When brows­ing through my Google reader today, I stum­bled upon an irre­sistible pic­ture of the Noonie on Baby­gad­get.

The Noonie caught my eye as a smart and styl­ish baby swad­dle; designed and man­u­fac­tured by US Mumpre­neur and cre­ative designer Lalas Pequenos, based in Vir­ginia. It looks so cud­dly I almost feel inspired to try for another baby just to have an excuse to buy one.

Accord­ing to her pro­file, Lalas is the mother of two ‘very busy boys’ aged 7 and 8 and wants to cre­ate keep­sake, envi­ron­men­tally con­scious and entirely hand­crafted items which she sells online. What I was even more impressed by, how­ever, that this Mom not only man­ages her fam­ily as well as her busi­ness and makes gor­geous swad­dles. Along with her fam­ily and busi­ness part­ners, she also owns a 1500 acre pri­mary rain for­est in Costa Rica and a por­tion of all pro­ceeds from the Lala’s Pequeños line go to help pre­serve the Rain­maker Con­ser­va­tion Project.

In other words: she proves that Cor­po­rate Social Resposi­bil­ity is not a lux­ury, but also some­thing small busi­nesses can do. That is a word worth spreading!

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Some peo­ple  are very lucky — their friends have babies more or less at the same time, and they sim­ply con­tinue to social­ize in the same group they always did, only now with kids instead of without.

If that is you — con­grat­u­la­tions, you just got your­self your very own playgroup!

But some­times it is not that easy to find or form a play­group. Your friends might have kids, but they are already in school-age. If you are one of the first in your cir­cle of friends to have a baby, you might find your­self very much alone in the new role as mother or father: by all means, stay in touch with your pre-baby friends and col­leagues, but it is unlikely that they will take a morn­ing off work every week to hang out with you and your baby. And it is even less likely that they will feel the need that you do to dis­cuss feed­ing, dia­pers and how to choose a booster seat.  If you have relo­cated after hav­ing a child and are new to the area you live in, the chal­lenge is of course similar.

In other words: you sim­ply might not know any­one your age in your area who stays at home with kids. As many play­groups are very infor­mal, they don’t exactly post ads in the paper about when they meet. The good news are that if you start look­ing, you will find what you need, because there are many other par­ents out there in the same sit­u­a­tion — and whom you have a lot to offer. You just have to find each other! Here are some online and offline tips that I hope you will find helpful.

1. Think through what would work best for your child. Your child first and fore­most needs play­mates more or less the same age. But even a child who is a year older or younger than your child may be a nice play­mate who can teach your child skills in asso­ci­at­ing with chil­dren out­side their com­fort zone. Your child might also have spe­cial needs, and for exam­ple need to meet chil­dren who also have a sim­i­lar chal­lenge. If you have sev­eral chil­dren, you might either want to find a group where sib­lings are also brought along — or should play­group time per­haps become some­thing you do only with your youngest, while the oth­ers are at school?

2. Think through what would work best for you. Remem­ber — play­group Mums should also be friends mate­r­ial, so that the play­group can become that sup­port group and sister/brotherhood  that YOU need and not only a place where your kid can play. And it should be for the long-term. So, what kind of other Mums or Dads do you want to make friends with? Are you a sin­gle par­ent, and would it feel very impor­tant to team up with oth­ers in the same sit­u­a­tion? Would you like to get to know other stay-at-home Mums ? Or Mums who com­bine a career and kids? Per­haps you speak a sec­ond lan­guage and would like to have a play­group in which you can prac­tice that lan­guage? Or per­haps you would feel most com­fort­able with moth­ers who are active in church or with a par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion? One you know what you are look­ing for, it is eas­ier to find the right group to join or the right peo­ple to form a group with.

