#93 Juggling a Design Role and Parenthood
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You have to work with managing your expectations from yourself and from the baby because every single journey is super unique. Sometimes babies are not sleeping, they need your help, they need your support. And sometimes babies are more autonomic and they could spend time on a plane, right? And so if you're expecting that the baby will go to sleep right now, he's most likely not going to do that. That's the biggest frustration I had where I was expecting I can do something and I cannot. ♪

Hello UX friends and welcome to a new episode of Honest UX Talks. As always, I'm joined by Anfisa and today we will be unpacking some very personal stories about being a parent in the design industry and overall how to stay relevant when you're at home on parental leave.

I think we're going to talk more about how to stay sane, not relevant, but staying relevant is definitely something that worries most first-time parents. So we will try to share some personal stories and some tips and tricks maybe that we've been able to gather during the, in my case, I think I had a two-year parental leave.

And Anfisa is already seven months into it or even eight. So we have some experience with that and definitely some tips on how to stay sane and relevant. So with this intro, I'm going to jump to our classic question. How was your past week, Anfisa? Hello, everybody. Welcome to the next episode.

I mean, staying relevant, that's doubtful in my question because I'm still in the process, but for sure it's applicable for you because we know how active you are and how many successful activities or whatever like adventures you are going through right now. So definitely I feel like staying relevant is something you'll be more credible to talk about.

So my last two weeks were, I don't know, just as usual, right? You know, sitting with the baby, something we'll talk a lot about in this episode. And then we are about to wrap up our first job hunting support group or community group. So I'm finishing up some of those events. We did the whiteboarding challenge. We did the app critique process.

practices and we only have a couple of last events planned for the next week where we'll just do like a classic QA and then some games to close it off and then I will open the community for everyone which is the great news if anybody's looking for a job moving forward in this year feel free to join this community you'll find invitation link in the show notes and the reason why I'm opening it to everyone is because I've realized that when you have only like a group of 20 people it's just

that much tips and tricks people can share. But if you have the community open for like more people, we can all benefit from sharing great tips and things that work for us and helped us to find a job in this very crazy, turbulent year in the job market. And so, yeah, that's the reason mainly why I opened in this community. But you can also expect a lot of really cool things there, such as free events,

some quiz games. You can expect like a lot of tips, portfolio links, things that work like again, tricks and stuff like that. So just go ahead and you'll figure it out. I'm also working on redesigning my portfolio in Framer. And for those of you who doesn't know, Framer is like a new Webflow, but more similar to Figma. And I really, really enjoy it. There are

There were some struggles and bumps in the way, but I figured them. And I'm seriously in the flow and like so enjoying it because I don't feel like I've ever been able to build such a cool effect in the web space before. And that flow was a little bit limiting to me because I was not a proper developer and I was always just struggling with the basic stuff. And now in framework, it allows me to go full on on creativity and I'm just like really enjoying it. So hopefully anytime soon I'll share my portfolio update.

Maybe it will be helpful for someone for inspiration as well. Anyways, that's it on my side. What about you? How was your last two weeks? I know it was pretty crazy as well. Yeah, January's are always like you would expect them to be slow, but they're always insane and super intense. And this one made no exception.

Yeah, I just had workload at work and with my project, but mostly I'm very immersed in my role at Miro shaping the AI vision for an design narrative. And it's very exciting and a huge opportunity for learning and adding more layers of understanding to my AI expertise, which still feels limited, but it's growing.

Yeah, speaking about my AI expertise, I'm going to be speaking about it like the plan was for 2024. And I recently announced that I will be seeing one of my wildest dreams come to life this March. I'm going to be a speaker at South by Southwest.

which is essentially the conference that I've been dreaming about attending for over 10 years. And then last year, I went there as a participant and everybody was exhausted by my enthusiasm. Like I kept talking about it three months before, six months after. I've been at South by this was a dream come true. I can't believe I was there.

So on and so forth. And then fast forward to 2024, I'm going to be talking on stage at South by which is absolutely insane. And I can't believe it's happening. But it also adds quite significant pressure on my shoulders to come up with the best possible version of my AI talk.

and deliver it in the best possible way. So yeah, I'm a bit stressed out. But I also had a talk last week at 10x conference by Fonz Mons and I got a lot of positive feedback.

