We’re Back: Reflections on Newborn Parenting and Leadership

Kristen: Welcome to Love and Leadership, the podcast that helps you lead with both your head and your heart, plus a bit of humor. I'm Kristen Brun Sharkey, a leadership coach and facilitator.

Mike: And I'm Mike Sharkey, a senior living and hospitality executive. We're a couple of leadership nerds who also happen to be a couple.

Kristen: Join us each week as we share our unfiltered opinions, break down influential books, and interview inspiring guests.

Mike: Whether you're a seasoned executive or a rising star, we're here to help you level up your leadership game and amplify your impact.

Kristen: \ Hello and welcome back to Love and Leadership.

Mike: My God, I can't believe we're back here.

Kristen: I'm Kristen.

Mike: I'm Mike,

Kristen: And yes, it's been a while.

Mike: Three of us now.

Kristen: There are three of us, so the our third co-host is

Mike: He's sleep. He's

Kristen: for everybody.

Mike: It's so much better for everybody. It'll be interesting if we do this long enough that he can at some point join.

Kristen: That would be very cute. There's like some, podcasts I've listened to that are hosted by couples with kids and there's one of 'em I've listened to for a long time and the kid was not born when I started listening to and now he's six and he makes cute little appearances. 

Mike: Yeah, I was thinking six. He could probably make an appearance. Unless he's like Mozart and by the time he's four he can be running the show for some. I watched Amadeus over, I don't remember when, paternity leave time. I watched a lot of TV and you know that dude was playing like concerts by the time he was like four. I think he wrote an opera at five, oh my God. It makes me like just looking at him developmentally and watching him grow and change over just three months. I just wonder what has to happen to get something like that? And I'm not trying to put pressure on 

Kristen: Yeah, let's not do that. No,

Mike: but I mean.it like it. That's not that kind of result is not from an overbearing parent's pressure to be a doctor or a lawyer. that kid just was like, that. his dad didn't pressure him at two years old

Kristen: Yeah, yeah. No, I know. Yeah.

Mike: I mean, maybe he did, maybe put him at the piano, but you can't like force a 2-year-old to learn how to play a piano.

They that just happened and he was playing like, they toured Europe when he was like five and he would give like violin concertos. that's just, I don't know. I think about I, I'm not saying I hope he's Mozart I'm just, 'cause he had a very tortured life too, but, um, yeah.I think it, it is a combination of like nurture and nature.

Like he is what he is, but he is also what we, 

You know, reading all these books on neuroscience and brain development and, the nervous system consists of three parts. There's a starter, a break, and an accelerator and a newborn. They only have the starter and the accelerator, they don't have a break. So the idea that they can self-soothe is not.

Supported by science because they don't have the brain architecture. they need you as a external regulating brain. Something that I failed at terribly today. But, he requires us to, to soothe. So, you know, we pick him up every single time he's crying. We don't like, or we try to like, 

Kristen: Yeah.

You 

Mike: also, he is very loud. He's 95 decibels. Like he's very, it's very hard to ignore him.

Yeah. but and the more they feel safe, the more that they can develop their own nervous system regulation. putting somebody in a distressed state is a bad way to teach them to regulate.

That activates the fight and flight. So the whole like Ferber method where it's leave the child to cry it out, they're not actually regulating. What happens is they, for their own safety. If they cry long enough and no one comes, they go into like a free state because it's safer if you're a baby, to not like, be attracting, unwelcome attention.

So 

So what were we talking about? Welcome back.

Kristen: I

Mike: We're still us.

Going 

Kristen: back to the top, I guess.

Mike: what was the topic? What was the topic?

Kristen: Well, we're doing kind of a personal update. 

Mike: Well, that's my personal update.

Mostly 

Kristen: a personal 

Mike: We're trying to, I mean, he's amazing. So I don't know if, can we talk personal facts like Kristen had a. Unplanned but not emergency C-section, which was

Kristen: Well, let, let's, let's, before we get into

Mike: well, come on, let's go through the, like the timeline because it's,

Kristen: no, I'm planning on it, but I'll just say like

Mike: I'm sorry. Am I out of order? Going out of order. Do you think that changed?

