On March 30, 2020, my wife Jordan and I were blessed with a beautiful baby girl, our second child in 18 months.
We’d heard that even in normal times, the jump from one kid to two was significant. The fact that our jump occurred two weeks into a literal pandemic was likely to turn our world upside down.
Our top priority was to keep everyone healthy, and as exhausting and stressful as those first few weeks of quarantine were, we were fortunate to do exactly that.
Back in early February, I had kicked off a new role as head of sales at Voxie, a fast-growing Atlanta startup. Early returns were positive, and I was excited to dive back in after what I anticipated to be a brief paternity leave.
Once home from the hospital, I told my CEO that the increase in 24/7 home responsibilities and lack of external help due to the pandemic would make my dedicating more than a few hours a day to work difficult. I volunteered to take a temporarily reduced role and salary until our daughter began sleeping more through the night and we all better understood how COVID would begin to play out. Thankfully, he couldn’t have been more supportive.