Written by: Samantha Ettus

When Stacey Bendet returned to work just six days after giving birth to her third child, it wasn’t at all what you might think. As with most newborns, Bendet’s slept almost all day long. So on the Monday that she returned, Bendet arrived at the office after dropping her two daughters at school, worked for a few hours, breastfed her baby during her lunch hour and returned home at around 1 or 2 pm. This is the life of a CEO. This is the life of an entrepreneur. This is a life. It doesn’t need to be your life, but Bendet asks that you not judge her for it being hers.

I interviewed the Alice and Olivia CEO and Creative Director at her office 12 days after she had her baby. It was only months after Marissa Mayer was publicly flogged for announcing that she planned to return to the office weeks after she will have her twins rather than taking the full paid two months offered by Yahoo. We seem to have become confused; since when did fighting for parental leave go hand in hand with insisting that all women take the same leave or handle their post pregnancy lives in the same manner?

We don’t all use our vacation or sick days the same way, so why are we suddenly criticizing each other for how we take parental leave? We all parent differently, love differently, and manage our careers differently. So why should we insist that all women have the same experience after they give birth?

Back to Bendet. When she posted photos of herself back at work so soon after her C-section, the critics emerged on social media but Bendet was nonplussed. She feels strongly that, “as a mom it is really important to recognize who you are and what makes you feel happy because that’s what makes you be the best mother. I like to be busy. I like to create things. That’s who I am.”

Alice and Olivia offers employees eight weeks of maternity leave but Bendet is focused on employee retention and believes that maintaining a flexible approach to the policy is critical: “We organize things around people.” Bendet points to an employee who has Fridays off and she is open to employees doing what she did – returning to work quickly and working part time for five months instead of taking eight straight weeks off. “You have to learn what works best for them,” she emphasizes. Bendet is proud that 93% of her employees who have had babies return after to Alice and Olivia after their leave. She boasts that even her fit model returned after giving birth to her second child. As for her own choices, she explains:

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