Work and Childcare as a Freelancer: Expectations vs Reality

Hi there! I thought I’d do a follow up post about my work and childcare situation to explore what has been going to plan and what had not.

To recap, I have a few different business models:

• B2B trainings/facilitation that are financially lucrative but happen infrequently with a lot of admin work;

• B2C coaching which is relatively good financially but requires a lot of time for marketing/sales efforts; and

• Third Party coaching where coaching platforms match me with employees for sessions, which is a lower revenue point but is beneficial in that there is no admin nor marketing time involved.

The Plan:

My original plan was to reengage with work from October 1st (when my baby would be around 2.5 months old) on a part time basis, while utilizing daycare.

A couple of reasons why I wanted to go back so soon was because I don’t receive maternity leave financial benefits, and also because I feared that taking too much time away from work would make it harder to rebuild clientele when I come back full time. Unlike people who work under a full time corporate contract, just because I want to work full time doesn’t mean the clients will magically appear, so it’s important to maintain some business connection even when I’m not working.

The Reality:

I received a corporate training request for September, so I actually started working earlier than expected.

The first time was mentally challenging. The training required a lot more admin (meetings with the company and preparation work) than I had anticipated, and I was up at night worrying about being away from my baby even though it was only a 3 hour training.

But when the training started, I feel like I switched on my job-mode brain and I really enjoyed the time and felt a sense of accomplishment when it was over.

So far so good…so I thought!

Challenge 1: Breastfeeding

One thing I wasn’t expecting is that my baby would be exclusively breastfed. For the first 6 weeks or so, she was taking one bottle of formula per day, and then suddenly one day she started rejecting the bottle.

I was hired to do a full day training at a corporation (after the one above that I mentioned), so I asked my parents (who were visiting at the time) to watch her. We figured that even though she didn’t like the bottle, eventually she’d get hungry enough to drink from it.

Well, we were wrong. When I got home, I learned that she hadn’t eat all day long - that’s 9 hours without eating during the day! I was mortified and felt so guilty.

For starters, I knew that I’d no longer be able to take on requests that are too long. If it’s a one hour speech, coaching session, or maybe even a half day training, that would be more acceptable.

As for childcare, exclusively breastfeeding means that it would be challenging to put her in daycare assuming I’d need to feed her at least once every three hours. And utilizing daycare just for 2 hours (once you factor in finishing feeding, commuting, picking her up and then rushing home to feed again) also didn’t make sense in terms of what I’d be able to accomplish in that time. Especially since babies are unpredictable and while she may go 3 hours without eating, she might also cry to be fed within 1 hour if a recent feed.

Challenge 2: Childcare that’s not daycare

Since we decided to forgo Daycare, the other options would be to hire a babysitter or to utilize some of the temporary daycare facilities offered by my ward.

The temporary daycare facilities seemed a bit unreliable in that you need to book in advance (I’d be worried about taking on a client only to find out that the daycare is unavailable) and also far from us compared to regular daycares (two stations away, as opposed to a 10 min walk). I’d be facing the same challenge as regular daycare when it came to breastfeeding.

I liked the idea of hiring a babysitter because I could take breaks from work to feed the baby. The tricky part was figuring out if it would be financially lucrative.

One goal I have been having is to have a regular schedule for third party coaching where employees can book time with me on my calendar. The downside is that I wouldn’t know too far in advance how many bookings I’d have. With a corporate training, I’d know how much I’d be making and what day/time I’m working; with third party coaching, I could keep my schedule open and have days where I have no bookings at all, or some where I’m fully booked back to back.

If I open my calendar at get full bookings then it would easily cover the babysitter. But if I don’t, then the babysitting money would go down the hole.

Challenge 3: Coordinating with the Hubby

My husband has a very busy work schedule where sometimes he’s out of the house for 12+ hours a day. He does have opportunities for remote work, but on a seasonal basis.

The challenge I found is trying to have a conversation about my challenges without making him feel like he’s not contributing enough. It’s hard to ask for help when you know someone is working so hard, but at the same time, not saying anything at all would leave me the pressure of having to figure everything out myself which I also felt was unfair. For example, there is a built in assumption that I’ll watch the baby while he goes to work, where as if I have to work then I need to ask him for “permission” (I put it in quotes because that’s what it feels like, as if I can’t do something without getting an okay from him) or find a sitter to make sure someone is watching the baby and I have to pay for it too.

Luckily we came up with a plan that when his work settles down and he can do a bit of remote work for a few months, that I’ll block a couple days a week to open my calendar for coaching calls and on days when he can’t be home or if I do have a lucrative corporate training, we’ll pay for a babysitter. This takes off the pressure of feeling like the money I’m bringing in would go straight back out to a sitter, and also I can continue to breastfeed.

A bright future:

Nothing lasts forever. Eventually the baby will be eating foods so we think that she may be fine to go to daycare by April when she’s around 9 months old.

So at the end of the day, we are just making temporary plans now to bridge where we are at with her now and what would be possible in the coming months.

One step at a time!