3. Start ask­ing around. Word-of-mouth are surely the best ways to find oth­ers in the same sit­u­a­tion, or exist­ing play­groups. So start by ask­ing your friends, neigh­bors and col­leagues if they have peo­ple in their social net­work who recently have had a baby. If you went to a par­ent­ing class dur­ing preg­nancy, and you liked the peo­ple you got to know there, I am sure you already have a few num­bers to call. Are you the par­ent of a school-aged child as well? If so, ask the moms of your child’s class­mates for play­group sug­ges­tions. If your child is in day­care, make an effort to strike up con­ver­sa­tion with other par­ents when bring­ing or pick­ing up your child, and ask if they are inter­ested in meet­ing up or if they are in a fun play­group. Don’t for­get your pedi­a­tri­cian — he or she meets many moth­ers in your area and could help con­nect­ing you to an exist­ing group or to other moth­ers.  And why not get your spouse to ask about play­groups to co-workers in case some have spouses and chil­dren at home?

4. Check out the bul­letin boards at shops in your neigh­bor­hood, par­tic­u­larly those where par­ents may shop. The gro­cery store is an obvi­ous one, but also keep an eye out for fly­ers in for exam­ple mater­nity shops, children’s cloth­ing stores, toy stores,  the post offices and the local library. The library — or the museum — might also organ­ise story-telling time and crafts activ­i­ties for small kids, where you can go and meet other par­ents and kids. If you are a mem­ber of a church, they surely do the same.

5. Check online direc­to­ries. You can of course sim­ply Google for a play­group in your area. There are also great web­sites ded­i­cated to play­groups and includ­ing play­group loca­tors, such as www.mommyandme.com,but you would have to find one that focuses on your coun­try.  If, as me, you live in Europe, you will find that many of these sites cater to the US. A great gen­eral tip is to look at meetup.com — many groups for par­ents and kids are listed there, and you will auto­mat­i­cally be pro­posed a group which is in your area.

6. Don’t just jump in — feel your way first. So if you go for an estab­lished play­group, call up the play­group leader first. Explain openly what kind of play­group you are look­ing for and don’t be shy to ask as many ques­tions on the phone that come to mind before you decide whether or not this seems to be for you. It is also wise to first ask to come once as a guest, and just check it out and see if you feel com­fort­able. Ask a friend to go with you — even if she is not inter­ested in join­ing a play­group, at least you won’t feel all alone dur­ing this first visit, and two pairs of ears and eyes always see more than one.  Once there, lis­ten more than you speak and remem­ber that although I am sure you are a super-nice and socia­ble per­son, adults take a long time to warm up to each other. We feel our lives are already so busy, we don’t have time for more friends! Also be tol­er­ant of the other chil­dren as well as your own child. Your child will likely cling to you dur­ing the first visit — don’t push him to join the other chil­dren if he feels more com­fort­able with you. Sim­ply go with him to the play­room to select a few toys to play with near you.

If you decide to join, great! You and your child are in for a lot of fun. If you decide that this group is not for you, make a polite excuse and get out of there! That next play­group may be just the one you will want to join instead.

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In many play­groups, the mem­bers sim­ply take turns host­ing the play­group in their own homes. Which is not only an afforable but also very warm and friendly way to organ­ise a suit­able venue. But espe­cially if the play­group is organ­ised in a home envi­ron­ment, it is use­ful to agree on some Ground Rules and take some sim­ple mea­sures, to keep it safe for every­body and avoid unnec­es­sary dam­age to your belong­ings. Because as much as your home prob­a­bly is adapted to the life of one tod­dler or two, it is quite dif­fer­ent to have per­haps as many as ten run­ning around.

- Own­er­ship. Spell it out the obvi­ous: every­one is respon­si­ble for safety. Although you’ll surely want to chat and relax, each Mum must actively keep at least one eye on their own children.

- Overview. Cleary decide in which area of your home the play­group par­tic­i­pants should stay — prefer­ably in an open space where the adults can sit down but always can see the kids. Check the floor care­fully for any small for­got­ten items and toys that tod­dlers could choke on. — Make sure that any gates in front of stairs are securely closed.

Don’t be shy to close off the rest of your home: lock the door to your home office and if pos­si­ble, try to close off the kitchen so that no chil­dren can wan­der in there unsu­per­vised. Also put toys that you know your child for sure does not want to share or would not like to see get bro­ken, in one of the off-limits rooms.

