What do you do when your plans to breastfeed or bond with your baby conflict with your employer’s plans for your workweek? If you’re one of these four moms, you don’t give up your goals—you change your boss’s mind.

By Amy Levin-Epstein

Melinda Garland

Cheshire County, New Hampshire

WHAT SHE DID Persuaded her bosses to let babies come to work—twice

HOW SHE MADE IT When Garland became a mom in 2002, she was surprised by her reluctance to return to work at the end of her maternity leave. She loved her job at a small, family-run newspaper, but she wanted to be with her baby even more. Because her boss was eager to keep her on staff, and the office already had a fairly casual atmosphere, they were able to come up with a plan: Rather than leave baby Sophia behind, Garland brought her along to the office until she was 8 months old.

The arrangement worked well for every- one, but by the time Garland got pregnant again, she was working for a larger company. Badger Balm, an organic skincare company, was also family-run, so Garland hoped her new bosses would be open to the idea of bringing a baby to work. “I was realistic that this would be on a trial basis,” says Garland, but she did her homework: She downloaded information from babiesatwork.org (a site started by Moquin), and offered her former employer’s contact information—a reference of sorts for her baby. The CEO, Bill Whyte agreed to give it a try, and the Badger office soon fell in love with little Audrey. Garland designated “baby holders”—literally, office pals who’d watch Audrey when she couldn’t. This was important for meetings or bathroom trips, but Garland rarely had to actually ask anyone to hold Audrey. “There were some days when I had to look for her,” she says.

Since Audrey’s tenure as Badger’s mini mascot, five other babies have joined their parents at work. “We’ve had a baby boom!” says Whyte. “It’s never been a problem. I joke that we’ll have to rent babies to fill the void when we don’t have a regular one here,” he says. One reason the program works so well at Badger is that there are guidelines in place: Babies are shown the door when they’re 6 months old (too much crawling!), and if parents need time off during those first 6 months, they simply make up the extra hours when they’re able. This can minimize resentment from co-workers and help you do both “jobs”—parent and employee well, says Garland. The ultimate endorsement comes from the boss himself: “I say, ‘How can you afford to have people who aren’t happy in their jobs?’” says Whyte. “You have a short period of time where moms are potentially less efficient, but their gratefulness extends past that period of time, which has a great impact on the workplace.”

HER ADVICE TO NEW MOMS Make your suggestions early—as soon as possible after you’ve told your employer you’re expecting. “Bringing up ideas this big can’t be done in the ninth month of pregnancy,” says Garland. You’ll have more time to convince your boss or find solutions that work for both of you.

Sarah Walton

Tenafly, New Jersey

WHAT SHE DID Staggered her work return

HOW SHE MADE IT HAPPEN Walton was working at a small start-up—there was only one other parent in the company—when she got pregnant. There was no maternity policy in place, and certainly no company history of flexible schedules.

The federal 1993 Family and Marital Leave Act set in place maternity leave policy regulations (twelve weeks of unpaid leave), but companies with fewer than 50 employees aren’t required to offer any leave, and employees who have been with a company less than a year aren’t covered. The Act also doesn’t address the emotional and practical difficulties of going straight from maternity leave to full-time worker.

So Walton had to come up with a solution that worked for everyone—her CEO, the rest of the small staff, her husband, and herself. They settled on full pay for a maternity leave of six weeks, followed by working from home until the baby was 4 months old. “This was very important to me as it allowed me to establish a breastfeeding pattern and spend time with the baby,” says Walton. Once the four months were up, she arranged to come back to the office slowly. For three months, she worked at home three days each week; for the next three, she worked at home two days. After that, she went back to work full time. Since then, Walton co-founded Better Way Moms (betterwaymoms.com), a site about motherhood issues like working- mom guilt, co-parenting, and more. “No one ever tells you how hard it is to be a parent. I’m proud of what I managed to do with my leave, but there are so many things that make you think, ‘There has to be a better way!’ I’m hoping to help other moms out,” she says.

HER ADVICE TO NEW MOMS Be the person your colleagues can count on, no matter where you’re working. Walton told her company she’d be available on her days at home, and she was. “They were always able to get me and I kept things on track,” she says.

