A Shout Out to Working Moms from PandoDaily Founder

By Sarah Lacy

I just gotta give a shout out today to any working moms out there today– including my own mom who went back to work when I was in kindergarten.

I thought pregnancy while running a company would be hard. Or skipping maternity leave with a new baby and a toddler would be hard. I naively thought I’d been through the worst.

And then, we hit pre-school. Or more to the point: The first pre-school virus.

My entire family and childcare infrastructure– save my husband who was out of town during the contagion period– has been wiped out by our first pre-school bug. I mean wiped out. I took one of the first sick days I’ve taken in my adult life yesterday, and today I am about to go into a board meeting… with pink eye. I look like I was in a bar fight– except with a hacking cough and Rudolph nose.

Not that new dads don’t go through this kind of stuff too. But when a two-year-old has his first earache and is crying in his crib until 4 am– at least in my house– he wants mommy. It doesn’t matter that mommy has to be the CEO again in a few hours. At 4 am, I am just mommy, rocking a fever-ridden baby and hoping I can at least make it through PandoMonthly in 24 hours, which mercifully I did before succumbing.

I used to have horrible earaches as a child and remember my mom rocking me all night while I tugged at my ear and screamed. I never appreciated that she had to wake up the next day and go teach class.

If you’re going through the same thing this week; know you aren’t alone. We’re all in this together, changing the face of leadership in this industry one pink-eye lead meeting at a time.

Sarah Lacy is the founder and editor-in-chief of PandoDaily. She is an award winning journalist and author of two critically acclaimed books, “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0? (Gotham Books, May 2008) and “Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit from Global Chaos” (Wiley, February 2011). She has been covering technology news for over 15 years, most recently as a senior editor for TechCrunch.