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51 reviews for:
The Fifth Trimester: The Working Mom's Guide to Style, Sanity, and Big Success After Baby
Lauren Smith Brody
4.06 AVERAGE
51 reviews for:
The Fifth Trimester: The Working Mom's Guide to Style, Sanity, and Big Success After Baby
Lauren Smith Brody
4.06 AVERAGE
Prospective readers should know that the author mostly gives advice pertaining to moms working office/corporate jobs. That aside, I loved this and found it to have the perfect balance of anecdotal and scientific evidence. It didn't feel like there was any "filler", which i feel like a lot of parenting/baby books have. It also had advice that wasn't specific to working, such as how to get back into dressing yourself for public everyday, how to keep your marriage and discuss splitting duties with your spouse. I'll probably still be vastly unprepared for returning to work soon, but this at least gave me the illusion of being prepared far in advance ;-)
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
Yup, every working mom should read this. Shoutout to Beth for the recommendation.
I'm a bit frustrated with working mom advice books. And while the fifth trimester was better than most, I still felt out of place reading it. It seems that the idea of the working mom is the high powered executive, which I am not. I just enjoy working and don't want to be a stay at home mom, but I don't work twelve hour days and weekends and barely see my kids and have a nanny. There were good bits of advice strewn throughout, and overall The Fifth Trimester was well written, but all of the advice came from super successful moms (other than the one to two added in seemingly for good measure). Overall good to skim for parts you're interested in, but a bit too hefty and focused on people who make way more money than I do :)
Some chapters more applicable than others, of course, but overall, a pretty handy guide to being a working mom and, honestly, a nice reminder of how good I have it w/r/t work. Admittedly, I skimmed some sections, like the chapter on being self-employed or owning your own business. She makes a good effort to include women in all kinds of professions (one of her interview subjects is a police detective who was working vice when her baby was born!), but it still feels most relevant to moms in office jobs, rather than in professions or positions that require shift work.
My favorite piece of advice is to be your own role model by thinking "What would [Iris's] mom do?"
My favorite piece of advice is to be your own role model by thinking "What would [Iris's] mom do?"
I stumbled upon this book by accident, and it has been one of the most informative books I have read all year. As a woman who had no choice but to return to work after baby, I'd be lying to say that I wasn't worried about the transition. Reading this book really set my mind as ease. I appreciated the author's perspective about how millennial women can be instrumental in changing the culture about working motherhood.
I am back to work now, and the transition has been both difficult and good. I like myself when I am working, and I like my work. I am happy to be back. I appreciated that the book made it ok for me to admit that. It doesn't make me less of a mother. I just like my professional self.
One other thing that really stood out to me was just a random tidbit of information about how on average babies don't sleep through the night until 6-7 months. It made me feel tremendously better about the fact that my baby still wakes up 2-3 (or on bad nights more) times per night. I just have to remember that this is a season, however crumby, that will pass soon enough.
I am back to work now, and the transition has been both difficult and good. I like myself when I am working, and I like my work. I am happy to be back. I appreciated that the book made it ok for me to admit that. It doesn't make me less of a mother. I just like my professional self.
One other thing that really stood out to me was just a random tidbit of information about how on average babies don't sleep through the night until 6-7 months. It made me feel tremendously better about the fact that my baby still wakes up 2-3 (or on bad nights more) times per night. I just have to remember that this is a season, however crumby, that will pass soon enough.
A must read for any (new) mom going back to work after maternity leave. Good advise on merging the new life you have with your old (work) life and recognizing this is a new, difficult, exciting season.
skimmed. Good advice for some people. Mostly common sense. Also, lot of advocating for better policies for mothers in the US.
Highly recommended for any moms returning to work. Possibly less relevant for moms in non-traditional work environments but still full of good info on things like pumping and schedules and practical style tips.
Makes some really good suggestions about taking care of yourself and your job and your marriage when you go back to work. Lots of advice on how to prepare, how to pick childcare, etc. but a bit painful to read with a pandemic happening. There are so many things I can’t do right now that would make me feel more human. But at least no one else has gotten a haircut either!
I didn't end up finishing this. It's kind of long. I feel like this could have been condensed into a much smaller book. Honestly for me returning to work just didn't end up being nearly as hard as this book made it sound.