Kristen: Um, it's not better, that's for

sure. Um, anyway, so

Mike: Lemme, lemme say this though. I don't, there, there's so much. You know, I'm trying not to go off on a diatribe. There's so much wrong with the way we support mothers and fathers and families in this country.

Yeah. 

Kristen: I, let's talk about that

Mike: Well, I'm talking about that.

Kristen: But I wanted to stay upfront because we 

we haven't put out an episode in obviously a few months since it's our first one back. So,

uh, what we we're gonna do for this one is talk a little bit about birth 

Mike: I already did that, the last few. They know everything now.

Kristen: No, they don't.

for the last few months, and share like some learnings and things that where 

Mike: I know nothing, John Snow is about all I can tell you at this 

Kristen: Yeah. but before we do that, so this will be more on the personal end. So Yeah. If you're here for purely the leadership and not the love and leadership, you can always

Mike: get we gotta, we get, we've been told by close friends that there needs to be more love in the love and leadership.

Kristen: So

Mike: here we go.

Kristen: Here we are, going forward. So we are back. We're probably gonna be on a biweekly schedule for the meantime. 

Mike: I mean, hopefully this was a herculean effort just to set this up. 

Kristen: Until he's, until he has a more consistent nap schedule during the day. it's harder for us to do like our weekend recordings, so we have to record after bedtime. We'll probably be biweekly and probably no if, or maybe very select guest meantime until we have more consistent napper routine and or childcare figured out. So Sure. That's what you can expect going forward. but yeah. So the birth, it's, we have a three month old.

Mike: three month old. He's a little over three

Kristen: little over. 14 weeks.

Mike: Yeah. Oh, he's so

Kristen: As of recording.

Mike: He's amazing. He's amazing. He's amazing. Ugh.

He's amazing.

So Kristen had an unplanned but not emergency c-section. my guy, every time she, she, she. I'm just gonna share, and you can cut it if you want. We induced at 37 weeks. She had a little bit of high blood pressure and they don't play around with that.

Kristen: They do

Mike: They did not. Yeah. So because there's apparently, there's 50% more blood in the body during, during pregnancy for the woman.

So, uh, high blood pressure actually turns out to be very serious. I guess that's eclampsia

Kristen: it can turn into preeclampsia. 

Mike: Right. Yeah, It can turn into Yeah,

Kristen: Which is why they're which can cause seizures 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. So

Kristen: so cautious. I did not have preeclampsia. I had gestational hypertension, but they were not gonna let me go past 37 weeks 

Mike: because but you did not have gestational diabe. You had Schrodinger's diabetes for a minute.

Kristen: I failed the first test, but not the one that actually matters.

Mike: Well, it wasn't that. It's like we couldn't log in. Yeah, it was like we couldn't log into the, so she did the gestational diabetes test and it was like impossible to log into the OBS portal for four days.

It was like a long weekend. And so we were joking the whole weekend. She had Schrodinger's diabetes. Really? What? Tell us, So the C-section. Oh my god. I was in the room. They don't let you, thank God, be on the C-section side and they don't talk about how serious of an operation that is. like in No, I think there's a real dichotomy between what people think of pregnancy and childbirth in, in popular culture and the reality of it.

Kristen: And,thank God we had a great ob. Shout out Golden Gate. Thank you. You guys were amazing. Yeah. Yeah, it was a little crazy. We went in at night and thinking, and like they started the induction process and, as soon as the contractions started, Jasper in, in the womb was like, who?

Jasper's 

Mike: son.

Jasper Fucking Flynn.

Kristen: He was like, Nope. And

Mike: He was absolutely fucking not,

Kristen: Absolutely not. And started having, heart rate decelerations. 

Mike: Fetal rate Deceleration. Yeah. List listed on the form as fetal intolerance. Yeah. He was like, no.

Kristen: He was like, no. He was like, absolutely

Mike: not. Absolutely not.

Kristen: not going out that way. That sounds horrible.

So, yeah. by the morning I think the writing was on the wall. 

Mike: I mean, they gave us an hour to like emotionally process

Kristen: this. Yeah. And then I ended up, I actually, the induction was actually working 

Mike: it worked very well in terms 

Kristen: of dilating

Mike: You didn't even need the second, whatever.

