Some of you may know that in October 2025 my husband and I welcomed our first child – our amazing baby daughter – into the world. It’s been an incredible rollercoaster experience and I’m loving every second of being a parent. But as a self-employed director of Starboard, maternity leave has been relatively short for me!
For anyone running their own business, that kind of pause can feel daunting – especially if you’ve never done it before. There’s always that worry in the background: what happens while I’m gone? Will clients stick around if projects have to go on hold?
Making a plan (and trusting someone else)
Before I stepped back, I made a conscious decision not to simply down tools and disappear. I wanted clients to be supported, projects to be looked after, and things to continue calmly and professionally in my absence. That meant putting trust in the right person – and for me, that was my good friend Tom, who incidentally helped teach me HTML all those years ago when we met at Portsmouth Freelancers Meet.
I had a number of ongoing projects, one of which was due to be delivered in December. I got Tom involved in that from the off, knowing full well I wouldn’t be able to complete it myself. The others I fully intended to get mostly finished before the baby arrived.
Now, if you’ve had a baby, you’ll know these things don’t always go to plan. She arrived two weeks early, and I’d fully expected her to be two weeks late – which, as you can imagine, threw a bit of a spanner in the works!
Handing over the reins
Thankfully, Tom had been kept in the loop over the previous three months. I’d prepared multiple documents highlighting where each project was, including documentation, key contacts, and access to all my company systems. The only thing I planned to use my keep-in-touch days for was sending estimates and invoices.
Tom was very much at the helm of my company, answering emails and keeping things moving.
I’d fully intended to send an email to clients a couple of weeks before my due date, but baby had other ideas. So Tom had the fun task of telling clients he was now in charge! Everyone was incredibly supportive, patient, and understanding, which made the whole process so much easier.
I’d been nervous all year about handing my business over to someone else, as I’d never done that in nearly 20 years of freelancing. But both the clients and Tom made sure I didn’t have to worry.
Coming back to work
Coming back to work hasn’t felt like a dramatic “return” or a rush to catch up. Opening my inbox again definitely meant things got busy quickly, but everyone has been very welcoming, and it’s been genuinely lovely flexing my brain muscles again and picking up projects I started last year as well as some new ones!
I’m incredibly grateful: to Tom for keeping things running smoothly, to clients for their patience and trust, and to myself for allowing the business to pause without panic.
Why I’m back (but not quite fully!)
So why am I back at work so soon?
My husband and I are incredibly fortunate that the company he works for offers a very generous shared parental leave scheme. Because I’m self-employed, maternity pay is almost non-existent, so he’s taking the majority of the leave and will be off for six months.
Because he’ll never get the opportunity to have this much time off again (and because I can take my work anywhere) we’re using this time to visit family on the other side of the world. We’ll be spending five weeks in New Zealand from the beginning of February (and kicking off my 40th year in style!) and visiting both the north and south islands!
I’ll be checking in on emails and keeping projects ticking over while I’m away, but I don’t want to miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime trip, so Tom will be keeping things running here in the UK.
If you have a project you’d like to talk to me about, I’ll be fully back to work from 23rd March, and we can get the ball rolling in the meantime.