- Pro­tec­tion. In the area you do pro­vide as play space, remove all frag­ile items or at least put them out of tod­dler reach. Cover that white couch with a blan­ket that eas­ily can be thrown in the wash.

- Pro­vide a cen­tral play point. Put a blan­ket on the floor in the mid­dle of the room, and put the toys you would like to share in the group on it. It will  make it an invit­ing place for the kids to sit and play together in a place where you can see them.

- Make it pos­si­ble for them to run around safely. Remove any rugs on which kids who run around play­ing hide-and-seek eas­ily could trip and fall. If you have fur­ni­ture with sharp cor­ners, con­sider plac­ing cor­ner covers.

- Stay healthy. Agree that any child (or Mum) with a fever, stom­ach virus or other trans­mit­table dis­ease stays away from the play­group meet­ing. Agree that all kids wash their hands before they grab the snacks.

-  Keep it spill-free. Serve the kids drinks in small car­tons with straws, and serve tea and cof­fee to the adults in lid­ded cups, such as the Mum­my­Mug™, to avoid spillage and scalds. Never ever leave for exam­ple a ket­tle or a teapot on the table, but serve and put it back in the kitchen.

- But just in case… Check in advance where you have your first aid kit and that it is still prop­erly stocked with band aids — so you know where to look should an acci­dent still happen.

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This week, one mil­lion kids aged 6 months to 4 years are get­ting vac­ci­nated against the H1N1 virus/swine flu/‘mexican flu’ in the Nether­lands. I believe the Nether­lands is pretty late in get­ting this done: Swe­den for instance is much fur­ther in the vac­ci­na­tion pro­gramme. Usu­ally one would of course say bet­ter late than never, but as Eleonore already had the flu last week (and served me quite a Mom­pre­neur challenge/juggling act), I would rather say this one comes a lit­tle bit late for us.

In good Dutch order, it is not oblig­a­tory to have your kid vac­ci­nated, you may as a par­ent choose. I must admit I had sec­ond thoughts — not about the vac­cine itself, as I know many do, because I belong to the group who trust it is a wise thing to get vaccinated.

But I did have my sec­ond thoughts about sit­ting in the the assum­ingly mega-long queues to get the injec­tion, that I imag­ined undoubt­edly would have to be part of an oper­a­tion involv­ing vac­ci­na­tion of 1 mil­lion kids in 1 week. I mean, 1 mil­lion in one sin­gle week  — how could it otherwise??

But again, also in good Dutch order, if you choose to go along with the gov­ern­ment, you will be well taken care of. You bet­ter also do what they say, and exactly what they say: you bet­ter show up on the exact day, place and time allo­cated; indi­cated within a half hour slot, lest you go with­out. No sec­ond chance at your fam­ily doc­tors. The invi­ta­tion let­ter we got con­tained a full page of instruc­tions in tiny let­ters, where each postal code area was sorted on even and uneven house­num­bers — this was the way to trace ‘your’ slot. Be there or be square.

And — did it work or did it work! I think there were more per­son­nel than (ner­vous) kids and (even more ner­vous) par­ents at the large tent that had been put up in the Zuider­park in The Hague, which was our place to go to to get the injec­tion. Within less than 15 min­utes, we had parked, entered, reg­is­tered, found a nurse, sat through the painful sting, got­ten the reward (a col­or­ing pic­ture, suit­ably involv­ing a dinosaur and giant injec­tion nee­dle and lots of band aids — I assume to de-traumatise all the lit­tle ones by let­ting them colour it what­ever color after­wards),  and were out the door again. In fact — noth­ing but smiles all around, from all the staff, and mirac­u­lously (almost) from the kids, who seemed to sur­vive the expe­ri­ence just fine. Well done Holland.

And if you won­der — Eleonore did GREAT! She was so brave, I’m of course very proud ;-) But she did paint her dinosaur blue after­wards, and she did fill the injec­tion nee­dle next to him with imag­i­nary bright red blood, so I assume it was more scary than she wanted to show… !