I can't remember the drugs. But you didn't need the,

Kristen: Pitocin. Yeah, it just, some, just Misoprostol had gotten me to like from basically zero to five centimeters. I was also in a lot of pain, so I ended up getting

an 

Mike: epidural. Well, they said, because it happened so quickly too. It causes, yeah.

Kristen: So your contractions are stronger.

Mike: wa I could not watch the epidural. I have a thing with needles, despite the weekly acupuncture I get. I was like, you have to do this. I have to leave the room.

Kristen: Yeah. Yeah.

Mike: We had a whole birth plan. We had a

Kristen: did, and it did not go according to

Mike: plan.

Some of it went according to

Kristen: Some of it did, but,

Mike: I still think my request for uh,co code drugs co. Yeah. The drug like Michael will also take all the drugs that you'll give. They did not think that was funny.

Kristen: No. Yeah, no. Yeah.I was the only one who got any drugs.

Mike: Tell you what, they don't care about the dad at all.

Kristen: But, yeah, it was process. We were not like prepared for me to have a 

Mike: I was prepared, I knew it was gonna happen.

Kristen: You say that I, but we were not like physically

Mike: prepared. I was kind of prepared. We.

Kristen: like really worked through, you were not prepared to have to do all the diaper changes for two weeks.

Mike: I wasn't, I mean, it was longer than two weeks. it was two weeks after we got home and then, you know, half a week in the, so we were joking that like for the last like month, I was teasing Kristen, you know, like, Hey, you know, I really want us to have like a traditional thing and you're gonna do all the diaper changes, right?

Like it's the 1950s. And she was like, Nope. And I was like, I just kept. I kept, you

Kristen: kept saying it, kept

Mike: kept saying it. and finally the universe was like, Nope. C-section, you do all the diaper changes and that, that was that. But he was tiny. He was, like what was five pounds? Six ounce.

Five pounds, yeah. So he was a little tiny. Yeah. So it was

Kristen: He was like 10th percentile for his gestational

ages. He's big now, but he's still small for his age, but he's

Mike: but he's but he's grown. He's almost tripled in weight. Like he's growing very aggressively. So he was so tiny.

It was just like, I'm used to handling like pastry, So I'm used to handling cakes. I'm used to handling very delicate, food. But it's very like different to like try and handle your tiny little newborn son. I'm like, am I doing it right? it's it's just, it's pretty terrifying.

Kristen: He was tiny.

Mike: Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. He was very tiny. He's definitely and he didn't cry, so they pulled him out. They call it the sunroof. And I'm on like the side of the curtain, like the head side and all, they all, it's just her head is the only thing showing and they take him out and they.

First of all, they said if, they give you the choice to keep going with the, the vaginal delivery. And, but they're like, if it is an emergency C-section, we have about 10 minutes to get him out. Yeah. And I was like, we're not obviously doing that. Right. So

Kristen: In that case, they would knock me out entirely.

Mike: They would knock her out entirely. And just anesthesia. Yeah. And then. I wouldn't have been in the

Kristen: very urgent.

Yeah.

Mike: Anyway, so they pull him out the sunroof and they hold him up and he just looks like a little alien. Yeah. And he's like gray and he's just, but his eyes are open

Kristen: wide open.

Mike: wide open.

Wide open. Looking at me. Yeah. And he is like, oh, hey. And, but he didn't cry for like the first 24 hours, so I was so freaked out. I was like, is he okay? Is he okay?

Kristen: also turned blue briefly. 

Mike: Well,

yeah, that was, he had a little low blood sugar, but yeah, I was gonna maybe suffocate. He latched, my wife did not believe me.

Kristen: I told her my son is gonna have no problem. That's the other thing, like dads, if you're not prepared for this, your wife's boobs are gonna be out so much. People are gonna be coming in and outta the room and her boobs are just, including her mom, are just out and you're trying to like help. And it's just okay, I guess this is what they're actually for. I think he kind of suffocated himself. He latched right away. Well, we get out of the uh, operating room and we're in the recovery room. He latched immediately. And I was like, that's my boy. And then he again,

Mike: And then he suffocated himself against my wife's boob.

But you know, I was like, I was like, he seems to be blue nurse. And she's oh yeah, okay. let's get the pediatrician. Oh my God. So it was a whole thing. Yeah, it was a whole thing. We were in the hospital for four days and they don't care at all about any sort of holistic approach. The nurses don't let you sleep.

