Six Tips For Planning Maternity Leave As A Public Health Consultant
In October 2019, I had my second child. A little girl. When I announced my pregnancy and later her birth, I started getting lots of questions about how to plan maternity leave as an independent consultant. Leave plans will definitely vary based on each consultant’s circumstances (e.g., type of services, financial status, partner status, etc.) but I think the six tips below are relevant across the board:
1. Ask Yourself: What Does My Ideal Maternity Leave Look Like?
A colleague recommended that I follow a public health consultant named Arianna Taboada, MSW, MSPH. She specializes in helping entrepreneurs and businesses plan maternity leaves. She has several blog and podcast resources that are really helpful. During her interview on the Get Paid Podcast, she asks: “What does your ideal maternity leave look like?” I think that’s a great place to start…and then you can determine what is do-able based on your workload, financial goals, etc.
2. Start Planning Early
I started planning right away. Many client contracts and other commitments are planned 6-12 months in advance, so I wanted to quickly get a handle on everything:
I reviewed my current commitments to see how they lined up with my due date. I moved a few things from fall to summer so that I had more cushion.
I reviewed my plans for professional development (e.g., conferences/courses) to see if I could still attend or should push until next year.
I started reviewing my business financials to determine how leave may impact my income for the year (including a review of expenses to see what I need to break even each month).
I started telling clients and colleagues about the pregnancy after 20 weeks:
My pregnancy was high risk (aka: I was a nervous wreck!), so I felt most comfortable telling people after our anatomy scan was normal.
In 2019, all my work was conducted via email, video, and phone calls so I could wait much longer to tell versus if I had in-person commitments. You may need to tell people earlier if your projects involve travel or face-to-face time. Speak with your doctor about what is safe for you travel-wise (and this may change unexpectedly- see tip #4!)
Telling people a little later gave me time to put a plan in place before discussing it with clients. People are much happier when you approach them with a specific plan so they know you aren’t abandoning them.
3. Be Realistic About Your Finances
I recommend blocking time on your schedule to sit down and review your finances. If you have an accountant or bookkeeper, schedule time to review this with them. Some questions to consider:
How long can you take leave with reduced or zero income? If you have employees, subcontractors, or passive income products, you may still have money coming in during leave (wahoo!) But if not, you need to consider how long your household can handle the loss. Or how it can be balanced by taking on additional work early in your pregnancy to be able to take a break later. This is especially challenging for consultants who are single parents or the sole income for their households.
Review your passive income streams (if applicable) Many of us sell products like ebooks and online courses. If you have these- fantastic! They may help money keep coming in during your leave. Do you have time/capacity to add to your library of products before leave to hopefully bump your income?
Revisit your rates. I’ve posted previously about important considerations for developing your rates. In that post, I cite Dr. Barrington’s calculation for daily rates. You need to consider billable time, overhead, and desired salary in her calculation…and all of those can be affected by having a baby. So definitely revisit your rate calculation with updated numbers. It is very possible that you will need to increase your rates to accommodate your new life with baby.
4. Plan For The Unexpected
While I hope that every reader of this post has a very easy, healthy, and full-term pregnancy, I recommend planning for the unexpected. You need a back-up plan just in case you or the baby end up with any health complications that impact your ability to work and/or travel to clients.
When complications arose with my first pregnancy in 2014, I was completely unprepared. I had client commitments until 36 weeks, which I thought gave me plenty of cushion. Unfortunately, I was hospitalized at 31 weeks for preterm labor and my son was born just a few days later. He spent a month in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, over three months on an apnea monitor at home, needed lots of follow-up appointments, and could not be in a daycare setting due to infection risk. I ended up needing to take eight months away from my business. Very unexpected.
So I recommend arranging for back-up support for your business. Do you have consulting colleagues that provide similar services? If so, get connected and arrange to partner so that you can offer clients a smooth transition when you go out on leave- especially if leave is sooner or longer than expected! You can also look into virtual assistant services to help with administrative and automation tasks to keep your business running.
With my second pregnancy, I stopped client work earlier and had colleagues I could tap for back-up support. Good thing because my daughter also arrived early at 35 weeks!
5. Plan For BOTH Maternity Leave & Re-Entry
I’m glad I got this tip from podcasts and blogs, because I hadn’t given it enough thought. I was focused on taking a few months off and then just assumed I’d jump back into my previous level at work. But it can be helpful to think about if you’ll have a gradual re-entry, e.g., working part-time at first or holding off on travel until baby is X months old. This can be especially helpful if you have a hard physical recovery and/or no one is sleeping much.
I planned a gradual re-entry this time around and it’s been so helpful! I had an unexpected c-section, so my physical recovery ended up being much slower. In addition, the sleep deprivation was much worse than expected. My daughter has a milk protein allergy that wasn’t diagnosed until she was nine weeks old. So my husband and I had many nights with just one or two hours of sleep while she screamed and screamed. There is no way I could have worked.
The other important consideration for re-entry: childcare. Once you figure out what re-entry looks like, start exploring your plans for childcare. Just promise me you won’t try to work full-time while caring for your child full-time. You need help. Because kids are unpredictable. It doesn’t matter if your baby naps every day from 1-3pm. On the day of your conference call, they will 100% wake up with a fever or go on a nap strike.
6. Stay Visible
It can be hard to stand out in a sea of consultants. It feels scary to go out on leave after you’ve worked so hard to run a successful business and bring in clients. It feels like people will forget about you.
So one thing I worked on during maternity leave planning was strategies to stay visible during leave. I was able to write and schedule blog and Instagram posts. I engaged several guest writers during this time, which is a great way to offer new content when you’re unavailable. I also stayed pretty active on twitter and planned a great collaboration for early in my re-entry period. My online course is always open for enrollment, so people could access that even during my absence.
Real life: I wasn’t able to be as visible as I hoped because my daughter arrived a month early when I was in the middle of batch writing blog content (see tip #4 about the unexpected!) But I was able to stay present enough that it didn’t look like I fell off the face of the planet.
So give some thought to:
Writing/scheduling social media content for your preferred platforms. Many things can be automated so you can simultaneously snuggle your baby and post content!
Re-purposing blog/podcast content during your leave - so many of us have a great backlog of work- think about how to re-share it when you are unable to create new content.
Planning projects or collaborations early in your return that will help get your name back out there to your ideal client/s.
I’d love to hear from consultants reading this post. What other tips do you have for going out on maternity or other types of leave? Please share stories so we can learn from your successes and challenges!