Here's the Plan ─ Your Practical, Tactical Guide to Advancing Your Career During Pregnancy and Parenthood

Having a baby doesn’t have to mean putting your career on hold. Though pregnancy and childbirth can create tricky situations for moms in the workplaceincluding legal, social, and practical onesit’s possible to balance a successful career with committed motherhood. Allyson Downey has done it twice, and Carry On is her playbook for success.

Straightforward, practical, and thoroughly researched, Carry On provides actionable advice for professional women entering motherhood. With advice collected from her own experiences and interviews with more than fifty working mothers, Allyson Downeyfounder of weeSpring, the yelp for baby products,” and a successful mother of two young childrenlays out the essential information new and expectant moms need, including info on how to handle pregnancy at work, maternity leave, and the transition back to working life. Allyson takes on such tricky questions as, How long should I take off for maternity leave?” What should my out-of-office message say?” And What exactly constitutes pregnancy discrimination?”

Sensible, compact, and written by one working mom for the benefit of others, Carry On is the definitive playbook for new and expectant mothers who are thinking, I’ve leaned in. Now what?”

Allyson Downey is an entrepreneur, writer, and parent who has built a career on the power of trusted advice. In 2013, she launched weeSpring, a Techstars-backed startup that helps new and expecting parents collect advice from their friends about what they need for their baby. weeSpring has received accolades from TechCrunch, Mashable, CNBC, and theDaily Mail, and it was heralded as Yelp for baby products” by InStyle magazine.

Allyson has an MBA from Columbia Business School, an MFA from Columbia University's School of the Arts, and a BA from Colby College. She serves on the board of Democracy Prep Public Schools, one of the country's top charter management organizations, and lives in Boulder with her husband and two children.