcare than I do because my childcare's open till five, not till two o'clock or whatever when school ends.
[00:23:29] Margaret Kelsey: Thank God for aftercare. I will say that. We got everyone into the aftercare program and it's a lifesaver. I have a funny story about that primary parenting stuff though, if you want to hear it.
Certainly! Here is the corrected part with all lines having a speaker name:
[00:23:29] Margaret Kelsey: Thank God for aftercare. I will say that. We got everyone into the aftercare program and it's a lifesaver. I have a funny story about that primary parenting stuff though, if you want to hear it.
[00:23:38] Shannon Curran: Go.
[00:23:38] Margaret Kelsey: Yeah. So it's a little bit divorce related. So
[00:23:44] Margaret Kelsey: Before I moved out and got my own apartment, my ex and I did six months of an in-home separation where we're in different rooms and whatnot. And we weren't really sharing with our friend group yet that we were separated, but we were doing primary parent days. So we were acting like custody would change hands even though we're in the same house. And so sometimes a mom would reach out to me and be like, "Oh, can Everett do a play date on Saturday?" And it would be like my ex's time with him and I would be like, "Oh, you have to ask Ben. It's his primary parent day." And she was like, "This is genius." I'm like, "Yeah, it's like I could be at the house. I could not be at the house. I can go pop off to Target without checking in with him because he's primary parent that day." And I had convinced her, she went back home and talked to her husband about it.
[00:24:29] Margaret Kelsey: She was like, "All right, on the weekends, we're going to split and I'm going to get Saturday and you're going to get Sunday." And eventually I was like, "Yeah, so I'm moving out. " We were doing a separation and she was like, "Oh my gosh."
[00:24:42] Shannon Curran: But I just pitched like, "Hey, it's awesome to just be like this day your primary parent and I can go get my nails done if I want to or go meet up with a friend for coffee and I don't have to check in with, is it okay if I leave the house and you're..." And so I think it was hopefully helpful for her in her relationship.
[00:25:00] Shannon Curran: It was an off ramp to one marriage, but maybe it kept someone else in a marriage maybe. I don't know. It could have been helpful. That's so funny.
[00:25:06] Margaret Kelsey: But I think having that language around it too is really important in a relationship or in a marriage of just calling out that that exists. We have defaulted to me being primary parent. There needs to be some time that you be primary parent. It doesn't have to be fifty fifty based on everyone's life and work and all those different things. And Shannon, to your point, it's not even fifty fifty because of we're both earning the same amount of money. I think both people's jobs have to be supported if we've agreed as a couple that both of us are going to have jobs, then we need to split up all of those things. So there's a book and a card deck Fair Play. I don't know if you guys have talked about it yet.
[00:25:53] Shannon Curran: No, we haven’t yet.
[00:25:54] Margaret Kelsey: No. Oh, it's amazing. I mean, didn't work for my last marriage, but I like the concept.
[00:25:58] Shannon Curran: What's it called again?
[00:26:00] Margaret Kelsey: Fair Play. And the whole point is that we treat women's time as sand on the beach, right? It's like renewable resource. There's always more time and we treat men's time like precious diamonds. And so in that book, it talks about, and there's like a card deck, which every decision or thing in a household, including planning birthday parties down to paying taxes to car maintenance to all that kind of stuff, you pick out the cards that you want to own and you have to own conception, planning, and execution of that task. You can't say, "All right, I put the dry cleaning stuff over here. Now you take it to the dry cleaner." You're the full stop, take it to the dry cleaner, pick it up, do the whole thing. And then the other interesting thing in that book is that there are some tasks that are time-sensitive, like feeding your children every morning.
[00:26:42] Shannon Curran: That's such a good framework.
[00:26:43] Margaret Kelsey: There's some things that need to be done and we tend to delegate in a relationship the time-sensitive tasks to the woman and the ones like mowing the lawn, which could happen anytime on the weekend to the man. So he gets more of these tasks that he can kind of do whenever he wants. And we get the ones that are super demanding in terms of needing to be done. And so it's just like, I'm really obsessed with when we have language to talk about something, then we can actually solve it. But without the language of like, "Well, why does this feel so hard?" we're never going to actually be able to make any headway into being able to fix anything.
