The Roche Report

I read a lot when I was pregnant. I read parenting books, parenting blogs, signed up for parenting email blasts. I read really good and really important things - like how to get my baby to  sleep through the night  (and this book works wonders - she was sleeping through the night at 9 weeks) and  how to calm my baby  - that have significantly improved my parenting experience.  One thing that I didn’t read much about (though I think it is out there and perhaps it just didn’t quite resonate with me until I was actually doing it) was pumping. Before I begin my thoughts on this: a little background. I was unsure about the whole breastfeeding thing and adopted an attitude of “we’ll see how it goes.” It actually probably ranked at the top of my parenting fears. I kind of wanted it to work; but frankly, I also kind of thought the whole thing was gross.  However, I gave it a go, and have actually had a pretty great experience with it, helped by the fact that IBM has a great maternity leave po

As I think about feedback that I have gotten throughout my career, or throughout my life really, it is kind of funny because you realize that many things change but often the feedback about you and what you need to improve repeats itself a number of times throughout your life. For example, I vividly remember on my first report card with grades, the comments from the teacher were, "Caroline is very smart, but needs to slow down, take her time, and double check her work." Likewise, on the first business process design deliverable I did as a new analyst on my first project out of college, I was SO proud of my deliverable and thought I had knocked it out of the park... and it came back (thanks Megan!) with quite a bit more feedback than I had anticipated, with the comment that I needed to "pay more attention to detail." I often relay this story for new analysts because I have improved quite a bit in my attention to detail since then -- but have really, really focused

I came back from maternity leave two weeks ago and it has been a fun, anxious, and fulfilling two weeks back. When my maternity leave started, I actually really struggled with loneliness -- going from my job, which involves talking to and being around people all day to being with Charlie all day. She is the best baby ever; however, she is still not quite the best conversationalist. The challenge was figuring out how to fill my days while adjusting to my new life. At first, going to the grocery store felt like I had run a marathon physically (and while I'm at it, learning how to enter the world with a baby in tow is a whole new learning curve. My first time going to the grocery store, I though I could put her car seat in a cart and didn't bring my stroller with me... and as you can see below... that didn't work too well. Thankfully, my sister-in-law was with me and could carry our basket of groceries also since nothing else fit in the cart). At the end of the day, I wo