Its designer, Tom, was one of the nicest people on the internet giving me the positive feedback on my talk. So it seems that there are some interesting things in there, but now I have to evolve it and add more updates and new layers. It is for some parts philosophical, but I want to make it even more so. Like it's not a talk about how to use mid journey or chat GPT, how to write the perfect

prompt it's a talk about how we can think about this technological revolution as designers and contribute and be relevant staying relevant in the AI revolution which are topics that in case you haven't listened to our previous episode with Jacob Nielsen himself you can go and check out that episode where we talk more about the AI revolution and technological milestone that we're participating in so yeah that's what I've been doing AI and design and everything nice

I have been meaning to ask for ages because I feel like not only me, but also most of our listeners will be super hyper curious. Obviously, you cannot talk about your work at Mira, but

Tell us a little bit more about it. Like, I know that it's out of topic, but I'm just super curious. Are you working on the features? Are you just shaping it? What stage you are? Because we all know that we will be using what you're working on right now. We're just dying to know what's happening there. That's so cool. Yeah, it's a good question. I'm going to try to navigate answering it without any breach. So yeah, essentially, I think you're already using in Miro if we have Miro users listening. Big

because of the speed at which the AI space is evolving. I'm with Miro for four months now, but I have features already live, features that I designed. So you're probably using some of my design decisions and shoot all the feedback you have. I'm very interested in it. And

And yeah, we're essentially trying to move quickly, but responsibly and ethically with building features, learning, launching experiments, but also putting a constant perspective of the future, like future-proofing these design decisions. Where are we heading towards? What's our North Star? What do we want AI to be in

the collaboration space and answering this kind of bigger questions while also delivering tactically with smaller features and experiments that should ideally coherently tie into a bigger narrative. So now I'm balancing these two, let's say, levels of abstraction. And it's exciting because on one hand, I get to see results and see feedback and learn very quickly. And then on the other hand, I'm doing the

big picture thinking, which of course is limited to the specific limitations of the AI industry, right? So I can't articulate a vision for five years from now. Nobody knows what's going to happen with AI in five years, but we're always future-proofing everything we're doing at Miro. And yeah, I'm just very grateful to be working in the collaboration space and building products for product teams, which feels like I'm in my home base doing design in my home space. So it's great. I'm very grateful.

But it's also intense because every job in the AI space right now comes with a significant level of uncertainty and ambiguity and unknowns. And so how do you operate with so much unknown, non-existing standards? We're shaping the mental models for AI as we go. And so Figma does something or Notion does something or Miro does something and then

Everybody's looking at that and then is this the right way to do it? And then everybody's experimenting with that. So it's like we're all learning as an industry what's the right way to surface AI interactions, to design the AI patterns in these products. And so there are no clear answers to that.

or in an ocean of ambiguity. And that's very exciting, but you also have to have the right mindset to deal with it. It can become frustrating. Like sometimes you just don't know. Sorry, you asked me for a short answer. Yeah, so sorry, but I just couldn't, I couldn't help it anymore. Like I needed to learn how is it going? Because NSYNC is so much for shedding the light on it. Obviously, you cannot talk about the details, but it is super interesting and super exciting. I

I'm very sure that most of our listeners are just also dying to know that. So sorry for the little detour. Anyways, let's go back to the topic. Let's do it. So reflecting back on my own maternal leave and on getting pregnant and having 10 months to prepare. Did you know that pregnancies typically last 10 months, not nine months? So it's 40 weeks. It's 10 months. Yeah.

Yeah, that was also like an insight for me. I was like, did you know they were lying to us all this time? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I think the first month you're not aware, like, you don't know you're pregnant. So it's essentially nine months from when you kind of know. I don't know. And many people give birth earlier. So I think...

between nine and 10 months, but some pregnancies last 10 months. Anyhow, you have 10 months to prepare for what's going to come, staying at home, taking a career break in a way. It's not taking a break. It's by no means a break. It's more intense than any job you'll ever have. But for me, those 10 months meant just...

contemplating a lot of fears, contemplating a lot of fear of missing out and just mentally preparing for something that I thought would be awful professionally. And so the first question I want to ask to both of us is what were your biggest fears before going into parental leave and which of them turned out to be real? Which of them turned out to be unnecessary? What was your experience? What did you fear most?

That is such a great question to start from. Well, first of all, I also want to mention that talking about the maternity leave, which is not the break at all.

The fun fact that in Czech language, I'm Ukrainian living in Czech Republic for those of you who doesn't know. So in Czech language, maternity leave is translated as motherhood vacation. And I've been like always like bitching around it. Like what the hell is that a vacation? But I'll mean it's like, how can somebody give it the name vacation? Anyways, yes, I have been on the maternity vacation according to Czech language for eight months now. Yeah. Looking back into the story of how I was pregnant and how, you know, my fears were accumulated. I think

You're right about like having so many fears. I'm pretty sure you had more of them, to be honest. I feel like for me, maybe after talking to you and hearing your story, I was not so wrapped up in all the fears. I definitely had a lot of them, but I think they were like manageable and limited. I think mostly I was so busy trying to prove everyone that I can do my great job even being nine months pregnant or something like that.