Jodie Lucci

Merrimack, New Hampshire

WHAT SHE DID Created a pumping room

HOW SHE MADE IT HAPPEN Even if there’s a law that backs you up, sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands. The recent health care bill guarantees that employees be given break time to express breast milk in a private place other than a bathroom. However, companies with fewer than 50 employees may be exempt if the employer can show that this would impose a hardship. And there’s no guarantee that companies will exactly jump to build pumping rooms.

If you think your company might need a little push to embrace the law, take a cue from Jodie Lucci. When her son Nathan was born 15 years ago, there were even fewer pumping rooms than there are today. (Since that time, 24 states have passed laws protecting breastfeeding in the workplace.) So she went looking for a spot for one at the biopharmaceutical company where she worked and found a shower room in the building that had potential. “I sent an e-mail to everyone who had babies or were pregnant (there were about seven of us at the time) and to the women who were using the shower after exercising. I got everyone interested, and then two of us went down and talked to the facilities person and asked for a curtain and an outlet in the shower area,” says Lucci, who says she’s glad she spoke up. In the past, other women had gone individually to human resources without any luck, and Lucci suspects one of the reasons she was successful was that she skipped the bureaucracy by going straight to the head of facilities. Breastfeeding was important to her, not just for the health benefits. “I wanted to pump because providing milk for my baby was the only thing I could do that the caregiver, my mother, couldn’t do. I was quite jealous of her getting to be there for all of his waking moments, whereas I’d only seem to get him when he was cranky or asleep. When I got home and we nursed, he was happy to see me,” says Lucci.

HER ADVICE TO NEW MOMS Stick to the facts. She acknowledges that talking about anything breast-related with a boss can be uncomfortable, but says you have to bite the bullet. “I also reassured him that I would work the pumping around whatever experiments I was running, and if that meant I would have to stay later, I would,” she says.

Rachel Aydt

New York City

WHAT SHE DID Changed her work schedule

HOW SHE MADE IT HAPPEN Aydt was working as the research director for a magazine during her first pregnancy and leave, and was able to arrange to take one afternoon each week off to be with her son Jamie— simply by asking for it. But once he was in kindergarten, she took the opportunity at her annual review to ask for something more valuable to her than a raise: more time with her son. Her boss was receptive to the idea. “I switched to leaving at 2:30 two days a week, and I came in earlier on those days. If I’d only come in four days a week, as opposed to working the five days with two afternoons off, I would have been far more under the microscope because the workflow would have been interrupted. If you leave early, nobody notices,” says Aydt. She used the time for adventures that couldn’t get squeezed into the bath and bedtime routines of workdays. “We went on outings to the zoo, or I would take him swimming or to the playground,” she says.

HER ADVICE TO NEW MOMS Consider how your workplace is run. For Aydt to lead the research department she needed to be available on her cell phone; plus, she asked for her afternoons off to be in the middle of the week to avoid resentment and lessen disruption. She believes that women will get what they want if they have a detailed plan for how to make it work. “A boss once said to me, ‘don’t come to me with problems—come to me with solutions,’ ” says Aydt. “So I did.”

Amy Levin-Epstein writes for Glamour, Self, Prevention, and Babble.com.

YOUR TURN

Tell us about your experience going back to work, and share your advice with other moms.

KIWI’s Dr. Rosen on day-to-day courage:

When my daughter was only three or four years old, she was obsessed with the “Wizard of Oz” movie. We must have watched parts of it daily for the better part of a year. I know this is not unusual based on the numbers of preschoolers I see in my office wearing ruby red slippers. While I am not a big fan of TV for kids, the fun we had watching clips here and there only served to stimulate her incredible imaginary play the other waking hours of our days.

One of my favorite parts is the following interchange:

Cowardly Lion: …What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! …What have they got that I ain’t got?

Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman: Courage!

Cowardly Lion: You can say that again!

Courage, of course, comes in many sizes. Big and small. What I’m writing about here is the day-to-day courage to stand up for your way of life no matter how much others in your life and community may disagree with you.