[00:27:23] Mallory Lee: Wow. Hearing you talk about this, I'm realizing without having that framework, I think Brian and I do a decent job of this
[00:27:32] Shannon Curran: Because- You guys
[00:27:33] Mallory Lee: Do. Ever since we were dating, we would talk about boy jobs and girl jobs. And if something's broken, I don't even think about what's going to happen. I just know he's going to fix it. It's
[00:27:46] Shannon Curran: Very Midwest. I love it.
[00:27:48] Mallory Lee: It is. It is, right? But that even is related probably to how my maternity leave where I decided I wanted to try staying home. It all unfolded during this time where I was very much the primary parent. I was nursing. I was the only one who got up at night because Brian had to get up and go to work the next day. And back then, this was like 10 years ago, his company didn't have that generous of a paternity leave for the person who's not giving birth or whatever. And so he took like one week off and then he was pretty much back to work. And with one, that was fine. It was no big deal. Even though I did have a C-section and I was recovering from a major surgery, but our moms were around. So I will say when the next C-section is scheduled and planned, dream, that part's a
[00:28:47] Shannon Curran: Dream.
[00:28:48] Mallory Lee: But yeah, I think that for so long I was just very clearly the primary parent and I wonder how it would be now because now that I'm back working full-time, there is no primary parent. We're both so fifty-fifty, it would be very interesting to see how it would go today if we had another little one surprise us, but we're not going to, but I'm just saying it'd be interesting.
[00:29:13] Shannon Curran: You've said that people plan ... Valerie said, I don't know if you heard this episode, Margaret, but Mallory, it's like, no one has a third kid on purpose, like nobody. She goes, "But the fourth one people have on purpose because they decided they needed to even it out." She's like, "We're not going to do that." I know I'm
[00:29:31] Margaret Kelsey: Youngest and I'm three, so I feel personally attacked.
[00:29:34] Shannon Curran: That's what I said. I was like, "I'm so sorry to all the third kids on the
[00:29:38] Mallory Lee: Call." It always ends up being the best possible surprise of your life, but I've done a lot of research nine times out of 10. It's a surprise.
[00:29:49] Shannon Curran: Yeah,
[00:29:49] Margaret Kelsey: That's hysterical.
[00:29:51] Shannon Curran: Yeah. I had my first, Mallory also had her first two really close together, but people are always like, "Oh, is it because you wanted more?" I'm like, "No, it's Because I couldn't stand the idea of having to do this again, so I had to get it out of the way
[00:30:04] Mallory Lee: In and over it.
[00:30:06] Shannon Curran: And now I pretty much, the first three months, if you'd asked me, I would say, "I'm not going to make it. I certainly am not going to make it." But now I'm like, okay, I can see how this would be cool. I still have two babies at the same time that just need very different things, but it's fun to watch the older one have a lot of affection for the younger. And also I have to protect her from being impaled with a hockey stick, but most of the time it's very, very sweet.
[00:30:36] Margaret Kelsey: I feel that. I think the thing that I'm really happy about right now is that I have two bonus daughters now. Yeah, that's so cool. And so it's really fun. I did have some hesitation if ever it was going to be an only child his whole life. And it's fun because we didn't have to force the family together and be like, "All right, congeal," because it's probably once a month that we get all the kids together on a weekend during the school year, because they're obviously in school, so it's harder to do that. And then in the summer we can spend some more time together. But watching the affection amongst them, and then I mean the two older ones fight cats and dogs sometimes. But watching Everett really love on Daisy who's like two and a half and really just like ... Yeah. Rosie and Daisy.
[00:31:25] Margaret Kelsey: So I got some flower children.
[00:31:27] Mallory Lee: Adorable. That's
[00:31:29] Margaret Kelsey: Nice. Be excellent for tattoos. Really cool. But getting thrusted into it, I think Mallory, you having three and then watching, you become a different mom. And what you're saying, Shannon, right now is like, when you just have one, you don't have to worry about impalement from another child. And so I realized that I've had to learn different skills and I'm still learning different skills of like, how do I parent three? Because when the two older ones get in a fight, I can't just take Everett's side all the time. That's not fair. And I can't not take Everett's side sometimes when it was clearly Everett was not doing anything wrong. But then how do you balance that of like I'm not being mean stepmom Everett protector. I'm being like ... So it is wild in terms of I didn't realize until Rosie and Daisy ruined my life that I thought I just knew how to mom.