It's really poorly organized. And we were at a great hospital. They like shamed us when we used the nursery a couple times. Mm-hmm. And I was like, you're coming in here every 15 minutes. I haven't slept, you know, and I'm used to like long days and sleep deprivation, but it's like, you want me to drive my family home tomorrow?

And what You don't want me to sleep like, so what's your plan with this? What, how is that safe? I remember a MythBusters episode where they did a comparison of drunk driving versus, sleep deprived driving. And the sleep deprived driving was like 10 times worse. Yeah. it's

So they don't organize it.

The nurses all had like different, I'm looking at you nurses, like I have nothing but respect for nurses. But like it, their approach was completely disorganized. Every different nurse, every single different nurse had a different approach to the stuff that we were supposed to be doing. Yeah.

Kristen: They contradict each

Mike: other, like every single one of them.

And they would give, they would be passive aggressive with you. Like I, I failed to capture the tiny little bit of colostrum from one night, and the nurse is like, where is it? She was like, Batman. Where is it? I don't know, lady. I don't know. Like it's it was like, the, not even it was the amount of could fit on the point of a pin.

I don't know where it is. Okay. this is not a,I'm not a neurosurgeon lady. Okay. So, but the doctors were amazing. the pediatricians and our it would be, they're like, oh yeah. Send in from the nursery for a few hours so you can get some sleep. Every, every one of

Kristen: And we did have some really good 

Mike: Oh yeah, we did have some good

Kristen: and a great 

Mike: We had one great nurse, but we had one. The lactation consultant was amazing.

Kristen: Yeah. But

Mike: She helped us so much. And then we had one that came to the house a couple times. 

Kristen: Yeah. 

Mike: We did hire a, just a couple nights a week, an overnight, like a doula.

'cause our family's not really close enough to like come help. And, and that was the most, or able to, but that was the most expensive, worthwhile money that we've ever spent. It wasn't just that she would let you get some sleep. Like she taught us so much. She taught us so much. Hi Hanen. I hope you listen to this, right?

Kristen: right? Yeah, we'll, we'll send you, we'll

Mike: we'll, we'll we, we should link her. yeah, we, her bi

Kristen: can give her a shout

Mike: I mean, she's booked through like 20, 28 or something, you know, like

Kristen: You should, yeah. We'll

Mike: she's awesome. 'cause she's,

Kristen: we'll link her in

Mike: we'll link her in the, we'll link her in this sh Hi Hanen. Amazing.

She's amazing. she 

Kristen: taught us so much. 

Mike: she's also like a registered nurse. She's just not with a whole lifelong learning and infant care and, she teaches CPR and stuff like that. So it's, you know,highly recommend

Kristen: don't have like family who can like Yeah. Help you a lot. and even if you do, 

Mike: Stunningly expensive, but I would've sold my watch collection to fund that. I'll be, I'm gonna be 

Kristen: It's very worthwhile. that helped a lot. But yeah. No, I have, I have really. Reflected a lot on just how I, I knew this, how bad I knew this country was really bad with supporting new parents.

but it's really floored me actually going through it and just the idea, I thought I was gonna start even like part-time, I thought I was gonna start working again after like six weeks. And I was like, I am not remotely ready to start using my brain again at that point, it was just, yeah, the lack of support for mothers and and

Mike: yeah,

Kristen: Everything, childcare, everything in this country is,

Mike: And the marginalization of the role of fathers. Like it's pretty pronounced. I watched it on Facebook.I couldn't, I would like to think I could not have been more supportive of my wife. I was there through the whole, and I took, I did everything for the first couple weeks while she recovered from the C-section.

Kristen: Turns out that's major

Mike: surgery. It's major surgery, and I took care of her too. I even made. the overachiever ravioli 

Kristen: days 

Mike: three days post hospital. I was like, I'm gonna raise the bar here. We're making fresh pasta, and

Kristen: And then he was exhausted

Mike: Of course it was. It was really good pasta though.

Kristen: It was amazing. I mean, we were also binging the recent season of the bear.

Mike: Oh

yeah. Oh, we were watching the bear. I was like, I can still do

Kristen: because actually in the early weeks you actually have a lot like more downtime 'cause they sleep so

much. 

