Preparing for parental leave with Jackie Cook, CEO of Popins.

Kristin Revere and Jackie Cook discuss her work with clients and employers on maternity leave preparation and her Expecting Success program on the latest episode of Ask the Doulas. 

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Transcript

Kristin Revere and Jackie Cook discuss her work with clients and employers on maternity leave preparation and her Expecting Success program on the latest episode of Ask the Doulas. 

Hello, hello!  This is Kristin Revere with Ask the Doulas, and I am thrilled to chat with my friend Jackie Cook today.  I met Jackie back when I was doing a baby registry training through Be Her Village and then begged her to bring her 9in|9out Baby Expo to Grand Rapids, which she did!  So we formed this friendship over the years, but I’ve always been amazed by the work that Jackie does in the postnatal, maternity leave, preparation phase because I feel like it can be overwhelming to navigate all of the options, and it’s so important to understand all of the benefits with your employer and make a plan during pregnancy for your maternity and paternity leaves versus trying to figure it out when you have a baby, whether you’re a pro and it’s baby four, or it’s your first baby. 

So, welcome, Jackie! 

Good morning, Kristin!  Thanks for having me on! 

Yes!  I would love to have you fill our listeners in on your story.  I know it, but share your background and your own experiences with having kids and what led you to create Popins. 

Absolutely.  I’m happy to share.  I currently have what seems like super huge, old, independent kids that are almost 9 and 6 years old.  We’re in this kind of new phase of elementary school and activities.  But rewinding nine years when I was pregnant with my son, we were working over in the Netherlands.  And I had a really big job, and while we were super excited to be pregnant – it was a very much wanted baby – the timing wasn’t great.  My due date actually aligned with a couple of really big work projects, which were the whole reason we were over in the Netherlands in the first place.  Oh, no was kind of my first reaction, which is not great, necessarily!  

But I remember going in to meet with my boss to tell him that I was pregnant and being so nervous.  And this was a boss I’d worked with a couple of years.  He was a wonderful manager.  But still, I was super nervous to share this really delightful life event with him because of the impact that I thought it might have on my job and my career. 

In fact, it went just fine.  The first thing he said was congratulations; I’m so happy for you.  Which is absolutely the right thing to say and what every manager should say!  It’s not what always happens for everyone, but it was great.  And I spent the next few months really getting ready to not just have my first kid, but also get my job ready and help my clients feel like they would be okay without me.  They were also really supportive.  I think I was probably more nervous than they were.  They were like, Jackie, people have babies.  We’ll be fine.  

And after my son was born, it was like, oh, they were right.  People have babies.  They’ll be fine.  I was completely consumed with this new human that I was taking care of. 

So in the Netherlands, we’ve had amazing postpartum support.  They have a system of care that’s very similar to what you do at Gold Coast with postpartum doulas, but that’s just the standard.  Everyone gets, essentially, a postpartum doula for the first few days that they’re home with their baby.  So my husband and I just really were able to delight in our first weeks with our son.  We had a lot of confidence that breastfeeding was going well.  We had an opportunity to get a couple naps in because our doula would say, okay, I’m taking the baby now for the hour.  Eat your lunch, and then lay down.  And it was amazing! 

A couple years after that, we moved back to the US and were pregnant with our daughter, who is now six.  And I thought, oh, gosh, we have this.  We know what we’re doing.  It’s our second time around.  We’re going to rock it.  And everything went just fine from a medical standpoint.  We had a really healthy delivery, really healthy birth, really healthy baby.  And then I got home and I realized I didn't have that person that I’d had the first time around who checked my stitches and checked on breastfeeding and held our baby and showed us how to give a newborn a bath.  And we had good friends; we had family support, and that really was very important and very helpful.  But I missed that expert support.  The first time I gave our daughter a bath at home, we were in a different house; we had different stuff.  And I think I ended up getting more of the bath water on myself than on her because I just didn’t have the logistics figured out.  I’d forgotten what that was like from three years earlier. 

I do love that nurses do the home visits.  You have doulas.  Midwives also do home care.  It’s such a fantastic model.  And then they also have such a lengthy leave time for maternity and paternity leave. 

