Trying to Find the Balance: Working Parents

By: Asif, Nicki, Jill & Andrea

Did you know that September 16th is National Working Parents Day? We missed it and I am sure that you did too. This is because being a working parent is tough and there seems to be no time to stop and celebrate the parents who are working to bring home the bacon while trying to raise decent human beings!

This week, The Boudoir Studio tackles the challenges of finding the balance between work life and family life. Finding the balance can be through trial and error or just learning how to perfect the juggling act. Check out each of our personal stories.

Nicki:

So for me, being a working parent can be described in one word: juggling. I am a stay-at-home mom who homeschools 3 of our 4 kids, but I also run our business from home. There is no place I’d rather be than home with my babies and I am so grateful that I can run our business from home! But my days are not leisurely by any means. Asif and I often say how the studio is our baby and really, running a business and parenting children have a lot of similarities. There is no “calling in” because I’m sick, I don’t “clock in or clock out,” I have to be ready to respond to needs when they arise and I don’t get to choose when that happens. My days are mostly a whirlwind of juggling my kids’ needs and the needs of the studio. Some days I feel really good about how I did with my babies, others days I feel really good about the work I got done for the studio, but rarely do I feel like I’ve been able to effectively manage both at the same time.

“Asif and I often say how the studio is our baby and really, running a business and parenting children have a lot of similarities.”

#block-yui_3_17_2_1_1569354611877_7280 .sqs-gallery-block-grid .sqs-gallery-design-grid { margin-right: -5px; }#block-yui_3_17_2_1_1569354611877_7280 .sqs-gallery-block-grid .sqs-gallery-design-grid-slide .margin-wrapper { margin-right: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px; }

“I realize that I don’t want any other option. I love my life and all its craziness.”

That’s why it’s a juggle - one baton is in the air while the other is being caught and I just try my best not to let anything fall. It certainly requires a lot from me. Would I love to have less on my plate? Sometimes I think so. . . But I guess I’m not so sure. My life and the juggling keeps me on my toes which forces me to stay sharp, to dig deep and find more strength and patience than I think I have, and I have to believe that it makes me better overall (minus the occasional breakdown!!) One thing is for sure, when I try to imagine my life differently - going to a job and coming home to my kids at the end of the day, or sending my kids to school full time, or not running a business with my wonderful teammate and husband - I realize that I don’t want any other option. I love my life and all its craziness. I am fortunate and privileged to be part of so many moments in my kids’ lives and run a business with the man I love. I know for sure I wouldn’t trade that for anything! So here’s to becoming a better juggler!

Jill:

I am a stay-at-home mom with my 4-year-old daughter with another baby on the way in a few short months. I am incredibly grateful that The Boudoir Studio allows me to work from home and blog every week without having to put my daughter in daycare. Just as soon as I felt as though I have achieved a good balance in my life, my husband and I decided it’s time to have another baby! But, let me tell you, it has been a journey for all of us to find our place within our functioning family unit. Four years ago, I was determined to be a working parent. I was working at The Boudoir Studio assisting sessions and editing. When I was editing photos I brought my newborn daughter with me. This was my first introduction to multitasking breastfeeding while editing on a computer. I also worked for Asif at the cafe in downtown Rochester! He fully supported me bringing my daughter in her little carrier while I helped him with the morning rush. I was also working my own photography business on the side all to help supplement our income. Let me be straight with you - I was terrified to be a stay-at-home mom. I was so lucky that I had jobs where I could have flexible scheduling and/or awesome bosses that allowed me to bring my baby at work.

“ I was terrified to be a stay-at-home mom. ”

As you can image, I quickly became burnt out. Not only was my daughter attached to me every single day at work, I was also taking on all the nighttime routines of feeding and changing her. I look back on it now and wonder how I managed it. There came a breaking point where my daughter started to need more of my attention as she was getting older and I needed to decide if I was going to work or care for my daughter full time. I took a break from the studio and left the cafe! I became a full-time stay at home mom and was slowly losing my sanity. Sometimes my husband was the only other adult that I would talk to for days on end. I felt as though I had so much more to offer to the world than to just be at home with my daughter (insert mom guilt here). One night, I decided that I would go back to school because I could do so many classes online!

