My Maternity Leave Recap
January 17, 2024
Category: personal
my maternity leave recap
from one mama to another, from one business owner to another — congratulations and you’ve got this!
Wanna know the number one question I got asked when I was pregnant? And no, I’m not saying this to sound like the stereotypical influencer who gets *~ SoOoO MANY questions~*, but truthfully, aside from asking if I had a name picked out, everyone wanted to know what my maternity leave plans were!
As a small female-owned and operated business, maternity leave was something that I thought about since approximately the dawn of time. Well, since the day I decided to say peace out to my 9-5 with benefits and all.
There are a lot of perks when it comes to running your own business, and I knew that going into it, but a paid, 12-week leave without ever thinking about work was not one of them.
When I first began to share my thoughts on maternity leave, I received a lottttt of opinions. I felt overwhelmed. Since Navy is my first baby, I wasn’t sure what I was doing OR what I should do. And while I know every piece of advice was given with good intention, it made me scared to ever share my plans for fear of judgment.
So before I share how I handled my maternity leave, I just want to begin with a caveat — what worked and didn’t work for me might not be true for you. Everyone’s experience is SO vastly different. From their experience with pregnancy, their financial situation, and personality type to their delivery and recovery postpartum, their baby, and their baby’s needs. There’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to maternity leave as a small business owner as long as you’re doing what you believe is best for you and your family. Okay, cool?
When I first found out I was pregnant, my initial thought was this — I think I only need to take like four weeks off and then I’ll be able to dive back into work! I shared that thought with everyone around me and some agreed that I’d be good to go while others were like ehhhh wait a minute, you actually should take 6 months off.
SIX MONTHS?! There’s no wayyyy I could take 6 months off work. But thinking about just taking 4 weeks, maybe that wasn’t enough time. What if I have a c-section? What if I have postpartum blues? I really had no idea what to expect but I did know myself well enough to know that I would likely go a little stir crazy after a while.
I admittedly have a hard time taking vacation unplugged. No this is not to promote hustle culture, this is just the reality of being an ambitious enneagram three. I LIKE TO WORK and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
After a lot of thought, I landed on taking about 7-8 weeks fully unplugged from work. No client work. No real need to check in with my team, unless there was an emergency of course. Just a full two months dedicated to postpartum recovery and bonding with my baby.
In that time, I did end up checking in with my team here and there but not much. My business was my first baby and it felt weird to just go completely MIA. As a boss, I didn’t really want to leave my team out to dry for an extended period of time even though I KNEW they could handle it — and boy did they handle it.
From tricky situations that came up to being busier than we initially anticipated, they handled it like total champs. I’m so grateful I decided to build a team when I did. I think this is a great time to mention that sometimes running a business looks like late nights for a while in order to get to a place where you can fully step back, and I felt this big time during that time off. All of that hard work and all of those hours invested into my business and building a team resulted in me being able to step away for maternity leave and still having my business thrive.
Nowwww back to maternity leave. Thankfully, postpartum was a breeze for me. Pregnancy was really difficult so it was nice to finally start to feel like myself again. I spent pretty much my entire pregnancy being sick and nauseous or just feeling like I was in constant pain so to no longer feel sick I was likeeee whattt is this?! I missed this feeling.
I think if I would’ve had a difficult recovery or delivery my situation could have been different. But honestly, it just felt so good to snuggle with my baby and be with her finally.
Since I finally began to feel like a normal human again, I missed working. I missed working like a lottt. It felt weird to go from crossing things off my to-do list to suddenly just not. I filled my creative cup by creating a few pieces of social media content here and there or doing art crafts with Navy.
As my official, blocked-off time came to an end, the plan wasn’t to go back to working a full 40 hours a week right from the jump. Instead, the plan was to slowly ease back into work part-time. I still had Navy home with me so there was no way I’d be able to dive back into the original hours I was working.
In full transparency, this is the phase I struggled with the most and the time that I’m still working to get out of to be honest.
For the first time in my life, I felt my heart pulled between two places. I had this deep desire to get back to work and to start feeling like myself again but I also wanted to be with my baby. I felt guilty that I wanted to work. I thought about my other friends who would still be on their maternity leaves when their babies were 9 weeks old. When I was working, I was thinking about her. When I was with her, I was thinking about work. It was (and still is) an incredibly hard balance.
The plan was to have grandparents watch her two days a week. My husband, Joe, works from home a few days a week as well so we had planned to tag team watching her during the other days, and I had planned to take Fridays primarily off to spend with her.
I knew that I was not ready to send her to daycare. The thought of it just physically pained me. I know not every mom has the privilege to be able to not send their baby to daycare right away so I felt incredibly fortunate that this was even up for debate. Joe and I thought a lottt about what we wanted our childcare situation to look like and we ultimately decided on a nanny for a period of time before we re-evaluate in the future. I reminded myself this was WHY I started my business in the first place. Aside from my love for design and creativity, I wanted the ability to be able to make those decisions.
As first time parents, that has been the motto we’re going by — let’s try this for a while, see how it goes, and change course if we need to. I knew that having a hard set plan in place was only a recipe for disaster, so instead I wanted to give myself the freedom and flexibility to adapt or re-route as needed.
Relying on friends and family is wonderful, but tricky too. My parents, specifically, still work and it can be a lot to ask someone to give up their schedule to take care of your baby. I knew I wanted to have a set routine with a nanny but boy is finding a nanny difficult.
Looking back on all of this, I wish I would’ve had our nanny start sooner. I didn’t know it at the time because we were still figuring it out as we went along, however, we realized our family needed more structure and routine in order to thrive. I knew that I needed reliable childcare in order to be the best mama to Navy and to be the best boss and business owner I could be.
Hindsight is always 20/20 and that’s the beauty of running your own business. You get to determine what you want your life and what you want your business to look like. There are no rules. No set time or structure you HAVE to follow.
I am grateful for young, ambitious Bri who worked her booty off to be able to have the flexibility I have now, and my goal has been and always will be to give that same sort of grace to my employees. Your kid is sick and has to stay home today? I totally get it.
If you’re a fellow business owner who is expecting, let me leave you with this — becoming a mom is the most precious and wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. No level of career goals or income made could ever replace the love and feeling I have when I’m with her. I know it’s corny and everyone says it but it’s true. I actually get it now. Pregnancy forced me to slow down in ways I never expected it to. Becoming a mom has forced me to re-evaluate the legacy I want to leave.
You know your baby best and you’re fully capable of making hard decisions when it comes to maternity leave and work/life balance. You might not have all the answers right now but as long as you give yourself wiggle room to make mistakes or pivot as needed, you’ll be golden my friend. And congratulations, because it’s truly the best time of your life.
XO, Bri