Mike: And thank goodness. I work for a company now that actually gave me a month of paternity leave. That has not been the norm in hospitality.

Certainly not the norm in restaurants. Yeah.

Kristen: Oh yeah,

Mike: I don't, we could not have survived If I hadn't been off for that month, it would not have 

Kristen: I don't know how we would've with the C-section 'cause I couldn't do anything. I couldn't do anything. The

Mike: couldn't even lift him. She couldn't lift him in the beginning.

Kristen: it would've been very

Mike: been very difficult. Very difficult. and what do we, I just, this book on neuroscience is very interesting. It's called The Nurture Revolution. I can't remember her name off the top. Maybe we can look it up.

Kristen: Dr. Greer Kirschenbaum.

Mike: Kirschenbaum. Oh, very

Kristen: We'll let, we'll put it in the show

Mike: That is her. Fabulous. And, but she's talking about how as a society, we're collectively working against ourselves because,as we properly nurture children, they go on to, be much more regulated, productive members of society and then create more regulated, you know, and it's more of a positive effect for the entire society.

And if we're not doing that, we're not supporting families. Everybody's in some sort of dysregulated state. Mm-hmm.That's not good for anybody. No. And that is the American way is incredibly. Individualistic and incredibly shortsighted. And the, birds are gonna come home to roost very soon as our society, crumbles around us.

Kristen: Sorry. It's depressing.

Mike: is. It's very depressing. as much as our infrastructure is crumbling, you know.Other countries are rising and we're, we're a very powerful country, right?

We're the most militarily powerful country. We're the quote unquote richest country. But, we don't support the foundation of the nation, which is the family. The foundation of the nation is the family.

Kristen: It is

There, there's a lot of talk about supporting family and family values, but the actual reality of it.

Mike: yeah, there's no, I'll leave it at that. There's zero support. Like we're the, what are we the only, like,country that doesn't have Yeah.

maternal 

Kristen: Maternal, yeah. it's mind, honestly

Mike: it's honestly mind blowing. Like it's mind blowing. and also

Kristen: just the lack of support for childcare. Yeah. Before kindergarten or pre-K even. It's some states now, but

Mike: But it's, I guess we should pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. All right. Anyway, anyw who?

Kristen: um,

so, so yeah, so here we are three months later. I wanted to talk a little bit about just some of our lessons and bringing it back to leadership.

Mike: yeah, I'm struggling

Kristen: with that.

Mike: one. I don't, I can see that happening as he is like a little older and we're like setting boundaries and things and

Kristen: I can give some of my thoughts. I think some of the things that. I have observed about parenting a newborn. We don't know anything about parenting older than that yet, but, but for, from parenting a newborn, some of the things I've observed that I feel like line up really well with leadership, part of it is Just being present. I think it's, especially as he has gotten a lot more aware awake,he like notices us paying attention to him. And like 

Mike: demands it.

Kristen: demands it, it demands it, yeah. Yeah. And it's,

Mike: I will have eye contact or you will hear about it,

Kristen: But it's not as much. And I think there's,

some of the, the research shows like how much of their needs do you need for them to be like nurtured? And it's something I think around you have to get it right like a third of the time, 

Mike: Oh we're doing that.

Kristen: Yeah. And, which is very reassuring.

Mike: figure we're at like 85%.

Kristen: We're pretty good. I think we're, we really are trying. a struggle, but it's like that presence over perfection.

Mike: Presence over perfection. They're relying on you as a regulating, entity. Yeah. They sync their heartbeat to you. and their cortisol lowers when you, when you're present, you're helping them build the architecture of their brain.

Yeah. Andlooking back at my own upbringing, I can see what didn't go right. You know, like, you know, like I struggle with sleep. It's And some of that, probably didn't get situated when I was very young.

Kristen: Yeah. Well,I feel like a, like in our generations lot like the parenting trends were like, don't spoil your baby. Yeah.

Mike: Yeah. There

Kristen: There is a lot of that,

Mike: You cannot nurture too much.

Kristen: Yeah. And even, yeah. Yeah.

Mike: So in, in the book, the Nurture Revolution, which I haven't finished, I don't know, we're farther on her. She,I'm past where we are with him in the book, She talks about there are three points in development of your brain being the most neuroplastic and one the first time is obviously between zero and three years old, and then again in adolescence. So the brain is again, neuroplastic. But then when you reach, matrescence or patrescence, your brain again opens up and allows you to, Restate the architecture, if you will.