[00:32:23] Margaret Kelsey: And I'm like, "Oh, this is a different level of momming."
[00:32:27] Shannon Curran: Yes. Yes.
[00:32:28] Mallory Lee: Yeah. Oh, that's so cool though that they've already started to have their bond. And I can imagine, like you're saying, that's more organic because you're not just forcing it and surprising them. And it's like, "Hey, surprise, you have two sisters now." They
[00:32:45] Margaret Kelsey: Have two sisters that live here now full time. Yeah. I feel really lucky that it's a gentler kind of exposure and that they're going to grow up throughout their lives and feel like really close cousins. They're not going to likely ... Well, we'll see how it goes, but I think that it's kind of a perfect setup for me at least.
[00:33:06] Shannon Curran: I know you get alone time, but you get family time and sometimes you get couple time. I feel like Margaret- We
[00:33:12] Margaret Kelsey: Free childcare on our date nights and they're biologically related to that child. It's the best free childcare you can have. They're with their other parent. There's no other better place for them to be. Sometimes we'll go out and we'll talk to someone, sit at a bar or something and it'll be like, "Oh yeah, we have three kids and between the two of us." And they're like, "Where are they right now?" And we're like, "Oh, they're with their
[00:33:39] Shannon Curran: Parents." Not together. Not together separately. Yeah.
[00:33:42] Margaret Kelsey: They're in two different houses at their other parents'
[00:33:45] Shannon Curran: House. Different
[00:33:46] Margaret Kelsey: States. Yeah. Different states. Yeah.
[00:33:48] Shannon Curran: Oh my God. That brings
[00:33:49] Mallory Lee: New meaning to the dads where it's like, oh, dad has to babysit tonight. Talk about primary parent bullshit. When people say like, "Oh, daddy is babysitting the kids so that mommy can go out to girls' night." It's like, no, he's the parent too. No,
[00:34:04] Margaret Kelsey: He's
[00:34:05] Mallory Lee: Parenting. They're not really babysitting.
[00:34:07] Shannon Curran: I know. I feel like I've said this before, but I think having parental leave be really equitable is kind of the only way we get past this primary parent bullshit in the early days. Because if what you're saying is I get ... So number one, of course, I'm recovering from surgery and I was physically feeding, still am feeding my daughter because she won't take a bottle. The biggest thing with Sebastian, I remember is when I went back to work three months after, Pete was home for three full months being the primary caregiver to him. And I remember the first week him asking me all these questions about how I cared for him at the time. And I know it was because he was trying to, like continuity and all this stuff. And I was like, honestly, you do you. You find your own rhythm. I don't know.
[00:34:52] You think I knew what I was doing? I just survived every day. I don't really know. I used to take Sebastian out all the time because I could not be in the house. I just am the worst. And Pete, I don't think left the house for three months, but they had so much fun. They played with toys. I'm not as good at that part of parenting. Pete's really good about the ... Pete's like a floor guy. He's on the floor playing the thing and I'm the car gal. We're going. You know what I mean? Through competence, you gain confidence. He built competence around being a solo parent and being the primary parent. I think once you hit the toddler stage, it's like no one knows what the hell is going on. And we are all just trying to ... True. We've made it to the dinner table three times this week, luckily, because that was a big issue we've been just having.
[00:35:39] But we're trying everything. So now it's definitely fifty-fifty. But I think at the beginning it really ... If you don't have equal leave and if you cannot have women in high performing jobs in the workforce, you just can't. Unless their husband or their partner or the non-birthing parent is also allowed that time to care for the child. I just feel so ... I think that's the reason why we were set up for success the first time, for sure. Yeah.
[00:36:04] Margaret Kelsey: I can't imagine otherwise. I really
[00:36:05] Shannon Curran: Agree. I think systemically, the fair play stuff is helpful in the micro, but there are so many of these systemic things that set us up for potential failure. And by some luck that you're like, oh, this is how this actually works well, is that Pete had those three months. And yeah, I agree. I had a similar experience where my ex, I mean, we were working from home at the time because it was COVID, but I think only took a couple days off after and then was back to ... He was working in sales, so back to sales calls and all that stuff. So I think it would've been interesting to have that experience where
[00:36:51] Shannon Curran: You
[00:36:51] Margaret Kelsey: Actually have some help in the beginning bits.
