5 month baby update

I wrote this draft at 4 AM while feeding my baby on my knee with one hand and using Wispr Flow with the other.

This is my new normal.

Five months ago, my husband and I welcomed our baby. And in those five months, I've learned more about life, time, ambition, and myself than I have in, well, probably my entire 15-year career.

Motherhood has been the most humbling, disorienting, beautiful experience of my life. It's also been the greatest masterclass in everything I thought I already understood about building something from nothing.

Here are five things I've learned and why they matter whether or not you ever plan to have kids.

Before the baby, I knew exactly who I was. I was the girl from a small farm town in Canada who cold-pitched a billionaire at 17 and built a career in Silicon Valley. I am a GP at a venture fund, a Rolling Stone contributor, a LinkedIn Top Voice. I had my identity locked in tight.

Then I became someone's mom, and none of those “impressive titles” mattered at 3 AM.

Here's what no one told me: the identity crisis isn't a bug. It's a feature. When everything I thought defined me got stripped away, I found out what's actually underneath. And what's underneath is stronger, clearer, and more interesting than the brand I’ve built.

I’m experiencing this in parallel with my career. We're living through the biggest identity crisis the professional world has ever seen. AI is stripping away the tasks that used to define entire roles. If your identity is "I'm the person who writes the reports" or "I'm the one who builds the decks," you're about to have your own 3 AM moment. The people who thrive through this shift will be the ones who let the old identity break so a better one can form.

IBM just tripled their entry-level hiring, but rewrote every single job description. The roles don't look like they did two years ago, so the people filling them can't either.

Don't cling to who you were. Get curious about who you're forced to become.

I used to think I was good at time management. I had color-coded Google calendars, themed days, and productivity systems stacked on top of productivity systems.

Then, I had a baby and realized I'd been cosplaying as a busy person.

When I have roughly 90 minutes of usable work time before the next feeding, crying session, or diaper situation, I learned very quickly what actually matters. The newsletter that moves the business forward? That gets written. The "quick sync" that could have been a Slack message? Eliminated. The urge to scroll LinkedIn for 20 minutes to "stay informed"? Gone.

Motherhood taught me a brutal truth: I don't find time, I make it by killing everything that doesn't earn its place on my calendar.

To be honest, some of the little tricks I’m using right now make me wonder how on earth parents did it before AI. Audio apps, like Wispr Flow or Claude, are helping me create through hands-free dictation, while Notion agents are helping me to organize my thoughts around writing my book.

If you're building a career right now, audit your time like a new parent would. What would you do if you only had 90 minutes a day to move forward? Do that. Cut the rest.

By month two, my husband and I looked like we were running a startup out of our living room. Stuff everywhere. Half finished cups of coffee. People falling asleep in random places (including my mother who had flown in from Canada after I had desperately called to come save us a week earlier). 

It was 2am when my husband walked into the bedroom, holding the baby after we hadn’t slept for days, when he said, “we need to get our shit together.”

That’s when we recognized we needed systems. They were simple to start, but at least something we can build on later.

We decided who would get up with the baby each night, and who would get to sleep. We divided and conquered.

Once we got our footing, we added more systems. We had shared docs for feeding schedules, and a running list of questions for the pediatrician.

It sounds neurotic, but it saved our sanity. Honestly, it probably saved our marriage.

Here's what I realized: like parents, the founders who burn out aren't the ones with the hardest challenges. They're the ones trying to brute-force everything with willpower instead of building systems.

(By the way, if you haven’t already, take the What’s my Burnout Type? Quiz to learn more about burnout you may be feeling.)

Before our baby, ambition looked like: more deals, more content, more followers, more money.

After? Ambition looks like being fully present for bath time and still shipping a newsletter that reaches 45,000 people. The small wins begin to compound in ways I could have never imagined. It looks like enough instead of more.

This is the part where I'd normally tell you to work harder and dream bigger. And I still believe in big swings (my entire career has been built on them). But I've learned that ambition without clarity is just busyness. And busyness is the enemy of building anything that lasts.

The same thing is happening across industries right now. The AI era is forcing everyone to ask: what does success actually look like when the tools can do 10x more than you ever could? If AI can help you accomplish in one hour what used to take ten, does ambition mean doing ten things? Or does it mean doing one thing with ten times more depth, taste, and intention?

I think the people who win in the next decade aren't the ones who do the most. They're the ones who are clearest about what matters, and relentless about only that.

A few weeks before my child was born, my mother said something to me on a call:

“You will know very quickly whether your husband is one of the good ones.”

It took me aback, because my husband and I have been married almost 15 years and, truthfully, I just always assumed he would be a great co-parent. But even though my husband and I have built businesses together, navigated early debt together, and survived traumatic loss together, raising a human together is a whole new ballgame. 

That’s why I can say without hesitation: the quality of your partnership is the single biggest factor in making sure everything else works.

The early days of parenthood will stress-test any relationship. I was sleep-deprived, overwhelmed, and one poorly timed comment away from a meltdown at all times. What got us through wasn't romance or love. It was operating like co-founders. Clear roles. Honest communication. A shared ChatGPT project tracking bottles, diapers, and pump sessions. And the willingness to say, "I'm at capacity, I need you to take this" without guilt.

If you're building anything meaningful (like a career, a company, a family), invest in the people beside you. Not just your mentors or your network, but the person in the trenches with you every single day. That relationship is your operating system.

Five months in, here's what I know for sure:

→ Let the old version of you break so a better one can emerge.
→ Protect your time like someone who only has 90 minutes a day.
→ Build systems (especially with AI) so you can spend your energy on what only you can do.
→ Get clear on what ambition actually means to you, not what it looks like on LinkedIn.
→ Invest in your partnership. It's the multiplier behind everything else.

Motherhood didn't slow me down. It forced me to get honest about what I was speeding toward.

If you're in a season of transition — new parent, grieving the loss of a loved one, career change, figuring out what AI means for your work — know that the disorientation is temporary. What comes after is sharper, more intentional, and more you than anything you’ve built before.

What's the biggest lesson a life transition taught you about yourself? Hit reply and tell me. I read every response.

P.S. Know a new parent who's also trying to figure out the career thing? Send this their way. We're all in this together.

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