Growing a Baby While Growing a Business

Exploring the mother-entrepreneur's uncertainty about the postpartum period and prioritizing the needs of the body.

When I’m not pouring my soul out to my family, friends, and strangers online, I’m working my “real job” as a solo practitioner running a virtual law firm to support federal workers with disabilities. I have always hoped that I could be more than one thing at a time, and that I didn’t necessarily have to choose between pursuing a passion and earning a living if I could find a way to balance both in separate fields. Add “grow a child” to the list of pressing endeavors and suddenly the balancing act of being multiple things at once, including Mother, becomes a lot more difficult.

I have never been overwhelmed with filling my day with to-dos. I love lists. I thrive in active pursuit and I crumble when I have nothing to grow or create. I don’t discount rest, and I am utterly useless without adequate sleep. I find ways to co-exist with Time. I charge forward down every new path at full speed and I pivot when I realize I’ve made a wrong turn. I try on interests like I’m trying on clothes. I aim to live every life I can while loving the life I’m in because it’s all one and the same.

But these were all things I was able to do when the only person I was fully responsible for was myself. Now that I’m growing another human, Time has started to betray me.

Early morning hours I used to spend waking up slowly have turned into late morning hours waking up in a flurry because I overslept (because I couldn’t fall asleep until 3am). Which means my morning administrative tasks turn into weekend tasks so I can get all of my substantive work done for my clients during the week. Which means my writing is no longer built-in to my schedule, and is instead more sporadic. Which means I have to really prioritize my meals and my self-care to ensure the safety and health of my daughter in utero and to ensure I’m on some sort of schedule so I don’t lose sight of some sort of groundedness. Which means I have to prioritize more rest during the hours that I would ordinarily be working. Which means that I am taking a lot of naps and feeling like I’m not doing a whole lot of anything while simultaneously feeling more tired than I have ever felt in my life.

I am trying to grow a baby while growing a business. Inhale. Exhale.

I must prioritize my baby and my body.

But if my business is how I support my baby and my body, how can I possibly manage both at the same time?

Photo by Alexandrae Photo

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All I Want Is Freedom of Choice

When I was a little girl, I changed my answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” seemingly weekly. In college, I formally changed my undergraduate major seven times (Journalism, Biology, Applied Physiology and Kinesiology, Nursing, Music, and Economics, then eventually landed on a double-major in International Studies and Political Science). At some point, I stopped trying to squish myself into an academic niche and decided that what I wanted to do when I grew up was continue to have the freedom to choose.

Before I graduated from law school in 2018, I had already accepted a pre-graduation job offer in Santa Cruz, California. I declined it after taking the bar exam to move across the country to Charlotte, North Carolina in the pursuit of love with my now husband and the most perfect girl-dad-to-be (sorry, Dad, but it all worked out didn’t it?!).

The first job I found in North Carolina by happenstance was with a solo practitioner who eventually encouraged me to open my own office after I quickly grew to love the clients I served. Just one year later, my husband and I moved to Seattle, Washington for his job and I did just that; and my journey as an entrepreneur began in May of 2020 right as the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown the world. Perfect timing!

I had no idea what I was doing or if I would make a single dollar. It seemed like the worst time in modern history to start a business. I opened my virtual office in a tiny, dingy room that we nicknamed “The Spider Room” in the basement of a (very cute) townhouse that my husband and I rented in the middle of the city. We called it The Spider Room because we killed, without exaggeration, five hobo spiders the size of my palm every single day. My phone service hardly worked and I often had to sprint up two flights of stairs for every phone call. One of my best friends designed me a starter logo on the fly. I was sworn into the Washington Bar by waiver on Zoom while a hobo spider crawled up my thigh. I launched a haphazard website on Wix and built my own work processes from scratch. I holed myself up in The Spider Room in a new city where everyone was a stranger wearing a mask in silence and somehow…it blossomed (after hours and hours and HOURS of tiring and exhausting work).

Two years later, I overhauled and reconstructed every process I started with, hired Crème Brands to professionally rebrand my business and design my website, purchased all new practice management software, and launched into overdrive. My husband and I retired The Spider Room and moved to the suburbs where I setup a fully-functional and cheery office that I immediately equipped with a pink chair, a unicorn ottoman, and six different Ruth Bader Ginsburgs in varying forms. This transition happened at the entrepreneurial stage when I realized I kind of knew what I was doing, so I ended up taking too many new clients and overwhelmed myself again. I felt the brunt of this phase up until I found out I was pregnant for the first time in August 2023.

Every Time You Want to Give Up, Don’t (Unless You Have To)

My husband and I found out we were pregnant and then no longer pregnant in a week’s time. That week shifted something inside of me and demanded I make a change because I was panicked about my future. At first, I thought this panic was telling me to quit my business. To run to the corporate world and find a stable job with a stable income and make sure I can help provide for the family that we wanted to grow.