A recurring theme has developed lately in my conversations with families in my practice. Even though “green” is everywhere, there are still many challenges families face when they adopt a more natural lifestyle. As I noted last month, there are many baby steps to going green that make it easier to move in that direction. Sometimes cost and access can be significant barriers. But the biggest challenge may be trying to convince others in our communities that what we’re doing for our own kids is what’s best for them. One mom told me a story about how, when she politely declined a junk food snack for her toddler in a playgroup, she was not-so-politely requested to find a new playgroup. Mind you, she wasn’t trying to convert anyone to her way of life, just stating a preference for her child. Another parent has been working for years to introduce healthier hand sanitizer options in her local elementary school. Her main challenge? Not convincing the school administration to look at other options – they’re on board. It’s other parents who remain convinced that commercial alcohol- and chemical-based products are the only effective solution, regardless of safety concerns. A family considering non-pesticide lawn care was ambushed one weekend by neighbors, calling them “bad citizens” for possibly exposing their yards to weeds. Weeds?!? What about the exposure of the children and their pets to the toxic pesticides drifting and running into the family’s yard? Sometimes these battles take place within families. In one home, a mom is constantly fighting her own mother, forever scouring the medicine cabinets and tossing out the artificially-dyed and sweetened cold medicines that the grandmother insists her 8-month old grandson needs for his teething-related mild stuffy nose.

These are just a few of the daily examples of those I think of as “parent warriors,” fighting for what they believe in. It takes a lot of courage to stand up for what you think will best serve your child – for what you know intuitively is right – when it seems that the world is against you. I still maintain the best path to enlightenment is through education – of other families and of children. I have witnessed several instances of children encouraging other children to recycle or reduce waste or eat organic food. It’s a marvelous transformation to behold. Fortunately, these acts of childhood courage are often met with more openness and less resistance than their grown-up counterparts. Maybe we should all pay more attention to our kids.

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”- inspirational author, Mary Anne Radmacher

—KIWI columnist Dr. Lawrence Rosen

Raise your hand if you feel guilty that you don’t spend enough time with your kids. Anyone? Everyone? Well parents, rest assured that you are not alone. But some good news: A recent study out of the University of California, San Diego, found that family time has risen dramatically since 1995.

The study looked at surveys that analyzed how parents used their time between 1965 and 2007. Before 1995, moms spent about 12 hours a week on family child care. As of 2007, that number rose to 21 hours for college-educated moms, and to nearly 16 hours a week for all other moms. Dads, too, are in on the fun. College educated dads are now spending 10 hours a week with kids, compared to about 4 hours a week before 1995.

The study did not look at times when parents were around their kids, say at dinner. It focused on activities where the parent is directly involved with the child: helping with homework, playing catch outside.

You’re probably wondering where all the extra time is coming from. Well, moms are spending less time cooking and cleaning, while dads are putting in fewer hours at the office. More good news: Divorce rates are dropping with each generation, and more couples are sharing housework responsibilities, so they have more time together.

How do you ensure you spend quality time with the fam? What kinds of activities do you do?

-Nicole McGovern

My mom always stressed the importance of everyone eating dinner together as a family–as often as possible. As much as I hate to admit it, she was right (and there’s scientific proof to back her!). A new study shows that regular family dinners can actually improve asthmatic children’s lung functions.

The study found that asthma is directly related to separation anxiety. So, eating together as a family can provide little ones with a sense of security and regularity, therefore reducing their separation anxiety symptoms.

Family interaction and dinner conversation is super-important too, so keep the bickering to a minimum! Let everyone take turns discussing their day or what they’ve got planned for the week ahead. It’s also a great time to casually check up on your children’s asthma: ensure they’ve been taking their meds and always have their inhaler handy. Kids will feel protected just knowing that there is an adult looking out for them.

So this Sunday, take a look at everyone’s schedule and try to plan at least four nights where you can all sit down to dinner. And of course, feel free to try some of KIWI’s delicious (and healthy!) recipes.

-Nicole McGovern

Here’s the latest and greatest of what’s going on in the parent blogosphere. Interested in having your blog featured? Let us know in the comments!

• Attachment parenting or tough love? Crunchy Domestic Goddess weighs in on getting your little one to sleep soundly.
• Healthy Green Moms talk the benefits of raw milk, plus the controversy behind it.
• Looking for last minute holiday  crafts? Make Prairie Mama‘s tree homemade ornaments.
• It’s easy to say no to blow drying your hair in the summer, but not so much in the winter. EnviroMom is looking for tips  on air drying minus the chill.
• Tree Hugging Family shares three disposable habits to beat for the new year. Add them to your list of resolutions!