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06.32.
Luck­ily we wake up this morn­ing and note a good devel­op­ment: Eleonore’s fever down to a mere 37.2! She still coughs, she still has a throat so sore, that it actu­ally makes her cry in her sleep, poor thing. But still. Good sign! I was not that sur­prised, as she was sweat­ing pro­fusely a cou­ple of times dur­ing the night (of course I had been wak­ing up at every unex­pected sound she made, as the aware­ness that swine flu can cause sud­den breath­ing prob­lems has taken total hold of my unconscious).

07h30. Morn­ing rou­tine over. Includ­ing feed­ing Eleonore a cock­tail of Tam­i­flu, parac­eta­mol, vit­a­mines and cough drink. I feel slightly more awake after three — yes, no less — strong cof­fees with foamed milk.

07h40. We snug­gle up on the couch and watch the daily must-see show in the Nether­lands at this time of year (well — at least if you’re either 5 years of age or younger, or the par­ent of such a child): the Sin­terk­laasjour­naal.  The daily adven­tures, every year the same of course, of St Nicholas, that arrives to the Nether­lands from Spain on a real steamer around 17 Novem­ber with an army of cheer­ing and slightly stu­pid helpers, Zwarte Pieten, is greeted by the crowds in har­bours all over the Nether­lands. Lit­er­ally. Then Sint and his Pieten keep the kids in the coun­try in an iron grip until 5 Decem­ber, when it is time for presents. And every day in the mean­time, you’d bet­ter be pre­pared. Every evening, the shoe will be set at the fire­place, and sugar lumps and car­rots need to be placed in it, for Sint’s horse, Amerigo.…and in the morn­ing it bet­ter be filled with mini-gingercookies (‘peper­noten’) and a suited small gift. Or the sprout will be veeeery unhappy.  I know, because once, I for­got. Never hav­ing grown up with this tra­di­tion, how­ever, I for­gave myself (and could luck­ily blame the Sint…!)

07h30. Laundy Nr 1 in the wash­ing machine. 30 degrees. Of course. It works!

07h45. Com­puter on! Scan­ning through the emails that have arrived since 23h30, when I switched it off last night. Check out my Twit­ter mes­sages. I have two replies on one of my blog posts — in Russ­ian! Cool. I Google trans­late and reply. Find an inter­est­ing blog post by A Mod­ern Mother on [expat/bilingual] kids and their accents. Makes me smile. Fire off a quick com­ment — this com­mu­nity I’d be proud to become part of. 

9h05. Oups. Realise I have got­ten caught in emails, blogs and the rest and left the TV on a bit longer than planned. Eleonore does not seem to mind (sur­prise). I decide her fever is low enough that she can han­dle a real shower (last few days, the wash­ing has been some­what more lim­ited) includ­ing hair wash. She dis­agrees. I win. In the end she is clean. But must admit she screams louder.

09h25. Laun­dry Nr 1 in  dryer. Laun­dry Nr 2 in wash­ing machine.

9h30. Call the accoun­tant to make an appoint­ment for next week. We need to dis­cuss the monthly report­ing to the share­hold­ers, the new tax break that Dutch com­pa­nies will have as of 2010 on income gen­er­ated from patents (yes!!! we could qual­ify for a 5% cor­po­rate tax rate! incred­i­ble!), the reclaim of VAT paid in Ger­many dur­ing our par­tic­i­pa­tion in Kind&Jugend in Sep­tem­ber and some other bits and pieces.

9h45. Yes. Find a con­fir­ma­tion in my email of the arrange­ment of a major ship­ment out of Thai­land, that I’ve been try­ing to make hap­pen dur­ing the last week. 

10h30.  Eleonore takes the lead. She decides to turn the liv­ing room into a beauty salon. We curl her veeery straight and (to be bru­tally hon­est) rather thin hair. And she sur­prises me by being able to paint her nails — all by her­self, with total con­cen­tra­tion and no spillage. And in two colors!

10h55. Nose bleed alert! She gets them often, espe­cially when she is sick. Not very nice. But at least we know how to deal with it. After 15 min of care­ful nose pinch­ing, we’re both con­fi­dent it must be over — which it is.

