Throughout the summer, LearnVest has asked five amazingly accomplished moms to chime in on the topics that are near and dear to all moms' hearts. So far, they've chimed in on bullying, the ways we could be holding girls back from reaching their full potential and the old-school habits we should be teaching our kids to ensure their success. Today, they'll be discussing the things they wish they knew about parenting before they became moms.

Read what they have to say about their own take on the topic, then get to know them better by joining the discussion here!

With pregnancy comes an avalanche of unsolicited parenting advice.

Some people — your family, coworkers, the passenger next to you on the bus — just can’t help themselves. For example, a woman at my old job stopped by my desk every day to say things like, "You’ll never sleep again!” (actually that’s true) and, "Never leave your baby alone!" on the bed, changing table, fill in the blank.

After a while, you start to wish your belly wasn’t such a beacon for well-meaning big mouths. The thing about raising a kid is that women can't truly understand what it's like until they actually have one.

That said, here are a few things I wish I actually had known before I had my baby:

1. Cozy is convenient

Babies come with a lot of gear: Strollers, swings, bouncers, activity gyms, bottles, Boppys, car seats and high chairs. As gifts arrived and baby’s new furniture got assembled in our small one-bedroom apartment, I could feel the walls closing in on me.

Where would I practice yoga? How could we puzzle my husband’s golf clubs into the corner where we kept the boxes of wipes and diapers? Would we survive our cramped quarters until we traded in the apartment for a house in the 'burbs?

Like most families living in Manhattan, we made it work — while dreaming about our future digs and watching a lot of "House Hunters." I coped by taking frequent walks to the park, putting some belongings in storage (aka my parents’ basement) and buying toys that I could fold up and tuck away. But now that we’ve moved into a two-story colonial, I realize that apartment living was actually the ideal way to cohabitate during my son’s first five months — no racing up and down the steps to retrieve a rogue pacifier or make a midnight bottle. When your changing table, dishwasher and couch are all within 600 square feet, baby chores are a breeze.

2. Organic overload

While I was pregnant, I fantasized about giving my son an au natural childhood. An idyllic youth untainted by chemicals, pesticides, synthetic fabrics or off-gassing.

Then I went shopping.

Organic is everywhere — bibs, bottles, baby carriers; even spoons made out of corn — and it’s almost always more expensive, especially when it comes to clothing. And unlike food products, the fabric industry isn’t regulated. Manufacturers might label a onesie with just one stitch of untreated fabric as organic. I splurged on a (mostly) organic mattress, which I like more for its firmness than its materials. If buying organic is important to you, then buy organic baby food. Because once baby starts rolling and crawling and socializing, it’s harder and harder to control what he comes in contact with.

(We've covered organic stuff for baby before: Check out this piece about how to buy guilt-free, affordable organic clothing for your kids, see how Jessica Alba is shaking up the eco-baby industry here and read this for the easy way to keep your baby toxin free.)

3. Mommy and me for free

Soon after my son was born, my husband began to freak out about college tuition. I, on the other hand, fretted about the crazy cost of baby music classes, many of which required us to pay tuition for a semester-long block of classes. My singing voice would have to do, I thought.

Then, when my son was around four months, I discovered that many mommy and baby organizations, like Gymboree, offer free trial classes. A friend even found a gratis infant gymnastics class for babies up to 6 months. If you’re still wary of paying for playtime, try free story hour at your local library or start your own playgroup.

4. Step away from that cute romper

When you’re nesting, it’s hard to resist buying for baby. Every teeny tiny piece of apparel had me sighing and saying, "Awwwww." But before you snap up that pint-sized designer fedora, remember that baby will probably outgrow it before you remember to snap a picture. And aside from basics like onesies and pajamas, your little one’s wardrobe will likely be furnished entirely by friends and relatives for at least the first six months. I made the mistake of stocking up on cute little towels with animal hoods. My son will need to bathe right away, I thought (of course, I only gave him a sponge bath a few times a week in the beginning). Then I promptly received 10 adorable hooded towels as gifts, most of which I’ve never used thanks to my trusty washing machine.