I remember at my work, I didn't tell anyone, obviously, until we had like a conference where everybody was live in the same room. And I was already like seven months pregnant. Yeah.

So that's when everybody discovered it. So before that, I just didn't want anybody to feel like my work is being affected by this factor that I'm pregnant. And I really didn't want to talk about it. And I always felt one of the weirdest thing was that I just didn't feel comfortable sharing it for whatever reason. Honestly, I didn't really internalize it and try to unpack it. But

I just always felt like the fact that I'm pregnant, I don't feel like this is something to spoke about. I don't know if it's something I'd be sharing because if I say this, and honestly, in my design team, I was the first woman pregnant. We do have like five,

fathers in my team, but really not many women. I think maybe I'm the only one so far. Anyways, I just felt like it's a super weird thing to bring up as the woman, because as the woman, then immediately everybody thinks, oh, you're going to take the break or how relevant you'll be, or they will be hiring someone or what's going to happen and stuff like that. And will your work be impacted by the fact that you're pregnant and all of those things? And I just felt like, oh my God, I just don't want to have those conversations. I don't want them to be on our agenda. We have so much work happening and

I just don't want this to take away from the work we're doing. And so I think the only person I told that obviously I'm pregnant is my direct manager, who knew about it all along. And those people who would have been, you know, majorly affected by me going away. And that's pretty much it. Yeah, people learned I'm going to be on maternity leave one month before I was on maternity leave. And luckily, because my manager knew they did hire a design lead who will be taking on my responsibilities partly when I'm away.

And so that was not a part of it. For some reason, when I was so wrapped up in not telling anyone and being so focused on everything, and I think...

I had this opposite reaction of if I'm going to be away for so long, I need to do everything right now in this time while I'm able to. So also a disclaimer here, I think I was super lucky because I had a very good pregnancy. I didn't have any major problems. I didn't have morning sicknesses or something like that. So yes, of course, in the first trimester, I was a bit tired and sleepy and all that, which is normal.

In the last trimester, when you're growing much bigger, I was very active. I think I was, I don't know, running around for like eight kilometers a day up until nine months. I was really active. So I think I had a lot of energy anyways. And I was trying to bring this energy into every single project I can still squeeze into my time.

So I somehow managed to do so much work up until the moment I was given the birth. I think I did the ADP-List job hunting mentoring group. I was finishing work. I was finishing home renovation. I still didn't have a place to sleep at when I was 39 weeks pregnant. We were still reconstructing our bedrooms. Also, we didn't have kids' room. Honestly, I think I bought the very first thing for the baby when I was 39 weeks pregnant and I gave birth later.

like 32 weeks pregnant. So two weeks overdue. Anyway, so I was very not in a rush to get any baby stuff. I think a lot of people actually get in baby stuff when they're like six months pregnant. I think I bought the stroller literally nine months pregnant, like two weeks before I supposed to give the birth. So I was not in a rush. I was trying to squeeze everything possible in this amount of time. I think I was just anxious.

that I'll not have any more time for myself. And one of the key values that I feel like is super important to me is having my free time, my liberty, opportunity to do whatever I want. And I knew that it's going to be taken away from me, obviously for the good reasons. And that's the reaction I kind of had, right? Squeezing everything, just too much in myself.

Now, eight months after the birth, I'm kind of still in the same mindset, I have to say. So I can't help myself because I'm still trying to use every single minute, opportunity, hour, half an hour, 15 minutes to work on something. I think I'm not just a typical mother who wants to spend all the time for the baby. And I think every person is different. So I really don't want any judgment for people who's doing one or another way.

For me, I just knew that I just feel very bad when I'm not doing something. I feel like a huge homo, which we'll, I'm sure, talk about in a second. But I am just trying to squeeze absolutely every single minute with work, packet, like portfolio, new program, new group, recording new course. I want to be relevant. I don't want to fall out.

I want to read books and stuff like that. So to me, it's an opportunity to actually fill the limited amount of free space with everything I've been postponing in my work time. Reading books, launching little programs here and there, supporting community, doing mentoring and stuff like that. Something I believe you also did. So yeah, my fears were really packed with me not being able to have my free time anymore, which is absolutely true. You absolutely don't have any free time. And the only way to do something right now for me is to literally multitask.

