Hellobee

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 […]

My husband and I have been at home for four months together. In the winter. In Canada. With a newborn. Yes, it’s been as crazy as you would imagine. As we prepared for this lovely/crazy time of our lives, we didn’t really know what to expect. We each had a picture in our mind of […]

Much like when I was pregnant with M in 2013, I’m planning to take the full year of leave offered to me by the Canadian government. The process mystified me last time, and gave me a lot of anxiety, but I feel a bit better equipped to navigate the system the second time around. Still, […]

I don’t know why Mr. Dolphin and I thought it was a brilliant idea to try to start getting pregnant while I was looking to change jobs, but we discovered I was pregnant pretty much the same day that I got an offer for my current job. Part of our reasoning was that almost all […]

I became fully self-employed in the summer of 2011. And I found out I was pregnant with Little Cotton Candy in March 2012. At the time of my pregnancy, I was working as a part time editor for one website and working toward getting more work to ramp up to full time. In other words, […]

After 16 weeks of maternity leave, I went back to work full-time last month. Before my baby girls came into this world, I thought that it would be so difficult to return to work. I was so certain of this that I even negotiated a longer maternity leave for myself during my pregnancy. Rather than […]

This topic is loaded for me. I have worked really hard over the last seven+ months to shift my perspective from bitter to grateful on this one… but there is still a part of me that sees a flaw in the system. The topic? Maternity leave for small business owners in Canada. I’ve been working […]