March 5, 2008

I’m in the middle of my second pregnancy, and looking back, I wanted to share my own story with those of you who are expecting or who are balancing work and family. I respect all women: we have so much on our plates at any given moment, and it’s a true testament to our courage and stout-heartedness that we show up every day and do our best with what we have.

My husband and I were together for a year before we got married. We married in June and then got pregnant that September! The pregnancy, my first, went smoothly– I was under 30 and in good health.

At the time, my job required a bicycle commute, a train ride, and a bus ride to my office. I commuted about an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. I worked at a regular day job for a tech consulting company with the occassional late night for a project or proposal.

Being pregnant meant that we had to buy a car and I started taking the bus instead of bicycling (I gained 45 pounds!). Towards the end of the third trimester, I became super-slow and tired. I ended up going on maternity leave three weeks earlier than expected, just because I kept on falling asleep!

After the birth, I stayed at home for six weeks, recovering, establishing a bond with my infant, and breastfeeding. I was reluctant to go back to work but at the time we decided that I would keep my full-time job and my husband would look after our baby.

After a few months I found myself in the “groove” of a busy schedule, which included nursing at 1am, 3, 5, and 7 in the morning, getting ready for work, going to work, pumping milk four times a day, then commuting back home and nursing at 6:30pm, 8:30pm, and 10:30pm.

Looking back, I did appreciate my job: it gave me some time “off” from constant childcare, and even though it was busy and time consuming, I did feel productive, enjoyed adult company, and felt like it was a good use of my day. I enjoyed being with my baby when it was time to come home. I think every mother decides for herself the right balance of being with their child/ren and pursuing other interests.

When our son reached about three months of age, my husband started part-time work, which then became about 35 hours a week. We hired a nanny, who took care of our child from two to eight hours a day.

We felt it was a good arrangement because there were other children in the in-home daycare and we knew that our child was happy and had friends to interact with. We stayed with this daycare arrangement for three years.

For some mothers, it’s an anguishing decision to find the right childcare provider, or to even go with an external person at all. There may be a constant challenge to believe that someone else will look after your child with as much care, love, and understanding as you do. The childcare decision is one that parents will find the right solution for: parents create the balance that best suits them (from no outside childcare, to a few hours a week, to a full 40 hours or more). We found our nanny through a referral from a neighbor: start with your circle of close friends, people in your groups or associations, family members or co-workers to find someone you trust and who fits your budget.

As our child reached two years of age, I decided to leave my job and strike out on my own as a freelancer. This early foray into independent contracting worked out well enough that my husband and I decided to incorporate and start our own company, doing what we did best (website design and development). We maintained a home office and continued with fulltime childcare.

That first year in business was a real challenge: between learning how to navigate marketing, networking, planning, doing the actual work, hiring subcontractors, and managing the client process, I felt thrilled and proud to be using all my skills, but I also felt overwhelmed at times because of the many demands that startup business owners face.

By systematizing and creating more of a unified set of products, we were able to lessen some of the demands on our time: we developed more standardized products, service packages, and menu-based tools. We did heavy research and development on creating our “core” set of web tools, which we could then use over and over again (instead of customizing everything and working for an hourly fee).

If you are considering independent contracting, find a way to “test the waters” with some clients so you get a good sense of what your process, procedure, or product entails. If you are starting a business for the first time, make sure you have some money saved up to help you through your first year, get a business loan if you need to, and learn from established professionals. Launching your own company is rewarding in many ways but you want to be in business for a long time, so plan for success.

By our second year in business, we had reached more of a comfortable routine. We started sending our little boy to a home-based preschool that matched our values. For those parents considering preschool or pre-K, use web searches and other parents’ recommendations to seek the right environment for your particular child’s needs and temperament.

By our third year in business, we decided to fulfill a long-term dream by moving to a new location, far away from our original base of operations. This required a steady phasing out of reliance on person-to-person meetings, networking events (we were part of a weekly Business Network International), and women’s groups, and more of a reliance on our web advertising and extended referral network.

We used the RingCentral toll-free number service, Paypal, online banking, a PO Box and EarthClassMail.com, and e-mail/fax documents to move towards being non-geographically-specific. This process was one of our most intense challenges as a family and involved a six-month period of commuting which took a toll on our personal relationships.

However, we became more settled in and found our “groove” again. We continue to find ways to create value for our customers, and both my husband and I have found new ways to explore our passions and share our knowledge.

The rewards in our personal and business lives have been great. We have a very happy home life where we have many opportunities to be creative. We rely on staff who are based all over the West Coast, and we continue to find ways to add bottom-line value to our website clients. We’ve seen an increase in our referrals, and that has helped our business development. Our child goes to the local kindergarten (walking distance) and plays with all the other children in the neighborhood.

As we prepare for the arrival of our second child, I anticipate we’ll find even more ways to create value for more and more people, including creating more products and developing more opportunities to share our knowledge.

In terms of our family life, my goals are to create as much freedom as possible, to share time and experiences together, and to provide a stable, secure, enriching, and nourishing home life for the children. I know it can be done!

All of us find a way to navigate through those very early years. With children, there’s always challenges, but I believe that all of our skills, interests, and ideas are ready and waiting for us to use them to the best of our abilities. Being responsible for someone else actually prompted me and my husband to “think bigger” and to dream for more.

I know that you will be able to look back to this time ten, twenty, or thirty years into the future and be happy and proud of what you were able to accomplish. Just follow your heart and do what feels best for you and your loved ones. Be gentle and kind with yourself, too: treat yourself as well as you would treat any other person.

And let me know if there are other ideas you’d want to see on this blog.