Being a dad at RELEX

When I first started at RELEX in 2006 as 20-something, it took years for almost any of us to start a family or get children. Since then, we’ve grown a lot as a company, and inevitably the people here have aged accordingly. Right now, the situation is quite the opposite: we have a couple of dozens of moms and dads on parental leave all the time, many expecting more kids, and quite a bunch of us juggling with the challenges of being a working mom or dad.

Me and my wife became parents to a small boy in summer 2017, and since then, I’ve got to explore this fascinating topic of being a working dad myself.

First months: Exhaustion, uncertainty, and ecstasy

I cannot really say I remember too much on what happened during those first months, but the overall feeling is that it was great – albeit very tired – period. Looking back, I think it went through very quickly, but I remember that at the time, after e.g. three nights of almost no sleep, it seemed like never-ending. I took a couple of weeks of paternity leave combined with my summer holidays right after the birth, and then returned to work while my wife stayed at home. In a way, this phase was relatively easy for me – the one working – as my wife was at home and I didn’t yet need worry about getting the little one to kindergarten and running back home, time-pressured, to pick him up. Then again, days at home are long, and the situation was entirely new, so it was still very important to get back home early to first free up my wife, and second, spend some time with the cute newcomer.

Those first months weren’t of course great for sleep, as the baby woke up many times during the night, and I normally had the morning shift from 5AM forward to let my wife sleep a bit before I rushed to work. In a way, I got used to being very tired, and as I had a good reason for being tired, it didn’t feel too bad (at least very often…). For us, the most difficult bit was the uncertainty: the baby grew so fast that phases followed one another, and you could never tell whether a couple of nights with no sleep would be followed by another 10 such nights or an entirely new phase.

Of course, when you are very tired, you don’t get the best out of yourself everyday at work, which was a change and didn’t feel good. Then again, I also felt it was easier to be at work after poor nights, as you’re normally busy enough not to fall asleep. Being home the whole day after a poor night was much tougher.

Having spent more than a decade at RELEX I find it difficult to estimate what other company cultures are like, but those early months with a baby made me appreciate the RELEX flexibility much more – it’s such a natural part of the culture that nobody even thinks of it. Nobody really cares where or when you work, as long as things get done – and people understand if they don’t always get done in time if one has a newborn baby at home.

Parental leave: Father-son quality time

When our son was 10 months old, my wife returned to work and I stayed home for four months. At RELEX, and in general in ”my bubble”, this felt very normal if not a bit short, but I learned that it’s still very rare in Finland for a father to spend more than a couple of weeks at home, especially alone without the mother. Surprisingly often you still hear of situations where one doesn’t even dear to mention the idea of a paternity leave at work, as it would be considered too weird. I personally thought it was important to stay home, both for equality and to get to know my son better. Those first months – mother possibly breastfeeding and staying home full-time – easily become quite mother-centric, and I wanted to restore a more equal balance.

 I got only positive reactions to my staying at home. I mentioned it on LinkedIn and found it somewhat amusing that I got way more reactions and comments to that post than to any earlier post. I doubt if mothers get a similar reaction…

I was away only for four months, partly overlapping summer holidays, so we didn’t nominate an interim person to take my job. In a flexible start-uppy way my colleagues stepped in when needed, my teams worked quite independently, and I chose to stay in touch with work, visiting office a couple of times per month (sometimes bringing my son with me). I understand not everybody wants to do this, but I found it a nice counterbalance for being at home.

I found this period at home great, as I had expected (it really didn’t hurt to have the hottest summer in ages). It wasn’t just a walk in the park, at least for me, but a unique period and precious time. It also had the effect I was looking for – in a matter of weeks it was me who knew our son better, and my wife had to ask me what to do in different situations.

Back to work: Towards the busy years

After four months I was a bit horrified of returning to work, as I didn’t know how it would be when both of us would be working. Partly this was due to the negative publicity this period of life seems to get all the time in the national media. Now we were heading towards this new unknown phase as well.

Our situation was easier than your average situation, as we were able to choose to take a nanny for the first year. This has quite a big impact on the mornings, as you don’t need to get the toddler dressed and carried to kindergarten on time for breakfast – instead he can hang around in his diapers or even sleep as we leave when the nanny arrives (sleeping late though wasn’t too common).

In general, life does look quite different nowadays compared to what it was two years ago. One of us needs to leave earlier to get back on time to free up the nanny. The other one wants to also come home soon to spend some time with the son before he goes to bed. This leads to workdays being even more intensive than earlier, as there’s a hard deadline. Quite easily you feel like being in the wrong place all the time: often you just need to leave office without time to finish things properly, meaning you easily continue to think of it at home when you’d like to focus on the child. On the other hand, as I got past the first weeks I noticed it balances your life quite a lot to have something to properly focus on during the evenings.

Overall, there’s less time to work, and especially in a family of two careers, the balance needs to be carefully managed to allow both to complete what they need to. On the plus side, this forces you to prioritize quite ruthlessly on where you spend your time.

After a hectic day, you no longer have the opportunity to go home and lie on the sofa, but instead the day continues to be quite hectic (and increasingly so as they grow!). When you put the guy to bed around 8PM, at least for the first months, I found it really difficult to do something productive like read or exercise. Sometimes you have to work a bit but often the time just goes into something and then you’re ready to sleep. Luckily over time I’ve learned to spend the time more sensibly at least every now and then.

As an introverted guy I was a bit worried at first that I’d lose all my own (reflection) time. However, you get used to everything surprisingly quickly. I’ve also changed my internal time zone by almost an hour and started going to bed earlier. This was and continues to be difficult but pays off whenever you manage to obey it.

If I’ve learned something over the last two years or so, it is that I don’t want to generalize or make predictions based on the past, as things keep changing so rapidly. So far, the world hasn’t come to an end, and I’m enjoying this new phase of life. It’s a continuous balancing act but at least I find our work atmosphere to be supportive of this – there’s load of colleagues facing the same challenges, and everybody understands that family comes first.