(Check out the other money mistakes a first-time mom made here.)

5. Work-from-home woes

When I quit my job at a magazine to stay at home with my son, I promised myself I’d bolster the family income with freelance gigs. My husband naively imagined I’d be churning out stories during my maternity leave. While I knew that was never going to happen, I assumed I’d be tapping away at my computer soon after. I’ve written a few articles here and there, but trying to craft publishable sentences while baby is fussing on his floor mat is no easy feat. Doing real work, for me anyway, means hiring a babysitter (which isn’t always cost effective), writing late at night (and trying not to zone out in front of the monitor) or putting my son down for an extra-long nap. I’ve learned to pace myself and say no to some assignments, even when my ambition is screaming at me to say yes. (If you're thinking of quitting your own job, check out these seven things every mom should know before she does so.)

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Robert Galbraith / Reuters

"My maternity leave will be a few weeks long and I'll work throughout it." new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said.

 It’s unusual enough to hear that a major corporation anointed a woman as CEO, but a pregnant CEO?

Yahoo announced Monday that Marissa Mayer, a former Google executive, was taking the reins of the technology company, and hours later it was disclosed that she was also expecting her first child in October.

Mayer chose to disclose her pregnancy to the company’s board before she got the final job offer, and the board was supposedly fine and dandy with the news.

"They showed their evolved thinking," Mayer told Fortune. 

Yahoo's board may have been reassured by Mayer's unusual description of how she plans to handle the time off she will take to have a baby.

"My maternity leave will be a few weeks long and I'll work throughout it," Mayer said.

It's the kind of news that may get other pregnant women at Yahoo further down the chain worried about the time they put in after childbirth.

Many executives in Corporate America today tout how they lead by example and show their employees that work-life balance is critical. Taking emails while dealing with a newborn might be tougher than first-time-mom-to-be Mayer realizes.

Although it is also worth noting that not all women are as lucky as Mayer to even have a maternity leave benefit. (The United States is one of the only industrialized nations without mandated maternity leave.)

In any case Yahoo's board is to be applauded for looking beyond Mayer's pregnancy to the leadership she can provide the company over the long term.

“Appointing a woman as CEO is pretty rare in and of itself, and having a pregnant one is even more rare,” said Eden King, co-author of "How Women Can Make It Work: The Science of Success." “Many women who reach that level do not have children at all, much less are pregnant at the time.”

What ever does happen for Yahoo's newest CEO, her appointment will up the ante on the working mommy debate. But don't expect it to change the work world.

“It’s a sample size of one, and it’s hard to know if this represents social change. I certainly have hope, but most of the evidence shows that there’s substantial discrimination of pregnant women who are working," said King, who’s an associate professor of psychology at George Mason University with a focus on women and the workplace.

Indeed, the number of pregnancy discrimination claims have been rising in the last decade, and that prompted the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to hold a public hearing earlier this year to address the problem. “A few employers have forgotten, or never learned, that it’s against the law to discriminate against women because of pregnancy,” David Lopez, the EEOC’s general counsel during the February hearing.

It’s unlawful, he stressed, to deprive a pregnant woman "the opportunity to sustain herself or her family based on stereotypical assumptions” that she won’t be as dedicated to her employers as a man or a woman who isn't pregnant.

The number of pregnancy discrimination charges increased about 15 percent in the last 10 years to 5,797 last year. That's down slightly from 2010's total claims of 6,119, according to the EEOC. 

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act was signed into law in 1978 in order to stop such bias, but many women's advocacy groups believe it doesn’t go far enough. A bill introduced in May called the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which is similar to the American With Disabilities Act, is supposed to fill the donut hole that the previous act left open when it comes to making accommodations for pregnant women in the workplace. 

“Equal opportunity in the workplace is an essential right in this country, and it is deplorable that women are still being fired, forced out of their jobs, and denied employment and promotion opportunities because they become pregnant," said Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families. "The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is badly needed legislation that would help stem this discrimination and benefit women and their families tremendously.”