11h12 A.M. My busi­ness part­ner Vik­tor is on the phone. I share with him some ideas I have after hav­ing read Crush It last night. Now, this one gives so much inspi­ra­tion that it will require a whole new blog post! Which I can’t write today — so keep check­ing in if you’re inter­ested to know my twist on this (because I do assume you have also read it?) ;-) 

11h13  Eleonore starts mak­ing presents for Amigo, Sin­ter Klaas’ horse. I cheer her on from the side­lines while talk­ing to Vik­tor. After I have hung up I help her wrap car­rots and sugar lumps in home-made gift paper and place them in the shoe by the stove — by the way, this year; she has cho­sen to use a 2 inch hot pink stiletto heal strap san­dal of mine. Hm. Last year, it was a rub­ber boot. Guess she is grow­ing up!

11h20 Laun­dry No 2 in dryer. Laun­dry No 3 in wash­ing machine. Hor­rey — last one for today!

11h30 Oh no. Thai part­ner calls to say that the local ship­ping agent has not been in touch as sched­uled. Gotta work the phone. Man­age to make sure ship­per has num­ber of con­tact per­son at the pickup address and vice versa. 

11h55 OK. Time for lunch. No small task as Eleonore basi­cally refuses to eat because of her throat pain. After try­ing every trick in the book, I do man­age to get her to eat a half a sandwich.

12h30. I decide for myself that Eleonore will not be eter­nally dam­aged from watch­ing another video. Espe­cially since we set­tle on a Swedish, veeeery edu­ca­tional one. That is at least mak­ing my con­scious a lit­tle lighter ;-) I snug­gle up next to her with com­puter on my lap.

13h06. Last laun­dry goes into the dryer.

13h08. Eleonore’s fever down to 36.7! Happy!!

13h10.  We start an ecclec­tic ver­sion of  our Winne de Pooh mem­ory board game, accord­ing to Eleonore Bru­tal Rules. I have no idea what the logic is, but hey, we spread out over the entire liv­ing room floor, I lose in the end (of course) but we both have fun!

13h38.  The mail arrives. I recieve some impor­tant doc­u­men­ta­tion about the progress of our trade mark reg­is­tra­tion in Japan — it is through! Mum­my­Mug™ is ready to roll and con­quer Tokyo! I also sit down to do some bank­ing errands. I love inter­net bank­ing. I pay my salary taxes, some pend­ing invoices and shift money between some com­pany accounts.  All done in less than 10 mins.

13h50. Eleonore comes up with a brill idea: let’s make a home video! Well — what the heck. Why not! I start charg­ing the bat­tery for the cam­era, is it has been in a drawer for a while. I start to feel that my lit­tle girl is really see­ing the end of the flu, she has her energy back.

13h53.  While the bat­tery charges, I return a call to a man­ager at ABN Amro Infor­mal Invest­ment Ser­vices in Ams­ter­dam. He’s asked me to speak at an event next week for start­ing entre­pre­neurs at Delft Uni­ver­sity. Of course most hon­ored to be invited — my sec­ond speak­ing engagement! 

14h15 Empty the dish­washer and clean up in the kitchen. I hear Eleonore talk­ing to her­self as she is invent­ing her own games in her room. Seems she is turn­ing the doll house into a sta­ble. I really enjoy hear­ing her a bit ener­getic and happy again.

14h42Viktor calls to debrief on progress in dis­cus­sions with a poten­tial major dis­trib­u­tor. Good news ! We are slowly but surely sync-ing, which is a really awe­some per­spec­tive. Me happy ;-) 

15h15. Eleonore runs out of steam very sud­denly, and wants PANCAKES — NOW! Luck­ily there is still a pack of pan­cake meal in the cup­board, because shop­ping is not pos­si­ble today. No leav­ing the house with this flu.

15h30. We engage with heart and soul — as always — in the pan­cake adven­ture. Home video idea long for­got­ten. Eleonore also decides to make a side dish: a home­made soup of water, salt, pep­per and some other spices she gets her hands on. Really fun — until it spills ocer her hand and stings her badly, she had a lit­tle wound on the fin­ger. Oh dear. We eat pan­cakes on the couch while the tears stream down her cheeks.

