How I’m Preparing for My First Maternity Leave as a Full-Time Freelancer
Christmas 2022 came and went, and my period…did not.
I’ll give you three guesses to figure out what that means. Yep! My husband and I will be welcoming our first baby in August.
As a Type-A, Enneagram 1, INTJ, my immediate response was to dive into research mode. Give me all the case studies, the articles written by other freelancers and business owners, and YouTube videos about all the necessities I would most certainly need if I wanted to be a “good mom.” (Spoiler: You should take most of those videos with a grain of salt.) However, if you’re like me and want to know the actual data behind well-worn pregnancy and newborn dos and don’ts, Expecting Better and Cribsheet by Emily Oster should immediately make their way into your shopping cart.
Once I started feeling confident in my ability to tackle the impending responsibilities of motherhood, I quickly started to worry about my business. 2023 was supposed to be my first year as a full-time freelance writer and book editor! I had big plans and goals! I was building great momentum! I was refining my services, working with amazing clients, and taking on more projects in my zone of genius! Shoot, I was even on track to match my old corporate paycheck!
Woah there, girl.
Can’t I still do all those things and have a baby? From this side of motherhood, I’m saying YES. I can have it all. I just need to redefine my goals, create a plan, and give myself permission to be flexible.
As they say: Preparation is the key to success. With that in mind, here’s everything I’m doing to maintain a thriving business as a full-time freelance writer and book editor while I take time away from my computer for my first maternity leave.
Start planning early
The earlier you start to create a plan for your business and maternity leave, the more likely you are to keep from spiraling into a full-blown panic. This isn’t a scientific fact, and I have no data to back that claim, It’s just what I know to be true. You don’t immediately need to have a fully fleshed-out maternity leave schedule with every detail nailed down but do start to get the scaffolding in place as soon as you can.
Assess your current workload and commitments, take stock of your ongoing projects and deadlines, and start making a list of the people you’ll need to notify of your planned time out of the office. You should also evaluate which projects can be completed before your maternity leave, which ones might extend into your leave period, and which ones can be rescheduled for once you’re back in the swing of things.
And, while you might be a solopreneur, bringing a baby into the world is not a solo endeavor. (I know parenthood looks different for everyone—I’m just speaking about my relationship and family here.) Be sure to have honest conversations with your partner or support system about your plans and expectations for maternity leave so everyone is on the same page.
Take a look at your finances
I am extremely fortunate and privileged to have a husband with a corporate job who could support our family even if I need to totally step back from my business. However, I know this is not the case for every person planning for self-employed maternity leave, and, Lord willing, It’s not my plan either.
As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I looked at my revenue, expenses, and income projections for the year and crunched the numbers to get a clear picture of the financial impact of taking time away from my business. As a service provider with no current passive income streams, if I’m not working, I’m not making money.
Once I had the data clearly laid out in a spreadsheet, I evaluated my expenses and set income goals for the months leading up to my expected maternity leave, so I knew exactly what would be coming into my bank account. From there, I made a plan to set money aside so I would have enough saved up to continue to give myself a regular paycheck while on maternity leave. (A slightly reduced paycheck, but a paycheck nonetheless.)
Communicate with clients and collaborators
I recommend sharing your plans for a maternity leave with your clients as soon as you feel comfortable doing so. I would also strongly encourage you to do this before sharing the exciting news on social media. As a business owner, a professional email with a personalized message is a much better way to receive the news than seeing the announcement on Instagram.
Because my business is built on a combination of long-term retainer clients and one-time projects, I took a two-pronged approach to communicating about my upcoming maternity leave.
For my retainer clients: I sent out a short, yet professional, email sharing the good news and informing them of my plans to take time off work to heal and adjust to my new life as a parent. I provided an estimated timeframe for when I would be unavailable for work, set realistic expectations about the unpredictability of childbirth, provided my strategy for keeping open communication as my due date approached, and reassured them of my intentions to return back to work.
For my one-time projects: I simply stopped scheduling new book edits when I planned to take my maternity leave. Again, because I know it’s impossible to know exactly when your baby is going to make their arrival, I also created a “taper window” leading up to my due date. This means no new, big projects in the 3-4 weeks before delivery—only tying up loose ends, delivering final edits, and creating and scheduling content.
Yes, I did have a bit of heartburn sending out those emails, but that could have been the nerves or a lovely pregnancy symptom. If I’m being honest, I’m sure it was a bit of both.
Set up systems and automations
Even though I know I’ll still be checking my email, responding to new inquiries, creating content, and sending out pitches, I also know I won’t be able to meet my current communication standards. Here are a few systems and automations I plan to set up and reconfigure to keep things rolling in my business even if I don’t open my laptop for a week.
An automated email response in my Gmail.
New language on the services and contact pages of my website with updated information about my availability.
A pause in the workflows currently running in my CRM, Dubsado, and new workflows to let new inquiries know when they can expect to hear from me.
Scheduling content to auto-publish on my blog (Squarespace) and on social media (Planoly).
Make a re-entry plan
Just like creating a “taper window” leading into my maternity leave, I plan to ease back into my business as I settle into my new normal. The key here? Set realistic goals. Am I going to be able to flip a switch and jump back into a fully-packed calendar? Absolutely not. Is my work-life balance going to be exactly as it was before baby? Um…no. Should I be communicating with my clients throughout maternity leave to slowly add things back onto my schedule? One hundred percent. Can I give myself a bit of credit and fully believe I’ll be able to establish a new work routine? Most definitely.
I’m also planning to take my maternity leave as an opportunity to test the waters for some new projects by creating some digital products, pitching articles to online publications, and experimenting with other forms of long-form, evergreen content.
At the end of the day, I need to remember that if my clients aren’t the type of people who are okay with a slightly disheveled editor or a baby making an occasional appearance in discovery or check-in calls, they’re probably not the type of people I want to be working with anyway.
And the power to choose who we work with, what we work on, and where we work is why many of us chose to become freelancers and business owners in the first place, right?
It’s all about setting realistic boundaries and expectations
As I mentioned earlier, I know this is all coming from the perspective of someone who has not yet become a mother, taken maternity leave, and kept her business afloat. Rest assured, I’ll be keeping notes about what worked and didn’t work for me and where I needed to reassess and adjust my thinking or approach to my self-employed maternity leave. You can certainly expect to see an updated article about how things actually went once I’m back in the office this fall.