Yes, absolutely.  And I think regardless of who you have supporting you, I am such an evangelist now for lining up postpartum support before your delivery, whether that’s a doula or a midwife or a group like Nurse Family Partnership, if you have that in your area.  Because just having someone who – that’s what they do.  They help parents with new babies in their home.  It makes such a huge difference in starting that new version of your family on a good foundation. 

Exactly.  And I know that you also work not only with the expecting family but also with employers.  So can you elaborate on that a bit more, about how you work with the HR department or employers directly? 

Yeah, absolutely!  So really that experience, those contrasting experiences of my own kids, helped me tune into what my team members were going through when I got back to work, what my friends were going through as they grew their families.  And I started looking more at how could we support people as they’re getting ready to have their baby, as they’re transitioning back to work, and I think employers play a huge role in that.  So as I started Popins and looked at, what does one need to do to prepare for a parental leave, and how can you transition well back to work – I think the employer is a really key role in that.  So I work with HR departments on a couple levels.  One of the first things I like to do is just take a look at, what are their benefit offerings?  What are their policies and guidelines around parental support?  And an obvious level, the first question is, do they offer paid leave?  In the US, that’s not a requirement.  It is becoming more attractive for employers to do and to look for in employee benefits, so that’s something that we certainly talk about and look at. 

But I also think it’s really important to highlight more standard benefits that employers can expose or put a spotlight on for their employees that are growing their families.  So, for example, many employers offer health savings accounts, and that can be used for a number of different things, specifically in this phase where someone is growing their family, it can be used for some of these expert services often, like lactation support or doula support, to things that your insurance may or may not cover.  You can leverage your employer benefits like a health savings account for those types of things. 

So that’s some of the work that I do with both the employer, as well as individuals, to make sure that people are thinking about how they can make the most of the money they have available to them.  And then employers can make the most of the benefits that they’re offering to help their employees have a really good experience as they’re growing their families. 

Yes.  And then in the last couple of years, I’ve seen so many more fertility-based benefits that also extend to birth support and certainly postpartum doula support, Carrot Fertility being the largest, that many employers have been taking on, and then Progeny and certainly other employees are looking into their individual company’s plan, which if they’re self-funded, as you know, they can create their own plans.  So we worked with an area construction company and added doulas to their benefits and helped them create a customized program.  There are lots of different options.  What are you seeing with navigating those? 

With Popins, what I talk to employers about is adding Popins in as a benefit for that individual support as well.  So we at the HR level talk about, how are you describing and sharing your benefits and policies?  How are you training your managers on how to react and how to get answers for consistency and time savings?  And then also, is there an opportunity to offer our one on one guidance and support for both preparation and return to work?  Because that offers an option where someone who’s not the employer can talk to an expecting parent about how they’re going to have the right support when they get home on their maternity leave.  So I have not met many managers or HR people that really want to talk about pelvic floor therapy or consultants with their team members, but that’s something that, from a Popins standpoint, I can talk to those people about and help them get the support that they need so that when it’s time for them to go back to work, they’re going back as a more whole, healthy person and family. 

Yeah, that is so needed.  I feel like as I’m talking to my birth and postpartum doula clients, they don’t even know what their benefits include, and back when I worked in corporate America, we had a lot of different presentations, as you mentioned, like you coming in and the different benefits that we had.  Say it’s vision, and someone would come in and explain the vision benefit to us that wasn’t our HR department.  So I was able to better understand this huge packet of benefits by some of that work.  So what you’re saying makes complete sense.  Or just sharing information in company newsletters or emails and so on to highlight, because it can be overwhelming.  And for spouses to try to figure out their partner’s benefits – like, I don’t fully understand my husband’s and what we have available to us. 

And I don’t know if you’ve seen this also, Kristin, but I think what I’ve been finding is that for expecting parents, it’s just an overwhelming time.  There’s so much new information coming at them around doctors’ appointments and baby development and how are you preparing for birth, and all of that on top of the normal day to day life.  And so if their employer says, hey, we have this program that we will cover and we’ll support you – I think it feels easier to take advantage of than if it’s one more thing that the person has to seek out. 