But in the end, bias against pregnant workers and whether they’ll land a certain job often comes down to perceptions, maintained King. In most cases, she said, the discrimination is based on a belief that a woman won’t be able to handle the job, or chose not to work after they have children.

In the case of Yahoo’s Mayer, she’s made it clear she’ll be more than productive in her new gig even as a mom.

Yahoo spokeswoman Dana Lengkeek said Mayer was not available for interviews Tuesday, but directed NBCNews.com to the Fortune article. Mayer did tweet the pregnancy news late Monday: "Another piece of good news today - @zackbogue and I are expecting a new baby boy!" (Zack Bogue is her husband.)

Mayer has a tough road ahead given the many Yahoo CEOs before her who have tried to turn the beleaguered company around in the last few years. There is no doubt Wall Street will be closely watching her progress. How will a pregnant CEO be perceived by investors?

"Turning Yahoo around is likely going to be a near impossible task; the stress, at least initially, is likely to be similar to that stress of starting Google, and you add to that the stress of having a child and the result could be catastrophic for one or the other," said technology analyst Rob Enderle. "On the other hand, this pregnancy might become a forcing function.  Often inexperienced turnaround CEOs learn too late the necessity of building a very strong balanced team; in order to take the pressure off of her during her pregnancy building such a team will have higher priority and, in the end, it will be the team that will do this not the CEO alone." 

The pregnancy, he continued, "may actually help focus Marissa on doing something that often is neglected and could actually better assure the result.   In the end her job is to turn Yahoo around; how she gets there isn’t as important. Being pregnant could become a best practice which would screw a lot of male CEOs out there."    

How women handle their pregnancies and how they disclose them, will likely impact their careers, King noted.

“Marissa Mayer made the decision to tell the company before the offer, which was ethical for her to do but not legally required,” she said. “I know women who waited to disclose pregnancy until after they got a job or promotion to protect the jobs they deserved.”

On a personal note, King admitted that she was pregnant when she was up for a promotion but waited to tell her co workers and managers until after she secured the position. "I have supportive supervisors and colleagues but I didn't want to chance it," she said. "I know the research."

Did you ever face a similar situation while job hunting? How did you handle it? Let us know. 

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While asking general questions about age or religion aren't clear-cut under discrimination laws, queries about a person's disability are not allowed.

Are you pregnant? What religion are you? How old are you?

There are certain questions most of us don’t expect hiring managers to ask during a job interview because we think they’re too personal or even illegal.

But while such inquiries aren’t always legal no-nos, they can be hazardous.

Cynthia M. applied for a job at Florida insurer, and believed she was more than qualified for the position. But during the interview she was asked about her religion and probed about her marital status.

“I was asked point-blank if I attended church and ‘which one?’ ” said Cynthia, who didn’t want her full name used because she feared it would hurt her continued job search. She was also asked if she had a family. When she told the recruiter she had a daughter, the interviewer asked, “Is that all?”

“That particular interview was very brief and there was zero response to my carefully thought-out letter I sent after the interview as a follow-up,” she explained. “I guess he didn't like that I was a single parent.”

A reader on our Facebook page, Linda Och, wrote recently that during a phone interview for a job she was asked her birth date and age. “I never heard from the employer again. I feel it was the cause of my not hearing about a second interview,” she maintained.

“Is this not discrimination?” she asked.

While you can’t refuse to hire someone based on a characteristic that’s protected under the nation’s labor laws, including things like religion or age, questioning a job applicant about such things by itself isn’t going to get government discrimination defenders banging down any company doors.

What happens as far as hiring decisions after the questions are asked is what ends up getting employers in legal hot water.

“Pre-employment inquires about a person's race, sex or pregnancy, national origin, religion or age are not technically illegal under the laws we enforce as long as they are asked of all people,” said Justine Lisser, a spokeswoman and senior attorney for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Dads, are you feeling pressure to do it all?

