Work Life Balance
The Work at Home Woman
December 24th, 2009I made a conscious decision to stay at home after I had children. Since I married late (I was 35 when I got married), my husband and I reviewed our finances and, although we would not have a lot of extra income, we decided that we could afford if I didn’t work. I had suspected that I would have some trouble having children and the complicated road to having my 2 children lived up to my expectations. After two high risk pregnancies, threats of bed rest and a preterm labor with my first, I wanted to care for and raise my babies myself.
Prior to my daughter’s (my first) birth , I worked as a personal trainer and woman’s health consultant. After her birth and all the complications with my pregnancy I really began to focus on prenatal and post partum exercise, health and wellness. What I found was that trying to grow such a service, to be available to my clients as well as to my daughter proved nearly impossible. To keep afloat I began writing health care columns for local publications. Writing offered me the opportunity to work and earn some money, to provide comfort, information and support to other women and, most importantly, to be completely available for my daughter.
The work at home concept was just emerging when I had my daughter back in 2002. There weren’t the websites and support groups nor even the term “mompreneur” back then. People were just beginning to explore more flexible work arrangements and “work/life balance” was just gaining momentum. Women were just beginning to question and explore how they could work and help provide income for their families while still providing the bulk of the care for their children. Over the years some women have excelled at the work at home concept and one such person is Holly Hanna, owner and founder of a website called The Work At Home Woman. 
The Work at Home Woman website is a veritable plethora of information on working from home. The website contains information and questionnaires to help women decide if working from home is for them. There are pages and pages of resources on how to get started working from home, lists of various careers that lend themselves to working from home and how to set up your own home-based business. I visit this website often and each time gain valuable information I use to improve my now home based business. The Work at Home Woman has taken all the mystery and difficulty out of starting your own home based business.
As a mama on bed rest you may be wrestling with what to do with your job or career when your baby is born. After all you’ve gone through to have your little one, it’s completely natural to have reservations about leaving your child with another caregiver. Take comfort in the fact that you do have options. It may be necessary for you to work in order to help support your family, but now you can work and help support your family while at the same time caring for your child full time or at least the majority of the time.
If you do decide to work from home, I highly recommend that you visit The Work at Home Woman website. With it’s wealth of information and resources, you’ll be able to start your home based career on a solid foundation and successfully grow your career or business to suite you and your family’s needs.
Visit The Work at Home Woman website at www.theworkathomewoman.com
Working Options for New Moms
December 18th, 2009I always find it a a bit surreal when I see tv commercials with mothers looking very serene holding perfect little babies 
who are adoringly looking up at them. While this surely happens often enough, I think that it’s important to note that motherhood, especially in the early days is sometimes far from serene. I recall that after the birth of my son, my second, I was completely overwhelmed. He was a much more aggressive feeder than my daughter had been and nursed every hour and a half-from both breasts! Couple that with the fact that I had had a c-section and I had a 3 1/2 year old who was also vying for my attention and you can clearly see that I was quickly coming undone. My parents had come and stayed with me for 3 weeks following my son’s birth and their help was priceless. But they left one day after my husband set out on a business trip and 3 weeks post partum from a c-section I found myself on my own with two little ones. I was literally crying in the airport after my parents left.
According to a report titled, New Mothers Speak Out, National Survey Results Highlight Women’s Postpartum Experiences “new mothers in the United States struggle with chronic emotional and physical problems, often with little or no support from their husbands or partners, all the while trying to meet the needs of their newborns, and in some cases the pressure to return to work,” says Carol Sakala, Ph.D., director of programs for Childbirth Connection, a national not-for-profit organization. Sakala and her colleagues surveyed 903 new mothers ages 18 to 45 who gave birth in 2005. The researchers found that six months after giving birth, 43 percent of the women still felt stressed; 40 percent reported problems controlling their weight; 34 percent had trouble sleeping; 26 percent had no sexual desire; and 24 percent suffered from chronic backaches. Notably, 44 percent of the women said that their physical or emotional condition interfered with taking care of their baby in the first two months. The authors suggested that longer maternity leaves and more flexible return-to-work policies might help new mothers.
