Preparing for Maternity Leave 2.0

Just 18 months after the birth of my first child, I’m due with my second and preparing for a second round of maternity leave.

My goal?

To reduce THINKING in the first 30 days, not to eliminate 100% of my work.

If I can have emails drafted, reminders set up, and content approved by my clients even if I have to just go in, copy paste, and hit publish, that will help me expedite things.

Hot take: I don’t mind working 15-30 minutes here and there during maternity leave. Shock? Horror? Ha!

I run an unconventional business and despite my absolute best and thorough preparations, I will still need to hop online to address items. But in the first 30 days when my brain is mush and my body is healing, keeping my time online limited and specific to more “copy paste” activities helped SO much the first time around.

It also feels virtually impossible to finalize every single detail before this baby comes.

With my first son I actually craved the stimulation work provides after 2-3 weeks being completely off. My brain needed to focus on something other than my baby or myself for a few minutes. It actually helped improve my postpartum experience and mental health to plug in to work and check a few things off the list.

Shock? Horror?

That worked for me.

I am all for months of paid parental leave. It should be an option for everyone.

But my brain and business require a different approach.

And that’s okay.

One example of a system I’m putting in place this week is creating calendar events that have auto-reminders 30 minutes and 5 minutes before I need to hit “send” or “upload” something.

If you are reading this as an entrepreneur who has taken or is preparing for parental leave, how did you prepare?