Well, I've been talking a lot, so I really want to hear your part of the story as well. Thanks for sharing your story. I knew parts of it. It feels like something so warm when people talk about their transitioning into parenting experience. It feels like they're offering something very intimate and important.

Reflecting back on my own journey, I remember very clearly having a lot of anxiety when I was pregnant. I was super stressed out. My career is going to take a hit. I was on this launch pad and going very quickly from not having a lot of opportunities to having so many opportunities. I wanted to say yes to everything. I felt like I'm going to just stall.

and then lose these and it's irreversible. And so I went into my maternal leave with a lot of anxiety and with a lot of preconceptions. And some mature, wise people told me that, you know what? Sometimes kids can restart your career. Sometimes kids can reframe your career. They can help you understand yourself better. And maybe it's an opportunity. And I couldn't believe that. I thought it's just like, yeah, sure. They're just trying to like make me feel better. It can't possibly be better professionally.

But it turned out that it was. Now, in all fairness and something that everybody who's listening should keep in mind, I had some help. I had all of the grandparents of Mia are in the same city with us. We had some support for like three, four months. I had a nanny.

So I was able to continue exploring professional opportunities and working on the side because I had this help. My partner was very involved. He was also like picking her up after his work and so on. So I had the time in which I could continue to experiment and learn and do things here and there and just play around with the things.

And it was very interesting that when I was pregnant, for once you approached me with the podcast idea and I was like, I can't possibly make time for that. It's going to be just survival mode day in, day out. And then I accepted it and then it became one of my most important rituals of self-reflection and continuous growth and so on.

And then also my ex-partner from Mento, Radu, he reached out to me when I was pregnant with the proposal. Let's build Mento together. And I was like, I can't possibly start a business now. I won't become an entrepreneur while I'm raising a baby. I don't need two babies.

But then he was also very, come on, we'll figure it out together. Let's just do it. Let's just try. And it was draining. I mean, if I were to do it again, like have a child again, I would not start a business while having a child. I would wait to see what that entails for me because it also depends on the child. Some kids are very independent and they don't require a lot of effort, but other kids don't sleep well. They get sick very easily. So you can have very different experiences from one kid to another. And

That also needs to be factored in when you're making career decisions. But it turned out I was able to launch the boot camp when Mia was a couple of months old and run this business in survival mode. Absolutely. It wasn't a walk in the park. I'm not going to minimize. Oh, you can do anything you want. It was like I was under a lot of stress and always close to burning out.

But it was an important growth in my career. I continued to do some of the things I liked, like content, brand deals, talking to people, communicating ideas, mentoring a lot of students, both under mentor and outside. So I continued to do some of the things that I liked for a couple of hours per day. And this kind of helped me be a better mother in one way.

because it wasn't just baby, baby, baby talk all day. I could just continue to be an adult, continue to do things that nourish me intellectually. And then I was able to be a better mother and sustain a lot of baby talk because I had something that was feeding my adult self. So it's really interesting that

I had a lot of concerns. I was probably one of the most preoccupied mothers professionally before becoming a mother. And then I am able to confidently say that if you have help, and it's impossible without any help, but

But if you have help, then you can continue to do things not at the same pace, not with the same rhythm, not with the same intensity, probably not as fast. But you can still continue to grow and progress and do things that maybe you like more. But it's essential that you have help. And this leads me to my second question for you. Did you have a support system? And what does an effective support system look like from your experience? Oh, this is such a great question. I feel like every mother needs one.

It's essential if you want to stay sane and if you want to have a normal human being sane for one year at least. Well, that's like, this is an emotional topic to me. I think I might be a little bit went in right now. So I am lucky because I did have some support system. I have my mother coming to Czech Republic from Ukraine.

Fun story is that as Ukrainian, when the war started, our parents' generation, they did not want to leave at all, even if the terrorists are already there. And it's very, very dangerous. I spent like three months trying to convince them to leave. They couldn't. And then when I got a baby, my mom finally came to Czech Republic. They were joking that this is the only reason how you made us leave Ukraine. So my mom came, helped me in the first three months.

As Ukrainian, she could be abroad for three months, visa-free. That was absolutely immense help. I didn't know what I would do without it. After the operation at the hospital, I was like alone for three days. You're only the one with the baby after the operation. You have no idea how to do, what to do and stuff like that. So it was like just critically overwhelming and overwhelming.

when I was out of that hospital and I could sleep in my bed and they would take care of everything. They would cook, they would clean, they would, you know, take the care of the baby. That was just like, I can remember this moment forever. It was so good.