“Employment decisions made on those bases -- such as denying employment to all pregnant women, or everyone who isn't a Christian, are illegal, however,” she continued. “When investigating a charge of discrimination, the EEOC will look at these types of pre-employment inquiries as indications of discriminatory intent.”

Nigel Telman, an attorney with Proskauer, an employment law firm that represents employers, said questions related to protected categories such as age or religion may seem innocuous to some hiring managers but can end up causing problems down the line. “An applicant who didn’t get the job can allege they told the employer something about a protected characteristic,” he noted.

Indeed, if there turns out to be a pattern pointing to discrimination against a certain group or groups, such questions may become substantiation of illegal practices.

In the case of Texas Roadhouse, questions by hiring managers about age are part of anecdotal evidence in the age-discrimination case against the restaurant chain brought by the EEOC last year.

The EEOC case alleges that managers were instructed to hire younger job applicants, and that older unsuccessful applicants nationally were told: “There are younger people here who can grow with the company” and “You seem older to be applying for this job.”

Texas Roadhouse officials did not immediately return a telephone call requesting a comment.

While asking general questions about age or religion aren’t clear-cut under discrimination laws, queries about a person’s disability are not allowed.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, employers are prohibited pre-employment inquiries about an applicant’s disability, according to the EEOC.  

The agency states on its “pre-employment inquires” web page that:

• Employers generally cannot ask disability-related questions or require medical examinations until after an applicant has been given a conditional job offer. 
• Employers are permitted to ask limited questions about reasonable accommodation if they reasonably believe that the applicant may need accommodation because of an obvious or voluntarily disclosed disability, or where the applicant has disclosed a need for accommodation.

In addition, it’s illegal to ask questions about genetic information or family medical history under the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, the EEOC’s Lisser pointed out.

And, she added, “It is also illegal for an employer to advertise for specific characteristics such as sex, age or race.” 

Given that personal questions could lead to claims of bias, you’d think employers would have abandoned the practice already.

“Some managers need a reminder that these questions are hazardous to the company,” said Richard Howard, an employment attorney with Meltzer Lippe. “Hiring managers should absolutely steer clear of questions regarding age, race, religion, pregnancy, and marital status.”

Has a hiring manager ever asked you an inappropriate question related to age, race, religion, pregnancy, health, or marital status? Share your story below. 

The number of pregnancy discrimination charges increased about 15 percent in the last 10 years to 5,797 last year.

It’s hard to imagine we still have to tell employers this today, but here goes: Pregnancy discrimination is illegal.

While it may sound obvious to some, blatant pregnancy bias is still alive and well in the workplace. A pregnant woman who applied for a job at a Subway franchise in Phoenix was told by a manager “we can’t hire you because you’re pregnant.” Last month, she won punitive damages against the employer.

It’s just one example of the types of flagrant pregnancy discrimination that the federal government is trying to stop.

“A few employers have forgotten, or never learned, that it’s against the law to discriminate against women because of pregnancy,” David Lopez, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's general counsel, said during a public meeting before the EEOC commissioners Wednesday.

It’s unlawful, he stressed, to deprive a pregnant woman "the opportunity to sustain herself or her family based on stereotypical assumptions” that she won’t be as dedicated to her employers as a man or a woman who isn't pregnant.

The number of pregnancy discrimination charges increased about 15 percent in the last 10 years to 5,797 last year. That's down slightly from 2010's total claims of 6,119, according to the EEOC.

While the EEOC is doing outreach to employers so they understand the law, the agency is also using the big-stick approach.

The EEOC has increased the number of cases it has filed against employers when it comes to pregnancy bias, Lopez said, reaching 20 cases last year, inching up from 19 in 2010.

He pointed to a $1.64 million settlement reached with Akal Security Inc., the largest provider of contract security services to the federal government, in 2010. The agency claimed Akal had a national policy “of forcing its pregnant employees, working as contract security guards on U.S. Army bases, to take leave and discharging them because of pregnancy.”

Such conduct, the agency maintained, violated the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which prohibits gender discrimination in employment, including pregnancy discrimination.

