Mayo Clinic Employee Experiences: On balancing work, curveballs of being a dad

By In the Loop • March 18, 2021

Mayo Clinic is a unique place: the culture, the values, the people. "Mayo Clinic Employee Experiences" explores the experiences of Mayo Clinic staff as they navigate life personally and professionally. Sharing these experiences increases understanding of others, and ultimately contributes to finding connections, belonging and inclusion at work. 

In this episode of "Mayo Clinic Employee Experiences," you will hear Scott Weber, a technical lead for Healthcare Technology Management, and Alan Janssen, a health systems engineer for Management Engineering and Consulting, share their journey of fatherhood. Weber shares his perspective of adopting two babies who grew up while he and his wife worked full time. Janssen talks about his life as a dad and working from home while his wife, Alicia, is a stay-at-home mom to three young children.

Listen as they share their experiences: 

WEBER: I believe when we became fathers, we took on the responsibility to assist them to grow.

NARRATOR: In this episode, you'll hear Scott, a technical lead for Healthcare Technology Management, and Alan, a health systems engineer for Management Engineering and Consulting, share their journey of fatherhood.

WEBER: I had always known that I wanted to be a father. But we were having some hard times trying to get pregnant and decided to adopt. We started looking at pictures of children, and I saw this young boy from South Korea. At the time, he was 9 months. My wife has issues flying, so I flew to South Korea in November 2000. I had actually only changed one diaper prior to the trip.

I spent a week in Seoul learning the culture. I visited the foster parents, along with our soon-to-be son a couple of times. He was 11 months old. I picked him up and took him to the airport. We kind of had a little journey between the two of us. It's a 17-hour trip. He only took two half-hour naps, and he never complained. I started to think, "Well, being a father is easy."

JANSSEN: Your major experience with diaper-changing began on an airplane?

WEBER: It did. When I flew there, I was able to bring two carry-ons. When I flew back, they only allowed me one. My decision was between a bag with some stuff in it or the diaper bag. Being the good father, I chose the diaper bag.

I realized at that time that I took all the diapers and didn't place them in the diaper bag. I put them in the other bag. So it's a 17-hour trip back, and I had no diapers. I started to panic. There were other parents who were adopting there, so I started talking to them. They were nice enough to give me a couple.

We went through the same process in April 2003 when we adopted a girl. When we saw her picture, we just fell in love with her. She was just beautiful. She was 5 months old at the time. Having gone through the process, I thought, "This is going to be easy." You know — no big deal — I've now been a father for two years. I know everything about it.

I flew to Seoul again. I picked her up.

On the taxi ride to the airport, everything was good. Then we got into the airport halfway and she started crying. We got to the plane with her still crying. The flight takes off. She's still crying. I had 12 different mothers come up and say, "I'll take her." And I said: "Great. Maybe you can do something."

JANSSEN: Please try.

WEBER: Yes, exactly. Here's this confidence all gone, and I'm now panicking. All 12 of those ladies who tried came back and said: "We can't do anything. Here, you can have her back." I finally figured out how to get her to calm her down, and that was to walk. So for 17 hours, I walked. There are not a lot of places to go on a plane. She would fall asleep at times, and I'd slowly get back into my seat. She'd wake up and start screaming again.

It was a stressful time. We landed in Minneapolis. I went up to my family and I said: "Here, you take her. I've got to sleep."

JANSSEN: My wife, Alicia, and I have three kids, with one more due at the beginning of May. We're so excited to have No. 4. Our oldest is nine, and we have a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old. The two girls are the oldest, and then youngest is a boy and another boy coming. We did have a little bit of a struggle. It took a long time. Nothing happened, and then we had some miscarriages. There've been so many people put in our path who have helped us become parents and helped parent our kids. It takes a village. It does for us. We've been grateful to have amazing people put in our path.

So tell me about working and parenting. How did you balance that?