Exactly.  Or they may not read through everything and have no idea that this benefit existed unless, say, a coworker told them that they took advantage of a particular program or service, whether it’s therapy or whatever it might be. 

Yeah, and that’s one of the things that I feel very passionate about is just any avenue to get more word out there, whether it’s the, hey, please tell your coworker, or did you know that these are some of the common areas that people struggle with?  And I think we’re seeing more of this, where there’s more awareness around mental health, especially in the prenatal and postpartum phases, where there is getting to be more awareness around lactation support.  So things like the Pump Act that came out last year that requires employers to provide time and space that’s not a bathroom for their employees to pump.  These are good things that are just, I think, enhancing and increasing the conversation around areas that are struggles for many, many new parents, and I think we share this passion, Kristin, that there’s no need for new parents to suffer in isolation.  It’s really hard being a new parent, but you don’t have to do it alone. 

Exactly.  And sometimes well-meaning friends and family members will just give time and space when actually, it can be so beneficial to offer support or let them process their birth or hold their baby for a minute.  So yes, it can be very isolating, and I feel like we never fully came back from the isolation of the pandemic.  People are still more isolated than what I saw pre-pandemic. 

Yeah, that’s a really good point.  I think that was such a hard time for people to be having new babies because there was so much unknown and fear, and a lot of the services that I was able to take advantage of six years ago pre-pandemic didn't survive and are now starting to find their ways back.  I live in the Madison, Wisconsin area, and we’re starting to see more mom-baby groups in person, more music baby classes, more swim classes.  Those types of things seem to be regaining their traction again, but it’s been slow, and it can be hard to find a community.  If your listeners are hearing this and they’re like, I really need a community – please don’t give up.  Please try to find it.  Groups like Gold Coast Doulas and Popins, we can help make that easier to navigate or direct folks that are looking for community in a certain direction in your area, but it’s so worth it if you can find it.  It’s just hard, and your friends that are not in the same phase of life as you might just not get it.  And that’s okay.  It doesn’t mean they’re bad people or not good friends.  But I think it’s important to have people that are in that chapter with you. 

Absolutely.  So tell us about your Expecting Success program, Jackie. 

Yeah, thanks, that’s a good transition.  Part of our individual Popins programming is we offer really prenatal support and guidance, that maternity leave prep, through preparing at home.  So that’s lining you up with your local support network, as well as helping you align expectations with your loved ones who want to help out in the area.  And then we continue that on through your return to work.  So getting that transition back into the workplace, figuring out how do you manage childcare with your job, who’s going to order diapers, all of that.  Stuff that maybe didn't exist in your life six months earlier.  About a nine-month engagement, prenatal to postpartum.  And our Expecting Success group takes that and adds in a networking component.  This is a fully virtual offering.  We’re currently putting together a group to start this fall for folks that have due dates in the November to January range.  And the goal is really to have that individual support in parallel with a small group that you can meet with and talk about whatever is top of mind.  So in previous groups, we would come together and I would think, oh, we’re definitely going to spend this time talking about how people are going to clear their calendars for their maternity leave.  And I was so wrong!  No one wanted to talk about clearing their Outlook calendar.  What they wanted to talk about was, hey, what kind of birth class are you taking?  Or, should I be worried about this childbirth thing that I’ve never done before?  So it’s really a nice window of time where professionals can meet with others that are in the same chapter of life as them and talk about things that they probably don’t really want to talk about at work but that are top of mind and that do need some processing. 

And do you work with employers to fund that, or is it self-pay for the members of the community? 

It can be either.  I’ve had prior clients do both.  If their employer is open to a conversation, that is certainly the preference, that their employer will cover it, and we can see a lot of benefit for the likelihood that this person is going to have a really clean exit into their parental leave as well as a much better supported, more productive return to work.  So there’s definitely clear benefit for the business to fund it.  But I’ve had some clients that use existing employer funds in creative ways, as well.  So if your company offers a professional development fund, for example, or a learning fund or a wellness fund, those are kind of budgeted areas that I’ve had clients access to pay for Popins services.  And then certainly, out of pocket is an option, and I’m always happy to talk to someone one on one about what their needs are and build out a budgeting plan as needed.

