As a small business owner, I was unable to take the one year maternity leave that the majority of Canadians are entitled to. For many years prior to us trying to have a baby this was a fear of mine, a scary unknown and something that made that leap into being ready that much more difficult. Really, I think this was certainly the case for all baby preparation, but that time and how to manage a business and a baby just seemed so hard to wrap my mind around. How would it work out? How could we do it?

Well, I’m on the other side now. New mama friends I’ve made over the past year are slowly making their returns to work and I find myself in a constant state of nostalgia and heartache over how quickly this baby thing zipped by. How did he grow and change and become a little person so fast? But, in reflection, was the no maternity leave so bad? Was it something I should have stressed, feared and agonized over? Turns out… not really.

Every baby, every parent, every home, every family is different. We all have our different configurations that make up our life. Work from home. Stay at home. Part-time. Full-time. What-have-you’s. Here’s how it played out for us.

I have a small consulting business and I work from home… or well… from anywhere. My husband works in very summer-heavy property maintenance. Prior to my pregnancy, he was working full-time for another small business owner who happened to be a good friend. My November due date worked out perfectly for his parental leave; however, we knew that if he were to return to his previous gig, it would be cut short around six months since he could take up to 37 weeks off. My mom owns a restaurant, and her hours in the restaurant are very flexible and she is often home during the day. She also has been itching to be a grandmother since I was practically a teenager.

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Our son was born in early November, and I took until early December off completely. No emails, no nothing. And then, as my head came above the water, I started to wonder how everyone was doing and began checking in with team members and took a few calls here and there before Christmas. I would sit at the kitchen table as I have always done, and my husband and W would be in his nursery, in the kitchen, and around. In January, I went back to full-time and we spent most of our days at home, while I managed calls, breastfeeding and listened to the action of the day from the sidelines.

At some point over the winter, and after some soul searching, my husband decided he would not be going back to working for his former boss, and going out on his own… which ended up working out super well, because his former boss had been doing the same soul searching and had decided he was not going to continue with his clients as of the spring. And just like that my husband was able to cherry-pick his favourite clients and his business was ready to go.

When we returned from our family vacation in April, it was go time. Spring was here, and he was back to work full-time. Now, this was my busiest time of the year as well, and it was chaos. Absolute madness. I would work in the morning, he would work in the afternoon and my mom jumped into our arranged two days a week of care. On days where she was watching W, I tagged along and worked upstairs, and was able to breastfeed on demand. This was perfect given the fact that he had very suddenly started refusing a bottle. It only makes sense now, his whole life had been turned upside down.

We were trying to move towards him starting daycare with my aunt, but wanted to get him taking a bottle first. By the time June rolled around he was ready to start; however, after only a couple weeks with her (two days a week) the situation didn’t work out the way we had anticipated and we were without care for awhile. I had lined up a different daycare with a good friend as of September, and she offered to start early one day per week as of July.

So, for the summer I had two days during the week with W, as my husband was in his busy season, and after having spent many months working full-time, I was in a place where I could scale back a bit and just be with my little guy watching him grow.

In September things officially transitioned into our new indefinite normal. W is with my mom two days a week, in daycare two days, and with me for one day.

The past year has been  all over the place, transitional and a bit whirlwindy. I think I’ll look back on it in the future and feel my head spin a bit. But, at this point in time, I feel like I’ve learned so much about this set-up and dynamic and how it worked for our family. We know how it can work and that it is totally doable. Here are some of our main reflection points.

1. The beginning was stressful and it took time to figure out. I think those early months I felt so much guilt and sadness over the fact that I didn’t have a leave. I felt pulled between my maternal instinct to step in and be there, while having to park my butt down and do work. Listening to tears and madness in another room was legitimately a form of torture. I wanted to let my husband and W sort it out, but I also couldn’t help but intervene sometimes because of a deep down visceral drive. We were just figuring it out and it was a lot to think about work and have this new life taking up 99% of my brain space. My husband was also adjusting to not working and being home in the dead of winter with a newborn. I often joked he saw and experienced things dads often aren’t exposed to. Needless to say, the idea of another is on the back burner for awhile as a result of those early days. It was survival mode, and adding work to the mix was a bit crazy, but we did it!

2. Having those days together as a family was worth not having a leave. If I had taken a maternity leave, my husband would have been working. While I still had to manage and work fullish-time while he was at home… we were together. And, while it was hard at first, I wouldn’t trade that time to have done it alone. Working was worth having us together.

3. You find your groove. With time we found our groove. Our daily patterns. We had good days and bad and in-between. There were times I had to leave a call early due to the unpredictability of a baby, but we just made it work. I have incredibly supportive colleagues, and we just all found a rhythm. And again, when my husband went back to work, we eventually found a new normal and the balance set in.

4. I like working. Now that I’m working four days a week, with our one day of just us, I get to spend that one day imagining what a maternity leave would have looked like. There were certainly many days, especially the sleep deprived ones when I thought, “this is why we deserve a year off!” because I struggled to find the energy to write meaningful reports and stay on top of my to do lists. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that I am so very grateful for this balanced life we have found. I have come to appreciate our days of just us. Planning special outings, or enjoying a day hanging at home. Those days, are also equally as crazy, and I find myself happy I’m working, because I love my work, and the engaging nature of it. Baby life is heartwarming, adorable and fun, but can also be monotonous, draining and madness. So, I find myself so very happy with where we ended up, and how it worked out.

So, what does this all mean for a maybe next time? My husband won’t have a leave next time either now that he is also a small business owner, so we’ll hopefully line up our timing in a place where I am in my slow season, can taper off my work for longer (more like 3 months), and work part-time for another half a year or so. And, I’ll chill the heck out more. I totally get the whole second time mom calm people have. On the other side you see how short-lived it all is. You see how short each hurdle actually is. How quickly it zips by. And you know and see how it all just sorts itself out in a beautifully chaotic way.