WEBER: We were active in our children's lives. I coached baseball, football, later becoming an unofficial photographer for the high school kids. I was allowed to adjust my schedule so I could make those times with the family. I feel I've been blessed with Mayo, and my managers and co-workers. They afforded my wife and me the time and freedom to be such a big part of our children's lives. Now I'm seeing it from the perspective of being the technical lead and seeing younger people going through the same process. Having that ability to be able to participate in our children's lives has been really big because the kids see that. That's very important to them. They want their parents there. I'm very grateful to those who have allowed us to do that.

JANSSEN: If you're both working full time, I'm sure there were times where you would say: "I'm not going to be home tonight" or "I'm going to be late. What about you?" And the reply would be, "Oh, I'm going to be late, too." Tell me how you and your wife worked through those home duties together.

WEBER: Grandma and Grandpa were able to help out when we couldn't make it. And we had friends who would help, and like you said, the village. It's important to have others in your lives. It makes life easier for you and it's better for them to experience other people in the social network. To do it by ourselves, it would have been extremely difficult. But we both work together.

JANSSEN: My wife — I have to give as much credit as possible to her ― is a harder worker than me. She doesn't have a full-time paying job. She's a full-time wife and mom. I take a break from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day. She's full-time from 6 a.m. to whatever time.

When we were first married, we thought we'd like to have that situation where I work and she is with the kids during the day. It's worked out well. I really appreciate what she does in keeping the house sane.

I've recently transitioned from working on-site to working at home. It's turned out well. It's been almost a year now, and I am kind of getting used to it. There's a lot that I love about it. I just have to give a lot of credit to my other co-workers, too, for being patient and giving grace to everybody in this new time. Sometimes there's background noise and we say: "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for you to hear that."

One funny story was when we first started working from home. I was leading a meeting and talking about something. I'm sure it was super important, you know. My desk is down in our playroom. My eldest daughter had come downstairs. She was doing her chore for the day — I think it was cleaning the bathroom. My 3-year-old son had followed her in there and suddenly I heard, "Mom, Thomas has the plunger."

Everybody in the meeting heard the same thing, and it was the doctor on the meeting who said, "Alan, do you need to pause the meeting so you can go rescue the plunger?" Everybody laughed. It was a great moment, but it meant a lot to me that it was the doctor in the meeting who understood that we're in a new situation. These things are going to happen that are a little bit funny. Just embrace it. I feel like Mayo has a culture of putting family first and making sure that your home life is good so that you can do good work. So the plunger was rescued. Everything worked out.

How do you define success as a parent?

WEBER: Having seen your children grow and become caring, intelligent individuals who can contribute in a positive way to society, that's just incredible. That feeling, the stages of growth ― seeing your children change through their accomplishments.

JANSSEN: At some level, I'm like: "I hope they don't go to jail. If they don't go to jail, I did an OK job."

But, really, are my kids kind? Are they willing to help other people? That's really what we would like our kids to grow up to be. Being smart and being successful — those I can take or leave. But are they nice people and do they treat others well? I learn from my kids so much more than they probably learn from me.

WEBER: I feel the most important thing that we can do as fathers is to support our children in whatever capacity we possess. People always say that it's just being there, which is a big thing. But it's easy to say and harder to do when we start going through a daily process. It's very important to spend that time with your children. We all have abilities and gifts, and any way we can use those to help our children grow and hopefully learn from us in a positive aspect — to me, that is big. It's easy to get distracted by daily duties and responsibilities — personally and job-related — but your family should always be first. Mayo afforded us that time, and we're very grateful.

JANSSEN: That's great advice. I'll pass on some advice that I heard from somebody else. If it's possible, make your hobbies your children. Do as much as you can with them. If you have other hobbies, include them. The time is going to be pretty short. You'll look back, and they'll be out of the house. Any time that you spent with them will be worth it. If you're a dad, just focus on being a good example. Acting the way that you would like them to act — I think that has been the best advice that I've received.

Dad joke: What does a nosey pepper do? It gets jalapeno business. (pronounce "jalapeno" like "all up in your.") If nobody laughs, you know it's a good dad joke.

NARRATOR: What has your journey been to parenthood? Share in the comments below or with a colleague.

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