Okay, excellent!  So what are your top tips for our listeners who are preparing for their family leave? 

Ooh, love this question.  Everyone has advice, right?  So I think one of my top tips is actually do what works for you and toss out the rest.  So that includes any of my tips that you hear.  If it doesn’t resonate – if you hear me say, like, absolutely everyone should have a postpartum doula – which I absolutely say – but it doesn’t resonate with you for a variety of reasons, then do what you feel like is going to work for you.  I do feel very strongly that as you’re preparing for your parental leave, lining up your expert support in your community for when you get home is one of the best gifts you can give yourself.  So the top areas that I recommend people look at and that I help connect people with in their community include doulas, birth and/or postpartum support, mental health support – so knowing who in the area or who through your insurance focuses specifically on postpartum mental health, like anxiety, depression, et cetera.  Often, that can be through your health system, but sometimes you need someone faster.  Lactation, and pelvic floor physical therapy.  Those are some of the areas that I recommend people know who their go-to people are, who the go-to experts are in their community, so that if or when they need help in those areas, they don’t have to spend a lot of time Googling at 2:00 in the morning.  They already have the number of the person they’re going to call.  Maybe they already have the appointment set up for an assessment or an eval.  

Yeah, so I think that’s kind of my top area in the prepping for parental leave is the at-home stuff.  Everything else, we can work through.  Clearing your calendar is actually quite straightforward.  It’s just making sure you actually do it so that you’re not taking a call from the delivery room. 

Right, and I’ve seen that as a birth doula too many times.  Or I’ve had clients work on their laptops trying to get those last-minute emails out and get everything set.  So yes, if there’s a way to get it done before – but babies come when they want to, so as much as you can plan and prepare, sometimes things are out of our control. 

Yeah, and I think that’s such a smart point.  My main philosophy with the Popins prep is, have everything set to go two weeks before your due date, and that’s going to cover most cases.  There are some people, of course, as you know, that do deliver more than two weeks early, for a variety of reasons, but statistically, if you have everything wrapped up and you are acting as a lame duck two weeks before your due date, you’re going to be in pretty good shape. 

Right.  And then I’m sure you work with clients who are navigating bed rest or multiples, and that is a whole different scenario as far as preparation and leave goes. 

Yeah.  I think on the multiples side, my advice would be that you have that same support that I mentioned, but make sure they have some experience with multiples.  I had a friend who had twins in the Netherlands, and a very similar experience to mine where they had that standard of care postpartum doula come in, but they had two.  So they had kind of the older, very experienced doula that worked with the, and then that person brought a second set of hands that was a bit more junior, but it meant that they just had more hands on deck.  And I think when it comes to breastfeeding, there are ways to breastfeed multiples, and there are experts out there that know a lot of great tips and tricks to help set you up for success in that area, as well.  

Absolutely.  Great tips!  So how can our listeners and doula clients connect with you, Jackie? 

My website is popinsfam.com.  And you can get a sense of my services, as well as schedule a discovery call right from my website.  You can also find me on LinkedIn as Jacquelyn Cook or through Popins.  Those are the best ways to connect with me.  And like I said, I’m always happy to do an intro call with anyone who’s expecting or getting ready to go back to work, or even if you’ve been back at work for a couple weeks after baby and it’s just not going well.  Happy to hop on a call and give some quick tips, as well as share a more expanded, individualized program based on your needs. 

Exactly.  And information on your Expecting Success program, of course, is on your website? 

Yes, absolutely, and for that program, again, we’re looking for folks who have due dates, specifically expecting moms who have due dates in the November through January time period, and we’re planning to start up in early fall. 

Excellent.  Well, thanks so much, Jackie!  I loved our chat!  We’ll have to talk again in the future! 

Looking forward to it, Kristin!  Appreciate you having me on, and keep doing the great work that you’re doing! 

IMPORTANT LINKS

Popins

Birth and postpartum support from Gold Coast Doulas

Becoming A Mother course

Buy our book, Supported