Having a help is so essential. And she did help me in the first three months. I could recover. I could go back to normal. I could figure out my new routine, my new life. I could build the mindset of how am I going to live like right now is it because she could take up a couple of responsibilities. My husband was working. So it was me and her and it really helped me. And then after one or two months when she left, another mother-in-law came. So it was also super, super, super helpful.

I have been without help for now a couple of months. It's been stressful, but I would say that the first three months were most essential because that's the time I personally was mostly struggling. And the baby was absolutely helpless. So, I mean, right now he's seven months old, so he can sit, he can do some stuff, he could hold his bag. I don't have to carry him for so long in my hands and being so tired all the time because I have a big baby, almost 10 kilograms. So it's a pretty big baby for seven months old.

So my back was dying and having a help was essential. And then long story short, so my parents and my husband's parents are all in Ukraine. We are foreigners here in Czech Republic, but in Ukraine there is war, so we cannot go home to Ukraine and leave with the baby there with the support. So the only way for us to survive it is either me taking care of the baby all the time or finding the nanny or kindergarten after, I don't know, one year from now or something. In Czech Republic here don't have a daycare. It's not typical. I think

think it's more typical in the US or maybe a little bit more Western countries. Like I've heard about it in the Netherlands or in France maybe. But here in the Czech Republic, I don't think you could ever find a place where they would take a baby less than one and a half years old. So first, how one and a half years? It's all on you. And the only way for you to get help is either grandparents or to find a nanny. And we thought about having a nanny for so much already.

But for some reason, we never get to do this. There is always this little internal block for some reason. I always feel like, oh my God, there's this new person and the baby will not like them. And what if this person doesn't work out and he's used to it? You know, like I'm having all those fears. So I'm always thinking, okay, I can survive a couple of months. Maybe the grandmas will come and help us again in a couple of months.

So for now, we are living without any help. And the typical routine day looks like me taking care of the whole day of the baby until like 6 p.m. And then from 6, sometimes 7 p.m., my husband is taking care of the baby for another two, three hours. And so I'm practically able to work only after like 6 p.m., 7 p.m. sometimes. This is when I have those community events. And this is when I work on my portfolio right now.

And then during the day, he sleeps a little bit. So before he slept a little bit more. Now he's sleeping maybe like one or two hours, depending on the time of the day. So I do have like a little breaks during the day, but mostly like 90% of the time, I'm just with the baby. And that's overwhelming. And the first six months, I was whining all the time. It felt like

It is hard. This is absolutely hard. It's like a marathon you're running and it has no ending. It feels like you can never break through it. You can never finish it. It will be always a lot of work growing to the least. It's overwhelming. You have to take it day by day and stuff like that.

So yeah, it was very, very overwhelming for me, especially the first six months. And now when he's seven, I feel finally more or less settled. The only bad thing is that when you're sick and you have absolutely no energy, you have to take care of the baby. And you also have this growing list of to-do things you want to do. So that is very, very tough. But I've

I feel like, again, having grandparents will save you, give you a sane space to do whatever you need to do in order to stay alive. Now, without grandparents or without help, I'm barely able to find time for the shower, but that's a different story. How about you, Ioana? I know that you had help, but tell us a bit more about it. How did you navigate it, I guess?

So in the beginning, I didn't have a lot of help because I don't know, I think mothers become very possessive with their kids when they're very little. It feels like you're actually the only person that can soothe them and really help them. And so I had Mia during the pandemic and there was no vaccine when she was born. And there was this also the layer of getting visits and support from people who are walking outside and bringing all the COVID vaccines.

strains in our home. So the thing is that I didn't have a lot of help for the first six months, but for the first six months, it's not that bad. You don't sleep a lot, but you don't sleep. That's a major problem. And it's bad for your mental health, but the baby sleeps 18 hours a day, I think in the beginning or something. So most of the time they do sleep, they just wake up very often. And so they wake you up and you can't go back to sleep as fast as them, but they sleep throughout the day. They have like four naps a day.