And I've been, whenever I don't know what to do, I just, I'm like, okay, I need to build my parent brain and take advantage of that neuroplasticity. 

Kristen: Yeah, I mean it's definitely a lesson in,

Like surrender and adaptation because there's, there's just gonna be times and Yes, like when he's upset and his cries is extremely upsetting,

Mike: 95 decibels, sir. 

Kristen: But when he is upset, you go through the checklist of are you hungry? Tired diaper change, et cetera. But if you've made it all the way through the list, like sometimes he just wants comfort or wants to be held wants

Mike: wants, he likes contact.

Yeah. He refuses to sleep during the day. Unless he's like contact napping with my poor nap trapped wife.

Kristen: Or he is just overstimulated and we just kind of have to get through. So like there's gonna be times where like he's unhappy and you can't fix it. And it's really been a lesson in. Learning to just be present with him through it and try to like, give him comfort and nurture.

But I, I think there's definitely some lessons there around empathy and just meeting people where they're at because you cannot logic with a three month old.

though. Yeah,

I know.

Mike: I'm trying. It's not working.

Kristen: Like he is, he is a baby. his brain is only in these early stages of development. So 

Mike: very quickly though. It's

Kristen: interesting. Oh, he

Mike: watch. Oh, yeah.

Kristen: It's very, it's fascinating to watch, but I think that's another thing that is interesting is that like the, he's progressing so fast, but it's also not like a linear progression.

It's like

Mike: mean, he, he rolled over at 17 days.

Kristen: Yeah, but then he kind of like didn't do it again for a while

Mike: and we also stopped making him do it. We're like,

Kristen: yeah. but

Mike: but we, not that we stopped tummy time, but we started really doing tummy time on us.

Kristen: But like, we'll see it with like his sleep, where he'll, which I mean, he's a great night's

Mike: sleeper. He's a great night's

Kristen: Very lucky for that. 

But,we see that even with like his now one wake up has been getting pushed back further and further, but it'll be like, it'll be around like 3, 3 30 and then we'll have a 5:00 AM night and then, but the next night is not 5:00 AM it goes backwards again and maybe get like another 5:00 AM So it's a good, I feel like that's off often true, like in one's career.

As well and different parts of like a lot of progression is not linear.

Mike: Yeah.The signs of learning, the signs It's not not how I like it.

Kristen: I know, right?

Me

either, actually. But yeah, as anything else come to mind with like

Mike: I mean, you know,It goes back to first you have to like self-regulate yourself. And if you're not doing that, nothing you're doing is gonna really work. And that becomes challenging.it becomes challenging when your own needs aren't being met. I mean, thank God I have a great partner. To all the single parents out there.

I have no idea how you do this. I have no idea how you do this. It's hard enough. Just the two of us. Yeah. I have, and I bring some skills to the table that has made this easier. Like my work in kitchen, my work in the house, I can get a lot more done than. I don't wanna say the average, but like I bring a lot of kung fu in terms of like just washing the amount of bottles.

Kristen: That

Mike: That you can go through that that, that we have to go through. Like I do that more facilely than someone who hasn't spent 20 years in a restaurant. and even then, it really should take a village. It does take a village. Yeah. It, and thank God we had Hanen in for a while.

I would love to have her back, it's a mortgage, a third house. I don't know, It's pricey but worth it. it, she does a month and that's it was, there was like a logical stopping point too. Actually with him. He was really like sleeping through the night.

It was a little redundant to have her come and do nights, you know? Yeah. Um, my friend was like, oh, you're cheating. I'm like, dude, what the mother I was like, sir, like,

Kristen: that is not cheating.

Mike: not cheating.

Kristen: No. Well, especially, I mean.I feel like if you're in a position where you don't have like solid family help and you are not like, privileged enough to be able to afford help, I think it's incredibly incredibly difficult. Just not the support mechanisms society not there. 

Mike: There's no support mechanisms.

Kristen: Yeah, I mean, it really makes me think, I think bringing this into leadership too, I have a whole level, a whole of understanding too around how corporations should, and usually don't honestly support working parents And

Mike: I mean, you know, being on the other side of that, I can tell you how hard it is to try and deal with a parent needing to be out all the time for a child. Like we're not,the world that I'm in, we don't have redundancy.

