How I’m strategizing freelancing with a newborn
(Motherhood journey: 10-weeks until due date)
I already have mom-guilt just thinking about taking time away from my newborn to work.
Part of me feels that I should just ignore work and make the most of this precious time with a newborn since they are only this tiny for so long. But the other part of me knows how much effort it took to generate momentum in my business to get to this point in my career and the idea of taking a pause for too long makes me nervous about how much effort will be required once I do come back to work.
My fears include:
Clients I have been working with will find someone else with the intention of it being temporary, but then once I am back to work they’ll decide to keep working with the other person instead of switching back to me
Having a lifestyle that resembles the first couple of years of my business when I was hustling to get my business going. I know that I am at a different stage (where people hear about me through the grapevine or send me referrals) but that nervousness is still there
One thing I recognize is that I’m not really worried about my finances right now. If I need to take 6 months or longer for maternity leave, I’ll be fine. So the fears are really about the loss of momentum in my business, which could in turn lead to cash flow generation problems down the line as I rebuild.
A question I have asked myself that has helped is…what is my priority? I definitely feel that my priority is to be a mother who is engaged with her newborn. I feel in that sense that working part-time hours, i.e. 2 half-days a week, would help me maintain some notion of momentum without feeling like it’s impacting my ability to engage as a mother.
Utilizing Daycare
My husband and I both have family that live outside of Japan, so we feel that early daycare is essential as part of our “village”.
The daycares in my area:
can take infants from 57 days old (entering age 3 months)
do not have any strict rules on when you take your child there or for how many hours
initially recommended that the baby starts with a short one-hour visit and then build up hours over time
Identifying what days and for how much time I’ll use daycare initially
I took a look at the past several months of my calendar and when I have had coaching or training sessions. What I discovered is that the day I deliver coaching the most is Tuesday, followed by Wednesday and then Friday. I also tend to do corporate training on Wednesdays or Thursdays.
This has been a helpful exercise because I was originally thinking of just using daycare on Mondays and Thursdays as a good routine, but through analyzing my calendar, I see that I should probably aim to use daycare on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. If a corporate client wants to do a training then I can propose Wednesday and see about moving individual coaching clients to Friday and take on a third day of daycare that week.
I already feel much better (and Efficient Mama!) with this strategy because I sense that I will be able to maximize my work time by limiting my work hours to the days that people tend to book with me the most (it would suck to have set up daycare for Mondays and Thursdays and not have clients be available, for example).
What days make the most sense for you to trial?