So I was able during her naps to do some things here and there. But then when she started napping less and less, I felt like I'm more solicited and I need some support. And then that's when we introduced grandparents slowly. But also my partner's help was very important at that moment. And so my support system was mostly made out of my therapist and my partner for six months and then grandparents. And then at some point when I started working

more we also had a part-time nanny that came in for four hours a day and that also cleared some space for me to be able to do the grown-up stuff well being a parent is also very grown-up don't get me wrong like it's the most grown-up thing I've done becoming a mother so I'm not saying that just work is grown up and being a mother is like playing around it's completely not the case

But like just being in the space where you have this professional identity or professional self, which is an important component in our psyche and something that we all need in order to feel balanced and at peace with ourselves. So not everyone, like some people don't care so much about professional success, but I'm one of the people who do care. So for me, it was very important to continue to have that to some degree. So my support system initially, yes, my partner,

And my therapist, I recommend anyone who's going through this major transition, you're going to be doing supportive therapy. It's not going to start surfacing your childhood trauma while you're having a lot of trauma in your life anyhow. So it's just supporting you through this process. For me, it was important. And then also, yeah, at some point, grandparents, at some point, nanny. And then Mia started going to daycare when she turned two.

And then I went back to work. And this is a luxury that I didn't mention yet. In Romania, we get two years of maternity leave, which is absolutely incredible. So for me, this privilege of being able to do nice projects and continue to work and run my boot camp and have a support system and spend time with my daughter and also breastfeed her for two years. And so all these things were possible.

because in Romania we have this privilege of being able to stay at home with a baby for two years and I'm very lucky. I don't think it's a privilege. I think that's a norm that we need to all act like this should be a thing. It's incredible that we still don't have it like everywhere. It's completely against nature, right? So human babies are the best

creatures that become independent the latest. So if you watch the birth of a wild animal, it's born and then it starts walking. Yeah, just keeps up with their parents. But for human babies, like they can't walk for the first year, they can't talk for the first two years. So they're very dependent. You need a lot of time until they become somewhat independent because even when they're two, you can't leave them on the street and figure it out. It

It should be the norm, but I understand it's a privilege judging by the U.S. facilities for becoming a partner and even some of the European countries that offer a couple of months and so on. So I'm very much aware that I was able to bounce between these spaces because I had two year maternity leave.

On this note, I just also want to add that in Czech Republic, we're also in this privileged space. Well, I really don't want to say this is privileged because I feel like it's a must. And those countries that are not introducing this, it's their big miss. And I just disagree with this approach at all. Yeah, in Czech Republic is also very loyal to the mothers. We have three years, but also you can take a fourth year if you want. I mean, some people take it. I can't imagine taking it. But yes, you can legally have four years of the maternity leave.

With this, you will have your space reserved for you. When you go back to the business, they have to provide you the same opportunity as you left with, which is unbelievable. Like, I'm very happy that this is a thing here. You know, it's very good to have this option, but I'm still considering coming back to work when the baby is going to be about nine months old.

That leads me to my last question for you. So indeed, in Romania, we have the same protection system, right? So they can't fire you for six months. They have to provide the same role. Even if they restructure it, it has to be similar or something along those lines. So I felt protected.

But while I was on maternity leave, I knew that I didn't want to continue having a full-time job after I returned from maternity leave. So I wasn't stressed at all that I'm not going to be relevant when I get back because I didn't want to get back at all. Just so happened that life doesn't turn out as planned. And when I came back, I was presented with

this incredible opportunity of working in the AI space on the one coolest, at that moment, it was like the top of the sphere. How do you call it? Like the state-of-the-art project in UiPath, clipboard AI. We were revolutionizing the way people copy and paste between systems. It was just like...

very interesting problem space, very interesting challenge to change a mental model that's so basic with a layer of semantic understanding with GPT before it was cool. And so we were doing a lot of amazing stuff and I was like incredibly excited.

and decided not to leave anymore because it was for me, clearly it steered my career. This is another preconception that I'm going to quickly mention. I thought that I'm going to go back to work and I'm not going to enjoy doing the things I was doing and I'm going to quit and find another job and not be relevant in that company anymore. But when I came back, turns out that there was a new opportunity that was completely fit for what I

I wanted to do with my life. And I didn't even know that I wanted to do AI, but I was catapulted in the AI space and I had to learn and grow and like accelerate in my career. So sometimes after parental leave, you go back and you find a new place, like things reshuffle, they rearrange in a way that could be even superior to what you left when you left. So also speaking about unnecessary concerns. And so because I knew that I'm not particularly interested in continuing with a full-time job,

which I ended up doing and still will be doing for probably a long time. But that's another topic. I wasn't stressed about staying relevant in my parental leave. But I know that you have this, let's say, topic or you're thinking about how it will feel when you're going to go back to work. And let's try to, yeah, maybe expand a bit on what...

person that wants to go back to the job, that wants to keep that job? What can they do during parental leave to continue to stay relevant and make sure that when they get back, they can still perform? What are you thinking about? Do you have any plan? Do you have any ideas?

