Yesterday I had the chance to w(h)ine and dine with a bunch of awesome moms in national security, thanks to @MaggieCaroline1 and #NSGSCon2020, and I can't stop thinking about it. (A thread.) 1/

I'm hesitant to hop on this soapbox for a lot of reasons. (I'm way out of my lane, for one.) But we have to start talking about pregnancy — and not just in rooms alone and in #NatSecGirlSquad. Because the fact of the matter is that we are not. And families are suffering. 2/

And I do mean pregnancy. Because 1) Parenting in this society is a second can of worms. But 2) Pregnancy discrimination is real. 3/

When I was pregnant with my first, I was taken off travel, had a contract broken, had pay withheld while I was out, and when I did return, had my commitment to the role questioned, along with a suggestion that perhaps I'd rather refocus so I could spend more time at home. 4/

I pumped in a closet for years at my place of employment. In places worse than this elsewhere. (Train/plane bathrooms were definitely the grossest. My moving car was the most dangerous, but the commute could be long.) 5/

I was shamed at nearly every TSA checkpoint I tried to carry milk through. Once I was asked, incredulously, where the baby was. Why did I have milk and not a baby? The TSA agent in question informed me, 'he also has a kid, he knows how this works.' 6/

When my second son was born, I had founded @inkstickmedia and was deeply enmeshed in a startup life I admittedly chose to pursue. Fortuitously, he was born at the start of a long holiday weekend. I took the weekend and got back to work. 7/

A lot of my own troubles stem from my choices of course: 1099 employment doesn't come with parental leave, and FMLA only protects employees of companies larger than 50. But broader workplace microaggressions are pervasive. 8/

Many parents have experienced the whiplash that comes with realizing that, pre-parenthood, you didn't really *get* where your colleagues were coming from or what they needed. Not shocking. Their lived experience was unlike your own. 9/

But a lack of conversation in this space leads us to put the onus of improvement on parents themselves. They made the choice to become parents, right? So they should suck it up and return to work, even if in some cases they're still *physically* recovering from childbirth. 10/

Colleagues both male and female assume they have a pretty good idea of what those first few weeks and months are like. Or they don't want to ask. 11/

If they did, they might hear that their female colleague can barely walk, is bleeding, leaking, possibly dealing with a fever from mastitis (or at least a clogged duct) in addition to the sleep deprivation they do know comes along with a baby. 12/

They might hear she's been struggling with feeding, post-partum depression, and physical pain, and that her partner has no parental leave and was expected to be back at work just days after birth. (Mine was.) So she's doing it alone. 13/

That the baby cries every night from 6-9pm, no matter what she does. (My second.) And that when she's on her feet too much, she starts to bleed harder, and she's terrified she might suffer a hemorrhage or worse prolapse than she already has. 14/

Too many women in this country feel that they need to choose between parenthood and work. That problem is not just at home, it's structural, and families shouldn't be asked to solve it themselves. 15/

This problem is only worse during COVID -- but not for the reasons you might think. 16/

Working FROM HOME (or from anywhere, post-COVID) is not bad for women. Working WITHOUT CHILDCARE is bad for women. Please stop conflating the two, because the first is actually pretty great for some families. (Mine included.) 17/

The second is crushing. So crushing that nearly every family I know has chosen to take a calculated risk in order to continue to work: whether that means bringing grandma in to help (me), joining a small pod, or something much riskier. Here, I recognize how lucky I am. 18/

For a long time, I haven't been able to shake the feeling that what we're asking of parents now is the same thing we ask of them when we deny true (and generous) paid parental leave. We're asking people to work under impossible conditions. 19/

When we snap back to reality, some folks will start arguing to send kids back to daycare and, likewise, parents back to the office. Problem solved. They'll be missing the real problem entirely. 20/

This is a country where we have no issue writing a blank check to the Pentagon, but the cost of paid family leave is politically divisive. Some of that might begin to change if we could bring ourselves to have an honest conversation about how fucking hard it is to be a mom. /21