Bringing a baby into the Think Creative Collective brand might derail the entire thing.

This is something that I (Emylee) have thought about every day since we got ready for our home study part of the adoption process. Once you’re “approved” you can go from childless to having a baby in a matter of hours, days or weeks. That means our two-woman shop might at any second (literally) have a baby to factor in.

Having a baby affects nearly every parent’s job, but there’s something a little extra scary when you work for yourself. Even scarier when you have a business partner whose salary depends on you doing your part.

There have been 5 times now where we’ve gotten “the call”. Those waiting on adoption know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s the most agonizing wait I’ve ever done in my life. You do the work to get approved, have your home study, do your background checks….then you wait. You wait for the phone to ring and the other person say, “there’s a baby for you”.

Now, obviously, not all of those worked out (seeing as we still have no baby), but they were all terrifying. They ranged from “baby is here, can you be on standby?” to “baby is due in 2 months”.

We’ve said yes to all of them, but not all of them said yes to us. That hurts.

But every time that phone rang and there was a potential baby situation, Abagail had to know. This isn’t a normal friend situation where you call when it feels appropriate. Nope, she was always one of the first to know (if not the first, depending on where we were).

Because this affects her. This could affect our business which means it could affect our income.

That’s terrifying.

When we actually started the home study process back in December 2015 we had some serious discussions as to how this would all work. It’s one of the main reasons we started to say “no” to 1:1 client work in January.

We knew we couldn’t be building a business that 100% relies on our presence to bring in money. It’s why we said “heck to the yes” to figuring out passive income streams in February. It’s why we worked our asses off for a few months to set up systems that would (hopefully) pay off soon (spoiler alert: they did).

But bringing in a baby is still terrifying. We’re both currently childless so it will be a first for all of us.

We’ve heard so many things about parenthood:

People say I’ll never sleep!
They say I won’t want to go back to work!
They say my whole life will change!

It scares me to think that I won’t want to go back to work, because I love my job. I love the work I’m doing and I know the impact it has on other people’s lives. I truly want to be a working mother, but the unknown is terrifying.

So for now I’m soaking up these days in which I’m still childless. I’m enjoying the days I sleep in, the wine nights, the last minute out-of-town weekends. We’re paying attention to what our business needs and how we can set up more systems for it to run somewhat on its own.

As one half of the face of this brand I’m worried about what it’ll look like with a baby in the picture. I’m trusting in what we’ve built and crossing my fingers for sustainability.

If you’re a work-at-home parent, I’d love to hear from you (seriously)! I’d love to know all the tricks to make this run smoothly (if that’s even a thing). I’d love to hear how you balance the two and when or how you actually get work done. Comment below so we can chat!