When I was pregnant with Lily I refused to put her in day care and go back to work. I liked a few of the people that I worked with and missed them when I left, but my job was going nowhere and I was bored doing the same thing all the time. There was a lot of office gossip, office games and I was getting to old for that kind of environment. As soon as I could start my maternity leave I was gone, I didn’t even wait for Lily’s due date to be near, I left 6 weeks before she was due. The thought of having to put Lily in day care every day and go back to the office and be miserable was not something I wanted to do, it was going to cause me extreme stress and mommy guilt. Why suffer through the day being unhappy in my job while Lily was unhappy in day care? I felt so guilty about putting her in day care, the thought of it made me sick to my stomach. So I searched high and low for a way that I could stay at home with Lily and still work. After I weeded out all the crazy jobs such as medical biller and phone sex operator I stumbled upon the world of Virtual Assistance.
When Lily was around 3 months old I saw a Patricia Beckman on Good Day Sacramento doing a story about being a Virtual Assistant and I knew I had to connect with her, she was my ticket to staying out of the office. I contacted her right away and within a few weeks starting working with her doing various administrative tasks for her and for clients. I worked with her for a few years and then decided to create my own Virtual Assisting firm and hire my own team of VA’s. Today we are going strong and have a team of 8 people and we focus on Internet Marketing for Women business owners who want to make their business shine on the Internet. We help them through Internet Marketing strategies, Social Media promotions and eCommerce solutions. You can find out more about my company at http://SunriseVirtualServices.com
I’d been running my company for about a year and growing it really well and then BAM! I got pregnant again. I tried to keep things going and it was good for a while because babies lay in their cribs and sit in exersaucers while you work. But now Abigail is 16 months old and she needs other little people to interact with and an environment where she can thrive, my office is no place for her to thrive in, LOL. I know that she watches too much TV and I felt that there has to be a better solution.
Lily will be starting a summer camp program in June so I had hoped that this would give me more time to work on my business but I would still have Abigail at home and need to tend to her needs.
Louis and I had talked about putting Abigail in day care environment but not until she was about 3 years old. Recently things in my company were really stressing me out because the company was growing so much I couldn’t do it all, I did have things delegated out to my team but there just wasn’t enough time for me to work on much and I felt out of the loop and disconnected from my company. There are big things that I can do with my company and I’ve had little time to plan and execute them and that has really stressed me out because I feel like I am missing out on some golden opportunities. I even had higher than usual blood pressure readings at a recent dr’s visit so I knew that something had to change.
At first the thought of putting Abigail in daycare made me feel guilty. Until we visited Goddard (where she will be going and where Lily went for 2 1/2 years) and she loved it! She ran up and down the halls, she played in the classroom, she interacted with the teachers and I had to drag her out of there. I am sure there will be some crying involved when we do those initial dropoffs but she is easily redirected so I don’t feel like there is anything to worry about.
Having her in daycare 5 days a week at even just a half time schedule will give me 20 hours per week to work and have better communication with my team, work on growing my business through in person networking, marketing and teleclasses.
So this time when I ‘go back to work’ there will be no Mommy guilt because I will be going to an office where there is no office gossip, no office politics and nothing but the ability to grow my business.
