Lindsay Miesel
Lindsay is Head of Content at Ava Women, a digital reproductive health company. She launched AvaWorld, a leading source of information for women who are trying to conceive. She lives in San Francisco with her husband Mike and their 4-year-old and 1-year-old sons.
What does your normal working day look like?
Since March 2020, I’ve been working entirely remotely. My company is based in Switzerland, so most of my meetings are in the morning. Typically, I wake up around 6am, have coffee and breakfast and check up on work emails that came in while I was asleep (rarely, I will have a work meeting from 6 – 7am, but only when it’s impossible to find another time). After I finish my coffee, I pack my 4-year-old’s lunch and wake him up at 7:15. We quickly get ready for school, out of the house by 7:40, and he eats a breakfast bar while we’re on the bike.
Most days, my work meetings start at 8am. I call in while I’m biking home and then switch to the computer when I walk in the door around 8:10. When my younger son was still breastfeeding, I’d wake him up right when I got home, and put him on my lap to nurse below the screen while on the call. I just weaned him last week, so Mike now looks after him in the mornings.
I usually have an hour or two of calls in the morning. By 9:30 or 10, it’s getting late in Switzerland, and I usually have the rest of the day to split up however I wish. After my calls are over and I’ve done a bit of work, I take a long break to get some exercise and have lunch.
I work for a couple of hours in the afternoon, and when I feel like I need a break from the computer, I do dinner prep and whatever chores need to be done around the house. The evenings are crazy, so I try to have 90% of dinner prep done before the kids get home.
Then I go back to work until I need to leave to pick up my younger son from daycare at 5:30. We get home and play until Mike gets home with my older son. We all have dinner together and then do our bedtime routine. I put the 4-year-old to bed, and Mike puts the 1-year-old to bed.
How long have you had this routine?
Throughout the pandemic.
How has it changed as your children have gotten older or as your family has grown?
When our younger son was born, Mike cared more for our older son while I was with the baby. But as the baby has grown, Mike and I realized that I enjoy and am better at the challenges of an older kid, and he enjoys and is better at the challenges of a baby. So we switched some responsibilities around to accommodate this: Mike did bedtime for the first 3 years of the older kid’s life, but now I do it.
Another change is that with two kids going to two different schools in opposite directions (not ideal, but that’s how it worked out), the day is cut short since we both are on duty for drop-offs and pickups.
What boundaries have you set around your work and how did you work with your colleagues to enable them?
I’ve always been the kind of person to have firm boundaries around my work. Before kids, it was simply my preference, and after kids, it became a necessity. I also like my job and working in general, but I’m not ambitious career-wise. Work isn’t where I get the utmost intellectual fulfilment in life. This combination makes balancing work and other priorities feel pretty easy for me.
From the outside, my job might look enviable and seem like something I strove for. But to me, it feels like I got very lucky and fell into a role that is both perfect for me and not too demanding.
Working at the same place for six years has made a big difference here. My colleagues trust me, and I don’t feel I need to prove myself. If I changed jobs, I think this would be a lot more challenging to pull off.
Working for a company in a European time zone also helps. Work is never an imposition on my time in the evening. I’m busy with my son from 7:15 - 8am in the morning, and I’ve set a boundary that I can never do meetings at this time. But it’s not difficult for my colleagues to work around that small constraint.
What are the most important things for you to get right to have a successful day?
I need to prep dinner during the day to enjoy the evenings with my kids. They get hungry and cranky if we eat too late. I have a little time when I get home first with my younger son before Mike and my older son get home, but I prefer to use that time to play with my youngest. He gets really cranky if I’m trying to cook dinner instead of hanging out with him. When he gets a little older I’ll let him help me cook.
Switching to weekends, what are the most important things to get right to have an excellent weekend day?
To be honest, weekends have mostly been a drag until recently, when my younger son switched to one nap. When he was on a two-nap schedule, and my older son was on a one-nap schedule, all day long somebody would have to be napping which meant we had a minimal window for doing anything outside of the house together as a family. We would take turns going out with one kid, or sometimes do something altogether and compromise the nap, but this usually ended up in someone being very cranky and no fun at all. So, the number one thing to get right on weekends, I’d say, is to survive long enough…
What has been the most impactful thing that you've automated or outsourced in your family?