[00:36:54] Shannon Curran: So we have one segment that we always do that we call our save of the week. It is either people, process, product, practice that helped you as a working parent in this last week, like something that you've done. Now, do you want to go first? To survive or thrive. We might not. Sometimes you get to thrive. It's not always. Margaret seems to be thriving. So maybe she ...
[00:37:18] Mallory Lee: I don't really know what thriving feels like anymore.
[00:37:20] Shannon Curran: Not right now.
[00:37:21] Mallory Lee: Hopefully someday soon. Yeah. So this week I'm going to default to the sappy mom gratitude. We have a funeral that we have to go to tomorrow. And I texted my mom and I said, "Hey, we've got a funeral. Are you available on Saturday?" She's like, "Yeah, of course. Be there." And just the level of not having to stress about that, it was one less thing for me to be all worried about this week or all stressed out about. And she never makes me feel guilty. She never even ... If she's debating it, she doesn't show it. She's just like, "Yeah, I'll be there." And I'm just so thankful for that and definitely saved my Saturday. So thanks, mom.
[00:38:10] Shannon Curran: Love it. So I could say we've been navigating with some challenges of a two and a half year old, our negotiation around dinner, which I've talked about on this pod before that we call big snack and that has stopped working, which is fair. Anyone in our house dislike eating. So I don't want to make eating a really frustrating experience, but I do think we were getting to the point where it was becoming a very passive experience and I do want it to be some time we spent together and all that. So we have recently redone our parts of our kitchen. A part of when Pete was kind of working more freelance, he built a nook in our kitchen, very handy, for to eat breakfast out, which has always been my dream. I've always said, any house I have, I just want a breakfast nook next to a big window.
[00:38:57] Shannon Curran: And now we have one. And so we've been trying to eat dinner there every night. And it's so easy to give up when it's feeling like a fight and you're like, "Do we really need to do this tonight?" So we've been putting his Tony box on the table and he gets to choose one of his figurines to listen to during dinner. And so it's actually been very successful. Unfortunately, I have listened to the story about the Wazel snook in Spidey and his amazing friends every night for the last five nights.
[00:39:25] Mallory Lee: You're memorizing it at this point.
[00:39:27] Shannon Curran: Oh God. That serious though.
[00:39:30] Margaret Kelsey: Whatever works at that age, it is whatever works. And the good thing is at that age, there are a lot of tantrums, but they're very short-lived. I feel like once you get, when they say three is two with a year of experience, I do think once they get more object permanence, like when you're getting into 33 and a half, those tantrums tend to be longer because they remember more. This two and a half, you can just take something away from them, hide in a closet and within 10 minutes they're onto the next thing, onto the next
[00:40:01] Shannon Curran: Terrorizing. I'm also building skills. I'm also building skills, right? And I'm building resilience in myself as well as my child. So I think there's, and next week this won't work, but for this week, I appreciate this little box that tells stories with very overpriced figurines that you put on top. So that was my- Big sack was
[00:40:20] Margaret Kelsey: Genius though. Big snack is genius.
[00:40:23] Shannon Curran: Oh, it was so
[00:40:24] Margaret Kelsey: Good. I did snack plate where it's mostly vegetables, but like a couple, like maybe a couple of fun. They'll do this today. Yeah. Snack plate is ... But like big snack is very similar. I do have one. Stackplate
[00:40:36] Mallory Lee: Was our lunch today and RIP to Big Snack Shannon because it had such a good run. It was-
[00:40:43] Shannon Curran: I know, but I think it might work again someday around too. Yeah, exactly. Nothing the same will work, I'm sure, but we can travel.
[00:40:53] Margaret Kelsey: Real one though. I know my one before was jokey. You go. I feel like the longer days, the warmer weather and the playing, we're living in the 90s and just throwing my son outside on the weekends. That has been amazing. We've spent so much outdoor time and I've literally was just like, "We're not allowed to go indoors right now." So we're acting like it's going to be a 90 summer. They're going to be juice boxes thrown out the window, go play with sticks. I don't know, just go make up a game and figure it out and go play in the backyard.
