The one aspect that still worried me was client meetings. An important no-nonsense client of ours was flying in from Britain for a four-hour session. I thought it might be easiest to have Uma watched by a babysitter, in case the client thought we were not taking the meeting seriously. Perhaps presciently, when I tried to prepare Uma by giving her a bottle, she refused to drink. I tried five bottle types to see if I could tempt her, but none worked.

So Uma came after all. She slept in a corner in her stroller while the client hammered us on what her organization needed. During a break, she looked down at Uma, and opened up about her affection for her young niece.

“I’m British,” she said. “So I will never use words like ‘I love it’ as you Americans would. But I would say I’ve been pleased with this session. And you do have a beautiful and well-behaved daughter, so enjoy her.”

I grew confident bringing Uma along to client and investor meetings as well as to evening networking events — get-togethers that I would have declined when my boys were babies but thought of in wistful moments after putting them to bed. Uma seemed to help everyone forget their own agendas and insecurities and form deeper connections. When I remembered hearing that programs exist to bring babies to schools to teach empathy, it made perfect sense to me.

By four and a half months, however, Uma was starting to scoot off her blanket. It was time for her to receive full-time attention where she could freely explore her world. Our experiment was over, and I appreciated how lucky I was.

If I’d been, for example, a cook, a doctor, a bus driver or a welder, I could never have tried it. But many parents — and not only the “lean in” professional women that you might expect — might find this model works for them, if they can get their employers to agree.

I learned that there’s a movement underway, led by the Parenting in the Workplace Institute, to encourage more parents to take their babies to work. Over the past decade, the group has recorded more than 2,100 babies being brought to more than 200 American organizations, including consulting, law and accounting firms, retail stores, dance studios and government agencies.