Ordering groceries. It’s more expensive, but I’ve decided that going to the grocery store takes too much time and is not high on my priority list.
What principles have served you best in your parenting?
Division of responsibility. I first learned this concept in connection with feeding children. The idea is that the parent decides the what, where, and when of mealtimes, and the child decides whether to eat and how much. Everyone stays in their lane resulting in more pleasant mealtimes and better eaters over the long run.
I like this concept a lot for the big picture of parenting and understanding what my role is. Specifically, I don’t think it’s my role to ensure my child is successful or has any particular outcome. Those things are not something that I imagine I have any control over. Thinking about it this way helps me remember that the whole point of parenting, perhaps, is to just enjoy it as much as possible. And sometimes it’s not possible—sometimes it really sucks. But the last thing I need is to worry about my kids’ future success on top of everything else.
When you feel overwhelmed as a parent, what do you do?
Ask for help. I’m lucky to have a supportive partner. Usually, when one of us is feeling overwhelmed, the other isn’t and can step in to help.
How do you handle hard behaviour e.g. tantrums?
Wait it out. I don’t think there’s much to be done about tantrums in the moment. I see them as a storm that has to pass. They’re unpleasant for everyone involved, not least the person having them, but there’s no way to rush them, and they need to be fully expressed before they dissipate.
Is there a primary parent in your household or do you split the parenting evenly?
We split things evenly. Not every minute of every day, but overall things feel very even and the expectation between us is that we are equal partners.
If there is an even split between parents, how do you divide the work and make sure that it is fair?
We had a lot of difficult conversations early on as parents when we were working this out, and as we’ve gotten more experienced, things have fallen into place more easily and without as much stress and tension. A few tips that have helped us:
Try to work around each parent’s strengths and preferences. For example, babies stress me out, but I’m in my element with toddlers. Since we have one of each, I tend to do a bit more with the older kid, and my husband does more with the baby.
Agree explicitly on what’s important to you before you split things up. For example, having a home-cooked meal together most nights is more important to me than my husband. He would be fine with takeout or scrambled eggs more than I would. The result is that I do a lot more cooking, and I feel zero resentment about it.
Be willing to cede control to make things balanced. For example, I’m a control freak in the kitchen—it’s my domain, and I’m very particular about how things are cooked, how things are cleaned up and put away etc. But I felt overwhelmed after having two kids and now my husband cooks once a week and is mostly responsible for the dishes.
If you’re a planner like I am, you might be tempted to want to define roles and responsibilities ahead of time for everything. But when you have kids, things change so much, and it can help to be willing to go with the flow. For example, one of the biggest fights my husband and I had was when I was pregnant, and I suggested that after the baby was born, since I’d be doing all the feeding, he could do all the diaper changes. He felt this was unfair, and I felt feminist outrage. The conversation didn’t go well. Little did we know that feeding the baby would be a million times harder and more time-consuming than changing diapers!
What is your top trick for making it through mealtime ?
Division of responsibility! The parent is in charge of what is served, where to eat, and when to eat. The kid is in charge of whether to eat at all and how much. This means that if your kid wants to eat nothing at all one night, or only eat bread, or only one raisin, you don’t worry about it and don’t say anything about it. When you fully trust in this process, they eat fine over the long run, and meals don’t become power struggles.
Also if your kid is preoccupied with dessert, put their portion on the table at the same time as dinner. Usually, they will eat it and then eat the rest of their meal. And after a few weeks, it doesn’t feel so special and forbidden anymore, and they don’t even always eat it first.
How do you bring play and fun into your time with your children?
I love making up stories for my kids, and I’m very good at it. So good at it that I can always use it as a tactic to get them to do things, like “if you want to hear the rest, please finish getting dressed!”
Another favorite activity is playing “art gallery” with the art my son brings home from preschool. I lay out all his paintings against a wall, line up some stuffed animal audience members, and then go into a character that’s kind of a weird combination between gallerist/carnival announcer/TV reporter. I comment on the various artistic qualities of each art work and ask the artist for his statements about technique, process, etc.