Maternity leave, or the lack there of, in the United States is a longstanding issue. Where many European countries offer new moms 6 months to a year off after delivery (with a guaranteed job to return to!), The United States offers a paltry 6 weeks, 8-12 weeks if delivery by c-section. Often times women return to work sooner out of fear of losing their positions. While many companies are beginning to entertain the option of flexible time or job sharing, many professional women avoid these options fearing they will be “mommy-tracked” and passed over for promotions and partnerships. The decision to return to work can be even more stressful for mothers who have had high risk pregnancies and were on prescribed bed rest prior to delivery. They may have used all of their maternity leave before they even had their baby (ies). Others may be reluctant to return to work-especially if their babies were born prematurely and/or have special needs
So what are women to do? Many women do as I did and simply leave the workforce while they have their children and raise their families. I was fortunate enough that my husband’s job and salary is able to support our family. Many other families are not so lucky. Today, often it is the woman who has the larger salary and/or the health care and other benefits to sustain the family. It just isn’t economically feasible for her to remain out of work for any appreciable amount of time.
Yet many women find that they just don’t want to stay home full time. Like me, they want to be available and present for their children, yet they want to do something that is intellectually stimulating as well as emotionally fulfilling. More and more, women are looking at work from home opportunities and starting their own businesses.
In the next several blog entries I will explore the options women have for creating work/life balance. We’ll look at options such as working from home, starting businesses, flexible and job sharing opportunities and in general, how women can take better care of themselves so that they can take better care of their families. I will include interviews with women who are experts in the field of work life balance as well as starting their own work from home enterprises. Stay tuned!
If you are a woman who has started a successful enterprise or successfully navigated working and having a family, please share your story with me. I’d love to feature you and I am sure other women would love to learn from your wisdom!
Older Moms, Small Babies
September 10th, 2009My fellow bed rest mama supporter KeepEmCookin’ asked, “Are older moms at greater risk of having premature babies?” Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding yes!
Since 1982, births for US moms between the ages of 40 and 44 have increased threefold. But in addition to the number of women having children in the later portion of their reproductive years, older women are at a marked increased risk of having hypertension, pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes during pregnancy, multiple gestations (either naturally or because of fertility drugs used to conceive), complications during labor and to deliver a premature and/or a low birth weight babies. Even with all of the technological advances in fertility treatments including the use of donor eggs, older moms still have a greater risk of having complications and children with birth defects and developmental problems. Some would argue that older women shouldn’t have children and that past a certain age, women should be strongly counseled against trying to conceive or having children that they do conceive.
As an older mama, I want to speak in defense of older moms.
There is a pervasive assumption that women are purposely waiting to have children until later. Rather than start families, the common belief is that women are pursuing career goals, traveling and developing their own interests and living their dreams. While this is true in some cases, it doesn’t represent the full story. For many of us (myself included) we opted to wait until we found the right partner and father for our children before starting a family. As many single women can attest, finding a partner and establishing a solid relationship can be a quest for the Holy Grail. I had no intention of becoming tied to someone who one day I may detest and/or I’d have to contend with over the safety and well being of a child. So I waited and I waited and 6 weeks shy of my 35th birthday, I got married.
For some women, it just isn’t in the cards and she will never give birth to biological children. Other women will have children later, in the 40’s; some by choice and yet for others it’s just when they are able to achieve a successful pregnancy.
Regardless of the circumstances, Motherhood Later Rather Than Sooner (Thanks Robin Gorman for coining this phrase!) is definitely here to stay. Those of us who dare (by personal choice or because the choice is made for us) to make the journey as older moms know that the road is rigorous; fraught with unexpected turns and hidden pot holes. But I myself can attest that the journey is well worth it.