During my job search through October 2023, I realized I hated the corporate legal world. I hated the robotic feel of the legal hiring teams. I hated the million extra steps it took to get an application into the hands of a real person. I hated the fear that I wouldn’t be hired if I told my interviewers I was trying to start a family or what would happen if I got pregnant again right after I got hired. I hated the phony feeling of propping myself up as a candidate for a role that I didn’t understand because every job description reads like AI wrote it and uses terms like “cross-functionally” or “synergy” that are cringey and that no one actually says in real life. I hated that companies were demanding teams come back to the office and forcing employees to sit in three hours of traffic to do so. I hated that no one actually prioritized mothers or women when I read through their benefits and missions and policies. All of it felt like The Man colluding with Time to steal heartbeats from my time with my family and I wasn’t having any of it.

I found out that I was pregnant again at the end of October 2023, and everything I was looking for immediately clicked into place. I met a kindred spirit at an advocacy conference right before I took that second pregnancy test (who is now a dear friend both professionally and personally) who inspired me to keep forging my path as an entrepreneur and reminded me that I am in control of my caseload, my processes, and my time. So I took back control of my business again with my baby at the forefront of my mind. Everything I did, and will do moving forward, is for my daughter.

I ended representation with half of my clients to lessen my load. I let go of clients who lingered without paying their bills. I tied up loose-ends that I was dragging my own feet on. I re-evaluated my priorities. I streamlined. I renewed. I rejuvenated. I setup a new system that would allow me to be Mother and Attorney and Writer all at the same time. These are not equal essences. I am not equal parts of each. But if I can still be 90% Mother and 5% Attorney and 5% Writer, that is enough for me.

There Is Always a Cost, So Pick Your Poison

Every second, I count my blessings that I have been able to forge my legal career in this manner. That I can work from home. That my office is two feet from my baby’s nursery. That I can work at my kitchen table if I’m feeling too lazy to walk upstairs to my desk. That I have no evil corporate boss to report to. That I control my time. I feel more than ever for the mothers who don’t share in this freedom. I want to do more for them. (I will share more about this in later posts). For now, I must focus on my own baby and my own body.

My work-from-home-life-as-my-own-boss is everything I ever wanted, but it comes with its own vices. If I am in control, and I relinquish control of my work to focus on my baby, how will I ever grow both things at the same time? How will I make money? How will I help my child survive? Can I even do this? What am I doing? Am I doing this right? Am I doing too much? Am I not doing enough? Inhale. Exhale. This is just another set of problems to solve, and I am grateful that this is my price.

The biggest question I face running a business every day now feels even more terrifying as my pregnancy approaches the third trimester: where is my income going to come from? I luckily have no shortage of clients, but my time is limited. And I cannot make money if I cannot do the work. Think. Think. Think.

Sell a product.

One of the beautiful things about entrepreneurship is being able to innovate without permission. I have a surplus of knowledge that I often give away for free. And so I started to ask myself if there was a way I could not give away my knowledge for free, and if I could instead offer people seeking my services options for better legal resources. This would solve two problems: (1) it would capture individuals I cannot represent (or choose not to represent) while giving them free or reduced cost options for assistance and (2) it would allow me to receive passive income while I’m not working during my postpartum period.

So, I put my nose to the grindstone and I made a digital product; specifically, Crème Brands (my personal heroes) designed a swath of custom templates and E-guidebooks for download that I’m implementing on my law firm website next month to provide federal workers with legal resources that read like a magazine. It took me five months to develop the content, but money-panic-fear, minimized!

Reducing My Own Load

In further lessening my anxiety about growing a baby and growing a business, I also decided to prepare for my return-to-work postpartum by cleaning up every single process I have like the obnoxious perfectionist I am. Making everything match (letterheads, templates, reference docs, etc). Implementing my branding colors and logos. Making everything look uniform. Utilizing automation for client intake. Recording out-of-office scripts in advance. Notifying clients of my pregnancy early. Sending out all of my outstanding invoices. Doing everything I can while I have energy before I have no energy to do anything except grow a tiny skull and produce milk. I must prioritize the needs of my body. But if I plan ahead, I can maybe trick Time and sneak in everything else I need to do before motherhood plants me firmly in the world of colorful world of goo goo gagas.

Some states (very few…sigh) offer Paid Maternity Leave for self-employed individuals. Washington is one of the few. My next mission to investigate! For any other Washington-based entrepreneur mothers reading along, the link for more information on this critical service is located here.

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Everything I have done since October of 2023 has been done for my body. My baby. My peace. I think that’s all we can do as mothers and soon-to-be mothers. Plan ahead as much as we can but let our bodies guide us through. Hope for the best, and ride out whatever happens. We cannot control when we will feel tapped out or run ragged. We cannot control our exhaustion because it’s our uncontrollable body at work performing miracles. I cannot think of anything more important right now than honoring my body. To honor the food I’m nourishing her with. To honor the rest my legs are begging for. To honor the sleep my eyes are crying out for.

I know that it feels impossible to “have it all,” whatever that even means. But I don’t think I want to have it all, and I don’t think any of us should (or can) strive for “having it all.” I think I just want to be all of the little pieces of me, and to make peace with the piece of myself that is presenting itself right now knowing that the other pieces are waiting in the quiet for my return to them.

We have one body and one life. I must stare Time in the face and remind it that nothing is more sacred or more important than my being, and I will cherish her while she grows into the infinite future.

Xo,

Violet Carol