15h55. Time for another video. Don’t feel guilty this time, it is about all that she can man­age. She clearly needs a cud­dle, so I snug­gle up next to her on the couch with the com­puter on my lap/ I watch Snowwhite with one eye (to be able to grab her hand when it gest scary) and start typ­ing away.

17h00. Oh dear. it takes 30 mins to con­vince her to take that last dose of Tam­i­flu. Glad this is over!

18h00. Din­ner

18h30. Early night for the lit­tle one. She surely needs the sleep.

So. That was my day. Seam­less or schit­zofrenic — what do you think??  Admit­tedly not the most stan­dard one for me, as Eleonore is not sick every day (luck­ily!). And I do work out of an office (often). And I have only one kid to take care of — I know there are many out there who jug­gle it with many more!

Any­one who finds this being too sim­i­lar to their daily rou­tine though: can rec­om­mend read­ing the excel­lent blog on hire­my­par­ents! Today: 6 Work Life bal­ance tips for chron­i­cally over­whelmed par­ents. Whole site really worth a visit!

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So — there was no escape in the end. The swine flu has hit the Nether­lands really hard the last cou­ple of weeks, and although I stuck my head in the sand and hoped we would stay clear of it: broad-scale vac­ci­na­tions are sched­uled to start Nov 24th, we would of course each get an injec­tion and after that we would be home free.

Now. Well. That was kind of wish­ful think­ing more than a plan.

Because yes­ter­day it started to hap­pen: Muu­u­uum, I have a sore throat.… Muuum, I’m tired… Two hours later I sat with a very sick child in my arms. And moth­ers being what moth­ers are, and I no dif­fer­ent from the rest, noth­ing else mat­tered any­more. A pow­er­ful thing, this flu, it really hits when it hits.  Know­ing that there is a very small but still a real risk it can poten­tially even kill per­fectly healthy peo­ple of course also makes it an out­right scary expe­ri­ence to see your most loved one have it.

The obvi­ous con­se­quence was of course that my well-thought out work plan for the week was out the win­dow and swapped for one totally arranged around what now had to come first, sec­ond and third: TLC 24/7 and all else I can give to help her through this, includ­ing the readi­ness every sec­ond to act, should she turn out to need med­ical attention.

And I am sure that I share this with all moth­ers out there. That re-prioritizing hap­pens instantly — you just do that.  No mat­ter how many items were marked URGENT in bright red on that care­fully worked out To Do-list, no mat­ter how ambi­tious we feel when everyone’s healthy. At the time of mak­ing the plan­ning last Fri­day, it would have been com­pletely impos­si­ble to imag­ine I would not pay imme­di­ate atten­tion to exe­cu­tion as of Mon­day morn­ing, as I am a fan of plan­ning and struc­ture — and delivery.

I’d of course lie if I said that it does not at all mat­ter that my work week sud­denly was not going to hap­pen — of course it mat­ters; there are impor­tant things for my busi­ness that now will have to wait a bit, net­work­ing events that will be missed, as well as that bi-weekly choir reherseal that does noth­ing for my busi­ness, but won­ders for me and my well being.

But each time such a sit­u­a­tion arises, I am so amazed to see — no, to really feel — that it is a re-prioritizing in the heart, not with the head. I’m sure every Mum out there under­stands what I mean. It has con­se­quences, some things I am dis­ap­pointed I will sim­ply miss. But OK. So be it. The world will still turn, the com­pany will not instantly fall apart and I rest in the con­vic­tion that I need to focus on what mat­ters most. Period.

I am quite a fem­i­nist and have been known to be a vocal sup­porter of the view that men and women, fathers and moth­ers, should share this respon­si­bil­ity equally for their chil­dren, and equally ‘sac­ri­fice’ their careers. There should be no auto­matic assump­tion — as admit­tedly there is in our fam­ily — that the woman should be the one tak­ing it on herself.

But truth be told: since I have become a mother myself, I have realised that in this kind of sit­u­a­tion, I do not want to be the one leav­ing in the morn­ing and won­der dur­ing the day from a dis­tance how she is doing. I want to be the one on the couch hold­ing her hand. Biol­ogy or not — that is just the way I feel, and as much as I still want equal­ity in soci­ety, I’ll stand for that feeling.