So when you call out, we're shorthanded.

Kristen: Yeah. And I get especially like in jobs where you need people to 

Mike: I need a physical presence on the front line. And if you're not there, God bless you. Your child's sick. Of course you need to go take care of them. But what do I do as a business runner or a business, that I'm still trying to run this very complicated high pressure business without enough people and it's oh, figure it out.

That. Okay. I just, I don't get it. We have the largest military in the world. We have all this money and we can't figure out how to like, help families be healthy. And it doesn't track for me know, I get it. I get companies not wanting to necessarily offer leave. It's like, we need you here.

Like, we're a business. Our goal is business, but I 

Kristen: But when it comes to supporting 

Yeah. Or, we've, we're, we've mechanized humanity. we are cogs in this machine. We are not like human beings to the,yeah. I feel like I, you can see this in the tech industry where it was, for so long, it was like, oh, like we, need people particularly, especially software engineers we, need people, so we'll throw like all the perks in the world at you. And then the, there's over hiring happened and now there's a lot less, like,

Mike: yeah, they're not doing it out of mag amenity.

Kristen: Yeah, so many of those things that were implemented to help attract and retain employees have gone away. Now that they don't need to hire like that now that the market is in their favor.

It's sad.

I mean, I know it fundamentally comes from the fact that their companies are motivated to.

for, to their shareholders, like that's who, creating value for shareholders 

Mike: saw a very funny meme. It's I It's I think dinosaurs, like looking up at the comet at the Chicxulub. I'm sure it's the Chicxulub comet coming to destroy the earth. And for some reason the tyrannosaurs is talking and he is like, yeah, this is bad. But for one perfect moment, moment, we really created a lot of value for the shareholders.

Kristen: Uh 

Mike: uh, Chicxulub. We were there, we were near there in Cancun for a minute.

Kristen: Oh, yeah,

Mike: yeah. That's where the Chicxulub crater.

Kristen: yes. anyway, I feel like that's a depressing point to,

Mike: I don't know. Leadership. Yeah.

So at my community now, we're actually looking to offer,pro per pre prenatal parental leave.there's something to be said for allowing people to live a natural life cycle and not have to be changing jobs all the time.like you, you lose the tribal knowledge. And,it is hard to run organizations. Even things like hotels and senior living. Like just where do we store everything?

It's like trying to find files from three years ago. No one knows where they're in an attic somewhere. Our community's a hundred years old. I have no idea where it is. Like it's 'cause we turn the position over three times.

Kristen: Well, it takes the ability to be able to see the long-term value versus just short term gains. RightI think, again, like I seeing a lot of this in the tech industry where apparently it's extremely, if you're like a computer science college graduate right now, it's extremely difficult to get a job.

And there, there's various

Mike: swing back in their way, in their favor

Kristen: But a lot of what's happening is that like AI can now do the job of an entry level programmer, but. If you don't hire entry level programmers now, like who is going to your senior software engineers in 10, 15, 20 years?

Right? Like it's, it's very shortsighted.Just focused on the immediate gain. So I think there's definitely a tendency companies to do that in a lot of versus long-term investment in your people. 

Mike: Yeah, we're very short. We're very quarterly profits, monthly p and l. I get it. But like. 

Well, just to kind of give us something to.

Kristen: end on. I mean,what's something positive about how like our relationship and communication and like how becoming parents has impacted that.

Mike: Well, 

they say it will really test your partnership. And I don't exactly feel it's done that, I haven't, I've, we've definitely experienced some moments of, heightened stress and irritability and things like that, but we've communicated that stuff and talked about it very openly to the point where we know the goal is not to compete with each other.

Like, you have it worse, or you get to go to work, or you get to, it's like we're trying to team up for.

Helping each other through this. Yeah. that's, you wanna talk about leadership, that's the real leadership is I'll do this so you can rest and then you will watch him so I can rest and we'll figure this out together.

And if you have a partnership as opposed to some sort of like competitive relationship, you're gonna, you're gonna be more successful and all in all. It's definitely not easy. I'm glad I waited till I was this age, even though my, I'm a little more tired than I was when I was like 35.

