Nothing changed my life as dramatically as the birth of our first baby.

It was completely unlike any transformation in the previous 25 years and resembled only the arrival of our second daughter in the years since.

That’s why I was particularly fascinated to read Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ recent announcement. She and her husband, Brian Rodgers, are expecting a baby boy in May.

I vividly remember the cognitive and emotional shifts that occurred when I became a mother. I rolled out of the delivery room into a new time-and-space continuum. Issues I’d never encountered before, from bilirubin counts to the realities of maternity leave and unemployment, suddenly entered my consciousness.

This week I began to wonder just how that experience might play out for Rodgers. Soon I imagined her gazing at a batch of family-friendly legislation with a new mother’s adoring eyes.

So I called Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner in Kirkland, executive director of the political advocacy group, MomsRising.org. It started last May and already has 80,000 members. Surely she’d have some ideas Rodgers might consider.

Ten years ago, Rowe-Finkbeiner’s son was born with an immune system problem that prevented him from spending his days surrounded by other children in day care. Rowe-Finkbeiner wound up having to quit her job. Yet when she went to the U.S. Census Bureau to research how many other American women stay at home with children, she discovered they go uncounted and unrecognized.

She knows the deep significance of a mother’s work. “Without sounding like a Hallmark card,” this political activist says, “children are literally our future. And they’re going to be the economic engine of our future.”

She rattled off a list of excellent ideas for supporting the parents who raise them, starting with a proposal for paid family leave. It’s a national embarrassment, she says, that this country ranks as one of four, out of a Harvard study of 168 nations, that lacks paid time off for families bringing home a new baby or facing a serious illness.

We’re right up there with Papua New Guinea, Swaziland and Lesotho, she says. Her favorite solution: a group insurance approach paid with a small payroll deduction. The cost wouldn’t be borne by businesses, but by society as a whole. And the benefits would extend whether you’re just given birth or you just received a call that your mother has suffered a heart attack.

In fact, such a bill has been introduced in the Washington Legislature. It involves a payroll deduction of 2 cents an hour, and modest benefits of $250 a week for five weeks.

But Rowe-Finkbeiner’s ideas don’t end there. She also advocates for part-time parity, policies that would make it easier for parents to work reduced hours with prorated salaries and benefits. She believes universal health care could open up more flexibility for both businesses and families. She also wants to reduce discrimination against mothers in both hiring and pay. She points out that child-free women make 90 cents to a man’s dollar, while married mothers make 73 cents and single moms earn even less.

In a phone call Friday, Rodgers sounded fairly lukewarm, if not opposed, to most of the items on the MomsRising list. But she said she hopes to work against salary and hiring discrimination as new co-chair of the Congressional Women’s Caucus. She’ll lead the bipartisan group with Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif.

Rodgers knows change floats in the air these days. Both the House and the Senate are filled with more women than ever before. She also recognizes motherhood will require her to balance her priorities like never before.

As for those coming cognitive shifts, she says, “I think it changes your whole life. I think you’re just more aware.”

It’s hard to predict how her new awareness will influence her political decisions. But it’s fun to dream.