It’s 2014! And I am officially back to work from maternity leave. I’ll admit I was a little nervous to start back yesterday. I knew I would not be able to maintain my usual lightning-fast pace, as I did before the little one graced us. But look at that face! She is delicious. I had 2 whole months to eat her up all day long, but now it’s time to work.
My first day back was a little frustrating. It started off very slow, though in retrospect Olivia gave me some pretty decent chunks of time to accomplish my tasks.
• Nursing a child while working takes probably 3 times longer to finish a task, but I am learning some interesting one-handed coordination skills!
• I can’t necessarily get my child to fit my schedule, so I’m learning not to dillydally as soon as she’s asleep and it’s time to work.
• To try not to be so hard on myself for not accomplishing what I used to be able to accomplish within 1 day.
• This will definitely require some grace and some getting used to.
Though I am back to work, I will not have the same availability I did before. I am temporarily booking myself with much fewer projects per week at this time. I am undecided when that should change. As Olivia gets older she will be napping less during the day, requiring more of my attention. Keeping her out of day care at this age is my choice; I think our time together is definitely worth it.
However with reduced availability, it’s become difficult to turn away projects to fit a manageable schedule for myself (and baby). This means my availability fills up MUCH more quickly. It’s important for my customers to know they need to plan ahead so that I can be available to them, but also that it may just not work for them at this time. Obviously, my daughter is my priority over work, though the work supports her well-being also. But I do hope some grace and understanding can be shown in such situations.
Once I figure out this new-mom-owning-and-trying-to-grow-her-own-business thing, we (my husband and I) have some really great goals for onelittlem to work toward this year! Our main goal of course is to grow the business, to be able to take more orders per week and to serve up even better customer service with that growth. We would like to make our first actual hire in the spring this year. Onelittlem has employed a few fantastic ladies for order assembly, and will continue to, but we plan to hire a Designer’s Assistant to help our processes flow better. I’m really excited! There are many details to work out in the meantime, but I can’t wait to grow this thing. Stay tuned for more to come in the months ahead!