I've worked on, being able to like regulate and things like that, thaton the wisdom side that are helpful for sure. You know, I don't, I could not have done this when I was 33 or, I would've figured it out, but it would've been way messier, 

Kristen: Yeah, no, I think, yeah, we've both done a lot of, Work on ourselves. A lot of therapy,

Mike: of therapy. Yeah. Lots of therapy.

Kristen: I think that's helped a lot. Yeah. And No, I agree. I mean,I think we, we did like some good upfront work going into like, when I was pregnant and stuff to kind of likeour foundation and things like, reading a book on how to fight better Oh yeah.

Mike: Yeah, the Gottman's. Oh God. Everyone should read that Fight Right?

Kristen: right by the go. Yeah. The Gottmans have many books, but

Mike: no, that's the compend. Fantastic. That's it. it's super helpful. they've.

Had like 40,000 people through their lab, and they run like these fights through their ai,simulators. And they can predict with like 95% whether you're gonna get divorced or not. but you can improve at it, like I fight bad. I'm like,it's like I'm trying to retake Iwo Jima or something.

get the boys and the guns, all right, go, let's get the guns, we're gonna, we're gonna attack the love of my life here. You know? And she. And Kristen is very like avoidant and she's like actively, laying some cement stones in the foundation, to put up a wall. But we, the more we like understood each other's 

fighting style. Mm-hmm. The more we could kind of like,stave off the initial engagement to the point where we can still have a conversation.

Kristen: Yeah, I think that's paid off a lot.

Mike: super paid off parents. It's super paid off

Kristen: because it's very, it's a high stress

Mike: Yeah. It can be very high stress.

Kristen: Yeah. And in the beginning, I mean, even though he sleeps well now in the beginning a ton

Mike: no. In the beginning it was every, every two hours and we were doing the triple feeding. So like we're feeding for two and a half hours. And then we stop and then we start again. It was like, oh, didn't we just do this?

oh my God. Yeah. Ugh. But

Kristen: Yeah. But I think

Mike: we And you couldn't handle him alone. Yeah. We couldn't split up duties in those first three weeks. We couldn't do shifts in, we couldn't do shifts. Yeah. Didn't

do enough. Yeah. 

Kristen: So it's been, yeah, I've, I agree. I think investments.

Mike: But you had some great support groups.

You made, like you, you had these support groups In, in, in our kind of neighborhood with other moms that were giving birth in the same quarter as you.

Kristen: That's been so helpful. And I have a group I've been doing that meets 

Mike: The dads were pretty lame. They're like, Hey, I'm going to the bar.

Anybody want to go with their, it's I was like, does anybody do historical European martial arts sword fight? No. No answer on that. You know, like I

Kristen: a little niche. I

Mike: learn to sword fight during p paternity leave. I had a lot of, I don't wanna say downtime, but there's like an hour here, an hour there.

I was like, I know how to wield a historical European, long sword.

Kristen: Yep. True. Yeah.

Mike: I have a few of them now, unfortunately.

Kristen: sorry. But yes, the support has also been like this, the mom groups and stuff have been really valuable this period. so I guess that's another learning.

Mike: Okay, well, we're back at it. We're gonna figure this out. This is, this podcast is important to us as a couple and we love doing it. We've learned a lot from it, so we'll be doing it as often as wewe don't promise any regularity.

Kristen: We're gonna aim for biweekly,

Mike: Gonna aim for biweekly.

We're gonna aim for biweekly.

uh, bear with us please. Thank you for I hope, if

Kristen: period, we're here for the long

Mike: We're here for the long haul, so thanks for tuning back in. And, and then we're gonna eat this cupcake from Della Trattoria, which best cupcake I've had since it's like a hostess cupcake made by real bakers.

Kristen: All right, everybody, we will see you next time.

Mike: link a picture of the cupcake in the, okay. All right, let's go. 

Kristen: The Love and Leadership Podcast is produced and co-hosted by me, Kristen Brun Sharkey and co-hosted by Mike Sharkey. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. We can't stress enough just how much these reviews help. You can follow us on LinkedIn under Kristen Brun Sharkey and Michael Sharkey, and on Instagram as loveleaderpod.

You can also find more information on our website, loveandleadershippod.com. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you again next week.