-Marygrace, KIWI staff writer

Purple and Carrot, discuss. Purple carrots can now be found in a fruit & veggie drink for kids. First Juice, Inc. just introduced two new flavors, blueberry+purple carrot and peach+purple carrot. And, if you are wondering…yes, purple carrots are real! Furthermore, their darker complexion brings antioxidants similar to blueberries and red grapes.

It is sold in an 8 oz. reusable and recyclable, spill-proof, BPA-Free sippy-top container that is convenient for parents on-the-go. The First Juice 32 oz. bottle is great for refills.

Read about the history of the purple carrot and First Juice!!!

– Stephanie, KIWI staff and wondering if adults can drink this too…?

January 19 is the day this year that we celebrate the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.;  a man who changed the world. Who knows where we would be without this hero who put his life on the line so that people would  “not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”?

I wonder if Dr. King’s parents, while he was growing up, ever realized how great their son would be. What did Alberta and Martin Luther King, Sr. do to create such an incredible child? What values, what inspiration did they give him? Did they know that he would improve the lives of countless people and change the face of our world? Did Barack Obama’s mother know as she held her beautiful baby in her arms that he would someday become President; that the hope of a nation would rest on her angel’s shoulders? Do any of us know what greatness lies in our children?

As parents, we all think our children are special. We love them with a biased heart.  However, the lesson of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama is that our children truly are the future of the world. This realization makes our job even more critical—raising our children with a social and environmental conscious can actually make a difference.

Let’s take these next few amazing days, the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States, to see that the potential is there for our children to make the world a better place. We are raising the next scientists, politicians, philanthropists, explorers, nutrition experts, artists, computer geniuses and more.

So, as you kiss your children goodnight on the 19th, on this crossover between two historical days, feel the power that is yours and theirs.  Infused with love and wrapped in your commitment, anything is possible.

—Maxine Wolf, CEO & Publisher, KIWI Magazine

Last weekend I went to the DC Green Festival, a joint project of Global Exchange and Co-op America. Hundreds of speakers and exhibitors convened at the DC Convention Center to educate thousands of people on the latest trends in the green movement. Attendees who stopped by our KIWI booth walked away with a KIWI Magazine amongst other goodies PLUS had a chance to sign up for our contests. Don’t worry. In case you missed this event, you can still participate.

Here’s the deal:

KiwiCrusaders: KIWI acknowledges excellence in school meals. Enter to win a prize of $3,500 for your school. http://www.kiwimagonline.com/kiwicrusaders/index.php

Next Great Young Chef Contest: Kids ages 4-17 are invited to create a recipe with our secret ingredient – Florida Crystals Organic and Natural Sugars. Parents, please upload a video of the chef in progress. http://www.kiwimagonline.com/contests/NextGreatYoungChef/

Great School Beaches Getaway: Teachers who sign up to receive enews on our new website, MyHealthySchool.com, will be entered to win a vacation package to a Beaches Resort location in Turks & Caicos or Jamaica. http://www.myhealthyschool.com/contests/Beaches/

Next stop on my Green Festival tour is San Francisco this Friday November 15th – Sunday November 17th. Please make sure to stop and say hello and tell your friends…

Stephanie Singer

Remember it is not always easy to talk to your kids at a young age about issues that they will hopefully not encounter until much older. As in the Appletini incident highlighted in my last Blog, here are five useful tips for having “the conversation.”

1. Start early: It is much easier to initiate conversations regarding drugs and alcohol when your children are seven, rather than seventeen. Start early and often!

2. Keep appropriate: Keep the conversation age appropriate and discuss making healthy choices for their bodies. Introduce consequences for behavior. “You want to make good healthy choices for your body, so your body won’t get sick”.

3. Expressing feelings: Create an environment of listening that supports your child’s ability to express their feelings. As your child grows and their interests widen to friends and activities outside the home, you want them to continue to talk to you about their feelings and “keep you in their loop.”