This type of bias can hit low-wage workingwomen the hardest, said Sharon Terman, senior staff attorney in the gender equity program at The Legal Aid Society Employment Law Center, who spoke at the EEOC event.

“We’ve heard from many women who were fired immediately upon announcing their pregnancy and whose employers explicitly told them the pregnancy was the reason,” she explained.

Low-income women who become pregnant, she continued, are routinely denied minor workplace accommodations that would help them continue working. A common example of accommodations would be allowing a worker to sit on a stool instead of standing all day, or letting her carry a water bottle.

She offered one case of a pregnant janitor who was fired via text message by her boss after she told him her obstetrician was late for her appointment.

Many poorer workers also don’t have paid sick days, she pointed out. The United States is one of the only industrialized nations that does not mandate paid sick days for employees. While some states have passed laws requiring some paid sick time, the majority of workers nationally are not covered by such legislation.

Although many employers have anti-discrimination policies, it still occurs. Employment attorney Sara Begley said, “Unenlightened managers who are simply focused on getting the job done may violate a pregnant employee's protected rights by taking adverse action for taking maternity leave, not provide salary increases or bonuses to employees on leave, assume an employee will not return post leave and transfer her duties to another employee, assume an employee will be on Mommy Track post maternity leave."

Such outdated assumptions, she added, “can and must be remedied by training and enforcement of applicable policies."

The biggest “knowledge gap” when it comes to the law, she added, appears to be with smaller firms who just don’t have adequate training.  

While reaching out and educating employers is important, said EEOC Commissioner Stuart Ishimaru, he shared his frustration that so little has changed in the 35 years since the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed.

“Why have we missed the boat?” he asked the panelists assembled at the hearing. Why, he added, does pregnancy bias persist? “It’s a puzzle to me.”

Judy Lichtman, senior advisor to the National Partnership for Women and Families, who spoke at the hearing, said it was all about long-standing stereotypes, and not just regarding pregnancy but for caregiving too. Our society doesn’t value people with family responsibilities, she said. “What are our real obligations to change an engrained paradigm?” 

The fertility rate is dropping, statistics say. People are simply having fewer children. Experts think the reason can be traced to financial planning by would-be parents wary of their futures.

But is that really the case? Do couples really behave this rationally? A large percentage of all pregnancies are unplanned, so isn’t it also possible that stress, anxiety, boredom, and damaged relationships brought on by economic gloom and doom are simply killing the national sex life?

While some couples no doubt do plan carefully, and opt to delay having children until sunnier days arrive, says psychologist, therapist and TODAY contributor Gail Saltz, people are also preoccupied with money worries. She senses that many more people are experiencing anxiety and stress, and possibly depression, because of the economic pressure of the past four years.  

“And when people are worried, they don’t feel like having sex,” she explained. “This is especially true for women. It is darn near impossible for a woman to have an orgasm if she is terribly anxious. A woman can physically have sex, but desire, arousal, orgasm, everything across the board is affected.”

Picture the couple who’s scrimping and saving to make ends meet. They’ve cut out restaurant dinners, movie tickets, vacations, theater-going. They’re sitting in front of the TV in sweatpants watching another episode of “NCIS” or “30 Rock.” They look at each other think, "My God, the last thing I want to do is have sex with this person."

“If you can’t spend any money doing anything fun, if that’s sucked out of the relationship, too, you’ve got no novelty, no playtime,” Saltz explained. Both are critical to stoking libido.   

Finally, there’s the inevitable sniping between partners. “Money is the number one thing people fight about,” Saltz said, “but you don’t even have to disagree about it. If you are anxious or one partner is depressed, well, that’s the person you are intimate with and so it gets taken out on you. You have to negotiate it all, and then, no, you don’t really feel like having sex.”

So it’s probably not only considered financial planning that’s responsible for the drop in birth rates – a drop that also occurred during the Great Depression, by the way. Maybe it’s that America is stressed out, bored, and more than a little cranky. 

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