Luck­ily daugh­ter and I still had an OK night (thanks to some Tamil­flu, lots of lemon­ade and even more parac­eta­mol) and have made it through the day (thanks to a com­fort­able couch, an abun­dant stock of DVDs and — thank God — a well-stocked fridge) with­out too much suf­fer­ing. Yes, pre­cious is clearly sick and this flu is clearly nasty, but so far she’s rid­ing out the storm quite well.  Thank God. First day over.

And luck­ily — it is actu­ally still pos­si­ble to do quite a lot.  To take a phonecall, fire off an email, in between giv­ing sips of drink, mak­ing tem­per­a­ture mea­sure­ments, giv­ing cud­dles and chang­ing the DVD. It is pos­si­ble to do what I do now: to ham­mer away at a new blog post, now that she has fallen into a rest­less sleep, and I can take lit­tle breaks in the writ­ing to check on her when needed. So I do feel con­fi­dent I will still get at least those very most urgent urgent mat­ters worked off that list in spite of it all, actu­ally almost effort­lessly and totally in between.

Mod­ern tech­nol­ogy, and hav­ing cho­sen the risky but free career of an entre­pre­neur, of course facil­i­tates this flex­i­bil­ity, as I, as self-employed, am priv­i­leged not tied to an office or to office hours. Very under­stand­ably one of the main rea­sons — is my guess any­way– so many of my fel­low car­ing and ambi­tious Mums out there have cho­sen to start their own busi­ness or a WAHM freelance/parttime from home. We can have the cake and eat it.

Now. Please wish me luck — because if I now come down myself now with that smack-bang fever, I’ll nei­ther be able to care for my lit­tle girl, blog nor tick off that list for my busi­ness.….…. So I sup­posed I am back to where I started — some­what naively stick­ing my con­vic­tion that I’ll sill tbe home free. Time will tell.

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Sat­ur­day morn­ing — bliss­fully quiet! Hus­band and daugh­ter has vis­ited fam­ily and are not expected back yet for a few hours. So, how bet­ter to use the time than to stay in bed a bit longer, sip a cof­fee (from a Mum­my­Mug — of course!) and reflect a moment on being a Mompreneur.

I came across the term Mom­pre­neur about half a year ago and instinc­tively felt I must be one. Sort of. Broadly speak­ing. I am a mother and I am an entre­pre­neur and I even make things for Mums. But what is that, actu­ally, a Mom­pre­neur? An entre­pre­neur who also is a mother, or a WAHM mother that is also an entre­pre­neur? Is it impor­tant to even thin about such detail? Yes, I believe so. Names, cat­e­gories and labels that we choose for our­selves send sig­nals to oth­ers about who we are. Per­haps good to match one’s expec­ta­tions on what that sig­nal is with the real­ity out there!

I see myself as much as a mother as I am an entre­pre­neur. I don’t want to choose, actu­ally, which is more impor­tant in my life. I did not choose to become an entre­pre­neur because I am a mother in any case — but I must admit that the flex­i­bil­ity that my entre­pre­neur­ial work gives me in terms of where and how I work — also greatly facil­i­tated by tech­nol­ogy of course — facil­i­tates my role as a mother. On the other hand being an entre­pre­neur is such a great respon­si­bil­ity that it also takes away the full free­dom to ‘mother’: I can’t imag­ine who would grant me mater­nity leave from my com­pany, should I get preg­nant again. In my old job, I sim­ply told my boss that I would not return to my desk for 6 months (yes, folks, that was pos­si­ble to piece together in Bel­gium where I lived at the time) and he just had to live with it — while I still picked up my pay check.

Curi­ous to hear from oth­ers out there what you put in the word. What kind of Mom­pre­neur are YOU? And how do you see other Mom­pre­neurs out there? What defines us? In any case, I do know that most of the women I have come across, for exam­ple at the incu­ba­tor in The Hague, the Nether­lands for entre­pre­neur­ial women where I have based my com­pany ( see www.womensbusinessinitiative.net ) I come across women who are as pas­sion­ate about busi­ness and their dreams as they are about their kids.

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