4. Problem solving: Have your child identify safe people to talk to about their problems (including you). Discuss what can happen if they “mask” or hide their emotions. Modeling healthy ways to resolve and express issues with your child empowers them to tackle the bumps in the road.

5. Safety rules: Discuss the importance of safety rules and the dangers of touching, tasting or smelling things that they can’t identify. Stress how very dangerous this can be.

Open communication with your child early on, practicing patience, problem solving, listening to your child and teaching consequences for their behavior are excellent foundations for laying the ground work for future “tough stuff discussions” including the use of alcohol as they head into the pre- teen years. (Oh, the Teen Years…when you will want that Appletini!)

Written by: June Grushka-Rosen (Miss. June Bug) M.Ed. is a Life Coach, Educator, Psychotherapist and mommy of two.
To contact – LifeCoachingYou@Verizon.net

When I picked up my daughter Sasha from school she proudly announced that a special visitor had come into their second grade classroom to discuss alcohol abuse. I was pleased that my daughter and her peers were being exposed to alcohol prevention so early. I know that early prevention statistically shows a decrease in the onset of kids drinking and addiction. In addition, I had been working diligently through my job to create an effective drug and alcohol prevention program in a near by school district.

I asked Sasha what she had learned, hoping to steal a few good ideas for my own program, and of course, to see how she was processing her new gained knowledge from someone other then her mother. “They said beer was alcohol, so I raised my hand and told them that my mom loves Appletinis. I asked them if Appletinis are alcohol too, and did you know mom… they are!?” You can imagine my surprise! After great effort to teach my child about the dangers of alcohol, it was a casual conversation with a friend joking about a recent event we attended and how we really enjoyed the Appletinis that my daughter picked up on.

The messages we send our children are not always conscious ones. Parents need to be mindful about their casual habits regarding drugs and alcohol. Sit down and have a conversation with your children regarding alcohol. Take it from me…. your children really are taking their cues from you.

Written by: June Grushka-Rosen (Miss. June Bug) M.Ed. is a Life Coach, Educator, Psychotherapist and mommy of two.
To contact – LifeCoachingYou@Verizon.net

P.S. Check back tomorrow for June’s tips on talking to your kids about alcohol.

KIWI presents: A new blog series on “Positive Parenting” from June Grushka-Rosen.

Many believe that children and their innate ability to use their imagination go hand in hand. Unfortunately, more and more, a child’s gift to create imaginary places, invisible friends and to dream about the future is not always second nature. This can be compounded by parents who feel uncomfortable when children explore outside the boundaries of what they see as reality. However, the necessity to help prompt a child to grow his/her imagination is increasingly important, due to rising negative stimuli including the over-indulged child, as in the child that has everything done for them and is given to in excess with no boundaries or expectations from their parents. As well as the disadvantaged child, a child that has been deprived of basic needs that may include environmental factors that lead to a lack of nurturing needed to stimulate creative thinking

Imagination is essential as a foundation for problem solving. I have found that while working with preschoolers in an affluent community, in addition to gang affiliated teenagers from the inner-city, that a key component to a child or teen’s ability to thrive and move towards success, is their capacity to rely on their imagination to problem solve. It can be simply having tots who are needed to quietly move from one location to another imagine that they are a magnificent colorful butterfly with arms as wings, silently soaring magically from one place to the next. What a fun contribution to teach a child that is working on curbing their impulse to talk when it may not be appropriate.

It is also my experience that role playing with groups of teens has proven to stimulate their knack to use their imagination by “thinking out side the box” and enhancing their capability to problem solve. If a teen is given the opportunity to “play the part” of the parent or teacher or voice of authority, they often feel empowered by the chance to be heard. Creating an environment to help a teen use their creativity to solve problems and set their own limitations can be a powerful tool to impart upon them.

Nurturing these skills in children gives them perspective and resources to find hope when others my only see hopelessness. The gift of encouraging imaginative-play fosters one’s depth to look at life’s challenges expansively. Growing a child’s imagination can lead to raising a unique problem solver, bring a sparkle to routine activities and encourage children to see a world filled with endless possibilities!

Written by: June Grushka-Rosen, MEd., is a Life Coach, Educator and Psychotherapist
To contact – LifeCoachingYou@Verizon.net