[00:41:29] Shannon Curran: Love.
[00:41:30] Margaret Kelsey: The changing weather, even though March is a very fickle friend.
[00:41:35] Shannon Curran: Well, Margaret, it's been so wonderful to have you here and I appreciate you very much for coming out of your little bit of your influencer hibernation for those that have followed you for years. You did. Yeah, it was fun.
[00:41:49] Margaret Kelsey: But I'm back, baby.
[00:41:50] Shannon Curran: Back so bad. You hibernated and did so many things.
[00:41:56] Margaret Kelsey: I
[00:41:56] Shannon Curran: Couldn't post
[00:41:57] Margaret Kelsey: On LinkedIn. I was buying a house.
[00:42:00] Shannon Curran: And getting unmarried and married. It's a lot important. Well, if people want to find you, they can find you on LinkedIn, right? But tell them about your art too. I'd love if people want to follow your art journey. Tell them a little bit about
[00:42:18] Margaret Kelsey: It. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, you can find everything through margaretkelsey.com too. It's kind of the place to offshoot to all the different places. So you can find my art there. I like to do cyanotype work. It's an alternative photographic process where you mix these iron solutions together and anything that you painted on becomes photosensitive. So I've done some collages with large scale photo negatives and other objects and things. And definitely I feel like now that the sun is coming up longer, maybe there'll be a new collection in the works, but I just really love ... And my fiance now is a fantastic photographer and we've actually now set up ...
[00:43:02] Margaret Kelsey: We can do everything from film photography all the way to development to printing. So we have a bunch of developer chemicals in my kitchen or in my dining room right now. So we're soup to nuts. And I do feel like since he's come into my life, creativity is just now a part of the daily process. It's just like- Oh, that's so cool. ... like your meals and all the other and breathing. So I think that that's our goal is to just kind of create every day and then hopefully I'll still do some of the larger collections and stuff. But it's kind of sprinkled now through all my daily activities rather than during that period of time that I was advising, it was like, this is what I'm doing is making this collection.
[00:43:45] Shannon Curran: That's awesome. Amazing. And I'll get back
[00:43:47] Margaret Kelsey: On LinkedIn and start posting some stuff. You don't want to hear my ramblings about AI.
[00:43:53] Shannon Curran: I'd rather hear yours actually than many others. So that's great. Perfect. Well, thanks gals. I hope you have a wonderful rest of this beautiful, sunny first day of spring and we will- It's been
[00:44:04] Mallory Lee: Wonderful.
[00:44:05] Shannon Curran: Talk to
[00:44:05] Margaret Kelsey: You later. Thank you for having me.
[00:44:08] Mallory Lee: Thank you, Margaret. Bye.
[00:44:10] Shannon Curran: Thanks for listening to Full Stack Moms.
[00:44:12] Mallory Lee: We'll be back with more episodes that help you see you're not crazy and you're not alone. If we might be your people, please make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:44:23] Shannon Curran: Margaret, do you have one or you want me to go?
[00:44:25] Margaret Kelsey: You can go because I'm not going to say divorce your first husband is my wife.
[00:44:30] Shannon Curran: That saved you every week, not just this.
[00:44:32] Mallory Lee: Is that a framework?
[00:44:36] Shannon Curran: Do our husbands, we love you.
[00:44:39] Margaret Kelsey: Have your kids with your first husband and then go find the love of your life.
[00:44:44] Shannon Curran: What a good setup.
[00:44:46] Shannon Curran: Thank you so much for joining us, Margaret. It was so wonderful having you!
[00:44:50] Mallory Lee: Yes, thank you for being here, Margaret! Always so great catching up with you.
[00:44:54] Shannon Curran: And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in to another episode of Full Stack Moms. We’ll be back soon with more conversations that help working moms like you feel supported. Take care!
[00:45:03] Mallory Lee: Don't forget to subscribe and share with your friends!
[00:45:06] Shannon Curran: Bye for now!
[00:45:08] Mallory Lee: Bye!
[00:45:10] Shannon Curran: Thanks for listening!