And clearly, I didn't have access to my laptop when I was on parental leave. I couldn't stay up to date with the Slack updates and company emails and company strategy. And I wouldn't have done it anyway. But you don't have access to all that. And so recommending people to read emails, it's not something good. But how can you...

ease that anxiety that you will have no idea what to do and how to plug back when you get back. What are you thinking about doing since you're contemplating this option pretty soon? First of all, things in company started improving when I went for the maternity leave. They told me as well, like, you will be cut off from the system. You'll have absolutely no access. You'll be out. Basically, forget about it.

And then I was like, okay, but I was feeling a bit turned off because I was hoping that, you know, I didn't get the baby for the next one and a half months when I was entering the maternity leave. So I was thinking I'll be still at least like online if somebody needs me, I'll be able to answer the questions. But yeah, apparently I've learned I'll not be having this opportunity. So I was scared about it in a way. And then I think I discovered that they didn't cut my access when I was like two or three months already a mother. So like five months after I kind of opened laptop,

Because I was logged out and then I suddenly decided to log in and I realized I can actually log in and everything was in. I was able to follow what's happening in the company. I just wasn't aware about it. I think that just introduced it when I went away. So they decided that it's not fair for the mothers to cut them off completely so they would have all those anxiety fears and stuff like that. And they decided not to cut mothers away. Yeah, I just learned it accidentally later. Yeah.

So now I actually have this space where I can overwhelm myself by looking into Slack and seeing what's happening there. But I usually choose not to. But it's very, very nice to know that you're not cut off completely. You're given this opportunity, just like with having up to four years of maternity leave. Having this option helps a lot to breathe, to being able to choose what you feel is important for you right now. So yes, I am able to see what's happening. I maybe once a month open and quickly go through either emails and Slack.

but I really don't want to stress myself with that. And the reason why is because I have learned very quickly in my maternity leave that when I don't have deadlines and when I don't have stressful communication and overwhelm of, you know, aligning everyone, our job is obviously very multifaceted. We have so many departments we have to talk to. We have to constantly be in touch with everyone. And if somebody is missing out, the project might go astray and stuff like that.

And so when I've learned that if you don't have that stress of communication and stressful decision making in the spot, right, and then timelines and the deadlines and stuff like that, this feels so good. Like right now, I have a lot of those creative projects, even portfolio redesign. And then I'm building a new website for my courses. And I have this new courses adventure that I'm building for people who wants to find a job.

I have all those new small projects and I absolutely have no stress of timelines, of managing, of communicating, of, I don't know, convincing anyone and anything like that. So I just learned that when you remove a timeline, specifically the timelines and the deadlines, you start enjoying it so much.

And that's why I felt like, OK, I don't want to be overwhelmed with things that are happening in the company because there is a stress factor to it. And there were moments when even though I'm very limited in how much time I have for myself, I felt so happy because I just can do it without feeling stressed that I didn't deliver something on time in a quality that I like.

Talking back about the question, I went a little bit away, but pointed that I still feel that I just can't stay away. I do have this urge of being relevant and I do have this urge of at least helping someone with the, I don't know, feedback. I really need this outlet somewhere. And without doing this, I feel like I am becoming irrelevant.

And that's one of my biggest fear. We started this conversation by talking about the fears, but the true fear that I have experienced throughout this journey was that I am away and I'm not able to communicate. I'm not able to contribute. I'm not able to give tips or I don't know, give the feedback. I'm not even talking about designing. Designing I can do on my own side projects, right? I can always find the creative outlet in my free time. But the fact that I cannot contribute, that's what sucks.

stops me. That's the biggest fear. And that's the only reason why I really want to go back. Obviously not for the full time. I'll never be able to do that full time because I do the time tracking for how much time I get. And usually I can maximum squeeze in a normal days two, three hours, in a good days four hours. And I'll probably look for nanny so that I can go

back to part-time job four hours per day for my full time. And I'll probably be also have to negotiate that I will not be participating in the meetings and I'll just want to contribute to the feedback and probably creating stuff. So again, like even though I'm stressing out about returning and communication, this is still a part of the process of, you know, being worried about what's going to happen and stuff like that.

I realized I can't help but want to be a part of it. And that's where I'm going to challenge myself. I was going back to work when the baby was going to be nine months old. Some the time when he's going to start crawling and stuff like that. But we'll see how it goes. We

You never know because like you said, you were thinking you will not go back to the full-time job. And maybe I'm so stressed out that I want to go back and I start and I realize I don't want to do this anymore. We don't know, right? As a part of the journey, we're learning, we're trying and we're iterating on what's happening. And that also goes to show that we all have very different stories. Like you said...

about your baby that the first six months were not even a problem for me. The first six months were a huge problem because my baby didn't sleep at all. I basically have to carry him for like six hours a day on my back and it was very hard and very tiring and I physically was drained absolutely every day whereas now he's like seven and I feel like oh finally I can breathe I have finally my time.

He can sit, he can play. I can leave him in his little playground and he'll do his stuff and I can take a coffee. I don't know, whatever. I can finally have time for myself. Whereas the first six months were absolutely horrible for me. So it's always different, right? Every mother has a very different journey and returning to work will probably be another very different journey for me as well. I have no idea what to expect. I know I want to fulfill my FOMO and I want to be a part of it, but...

I'll report back how it goes. Maybe I'll say, I will never want to work anymore. I'm quitting or maybe I'll get fired. Who knows? And that's not a fear of mine that I go back. I'm not relevant anymore because apparently when I had a lot of time, I was able to contribute and help in the moments when I have time. Now I will not have time. And that's my biggest fear right now that I'll not be able to provide the help when it's needed. So I'll not be as relevant anymore.

Wow, that was pretty intense conversation for me, at least it kind of pushes very sensitive or important buttons when I think about this stage in my life. And to be honest, I'm contemplating the idea of having a second child later in my career when I'm about 40, like in five years.

six years from now. So I'm wondering if I'm going to have a different experience, right? With all the learning that I have from my first pregnancy and with like probably in a different professional space, we need to reshoot this episode six years from now. Well, we're going to be a grandma. Just kidding, kidding.

grandmas of UX definitely I hope so thank you so much for sharing all these intimate stories with me and our audience I hope that people who are listening found it relatable and interesting and useful and helpful and warm like it is if you're a person who's contemplating their maternal leave please

leave your preconceptions at the door, just prepare for the worst, but expect also to be surprised and proven that it's not necessarily the end of anything. It could be a reinvention. You could come back stronger than before or more interesting or just be open to whatever life will bring you. And yeah, enjoy this journey because it's

It's magical. I think we didn't mention enough the fact that it's magical in itself. Yeah, like this conversation, I feel like that's the most intensive experience you could ever have. I mean, that's for me at least. It's the most intensive thing I've ever done in my life. It's most intensive in terms of feelings, negative feelings and positive feelings at the same time. Yeah, I completely agree with that. The last thing I want to add before we finish it off, because I just realized this is also a big insight for me. Don't think it's fair to not talk about it.

I think the key takeaway, key lesson that I've learned is that you have to work with your expectations while the support is important, while taking time for yourself and for the baby is very important. I think the key thing for me that is still helping me sometimes, sometimes I forget about it. You have to work with managing your expectations from yourself and from the baby because every single journey is super unique.

Sometimes baby are, like you want to mention, right? They're not sleeping. They need your help. They need your support. And sometimes baby are more autonomic and they could spend time on a plane, right? And so if you're expecting that the baby will go to sleep right now, he's most likely not going to do that. And you'll be so frustrated that you didn't have the time for yourself. You didn't, I don't know, get a time to go to the shower and stuff like that, right? That's the biggest frustration I had, especially in the last eight months, where I was expecting I can do something and I cannot. As I'm going through this experience, the only thing

and I'm trying to set myself up, is that you should always reserve this time only for the baby. You will be the secondary. If you have the opportunity to work on something or do whatever you want, enjoy it. It's going to be a positive surprise. But if you don't have it, this is fine. You expect the baby to not cooperate, right? So expectation is the biggest, sorry for the word, but bitch in this experience because I constantly got frustrated when the baby wasn't sleeping and collaborating or I don't know, had different plans that I had. And so...

Now as I'm like letting it go, it just feels so much better and I can speak about it freely. But honestly, in the first six months, I was like crying and they went in and I'm being so frustrated. But yeah, it's a learning process for sure. Anyways, let's wrap it up. I know it's been a very long, condensed conversation and I think it was also a little bit hectic, but it's because it's an emotional topic maybe. Thank you everybody who tuned in. If you want to support us, go on Spotify, rate the show online.

share your favorite episode or just one or whatever. Submit topics. We really want to hear from you. I think Spotify has a feature for submitting topics, right, Anfi? We have the anonymous form right in the show notes, but in the submission form, you can write where you were listening to this episode from, for example, from the gym or while cleaning the dishes, etc. It's always fun for us to note where you listen to it from.

Nice. And follow us on Instagram to stay up to date with whatever we're up to. And thank you for tuning in and see you in the next episode. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much. Bye bye.