#block-yui_3_17_2_1_1569354611877_12480 .sqs-gallery-block-grid .sqs-gallery-design-grid { margin-right: -5px; }#block-yui_3_17_2_1_1569354611877_12480 .sqs-gallery-block-grid .sqs-gallery-design-grid-slide .margin-wrapper { margin-right: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px; }

When I say, “I went back to school” it was “full steam ahead”. Full time, every semester and took 3 classes every summer. My daughter was sleeping through the night by this time so I worked and studied through the nights. I found that I was so much more efficient, happy and productive when I was juggling family life and school life. I even got married during my first semester of college! In August I graduated with my Associate’s degree within my 2-year plan with a 3.5 GPA.

This past spring, Asif offered me a blogging position at The Boudoir Studio which was graciously similar to the other jobs he has offered me: no childcare needed. I work from home with my weekly expectations, every month we all get together for a meeting which always feels like more fun than work. All of this makes it very difficult for me to identify as a “working parent” because I know that there are so many other people who have to leave their children every day Monday-Friday and are kicking butt, in their careers and their family lives. My experiences have just allowed me to be sympathetic to both stay-at-home moms and working moms. It is simply amazing that any of us get anything done!

Andrea:

Being a working parent has appeared in many different ways for me since having my first baby 3 1/2 years ago. After my daughter was born I initially went back to work as a nurse full time, this lasted about 5 months. I then went down to 3 days a week and that schedule stayed until my son was born. This is where things got crazy for me! Due to some mild complications, I was taken out of work almost a full month before my due date, then he was born just after the new year of 2018. 2018 was the year that in New York state the paid family leave act was put into place. This gave me my 8 weeks paid maternity leave plus an additional 8 weeks to take. Let me be the first to say that it is about time it is addressed that 6-8 weeks maternity leave is simply not enough. I could go on an entirely different rant about this that has to do with puppies, human babies, milk supply, mental health and about another 100 things on why we need more time off with our babies! That's for a different day though.

“ I started to have this feeling of dread the night before work. ”

So the time came for me to go back to my nursing job after having my son. At this point, looking back, I was a mess and certainly not ready. I think the fact that I wasn’t ready plays a huge role in the following events. I had two kids at home, a 3-month-old and a 21-month-old. My nursing job was a 45-minute commute and was always very busy. I only went back for two days this time, but those two days were so hard on me. When I just had one child, going back to work wasn’t terribly hard, but something shifted after having two. I started to have this feeling of dread the night before work. I was certain that something would happen that would need my immediate attention and I couldn’t simply walk out, and even if I could I had a good 45-minute drive home. I felt helpless. I would want to be anywhere but work and it would stress me out to the point that I would get a migraine. This didn’t help matters because, of course, at the time I was convinced it was work that was causing the migraine (certainly wasn’t all the stress and anxiety I was putting myself). How could I leave my kids to go someplace that made it so when I got home I was barely able to take care of them??

#block-yui_3_17_2_1_1569354611877_16497 .sqs-gallery-block-grid .sqs-gallery-design-grid { margin-right: -7px; }#block-yui_3_17_2_1_1569354611877_16497 .sqs-gallery-block-grid .sqs-gallery-design-grid-slide .margin-wrapper { margin-right: 7px; margin-bottom: 7px; }

Looking back now I think that had I been more ready to return to work it would have been a different outcome. I always believe that things work in-a-universe type way and everything works out in the end. It was also around this time when I started to really put all my effort into making the studio my main source of income. See for some reason shooting, editing, photoshop appointments didn’t cause me the same amount of stress or anxiety as it did at my other job. So I made the decision to quit and just have the studio be my primary income! Ultimately this has been the best decision.

So this brings us to the present day. So what's it like being a working parent now? It’s taken me 3 1/2 years but I am finally at a place where I have found some balance. I am just working at the studio. I can make my own schedule so I am smart about it. I know that my migraines usually happen at night so I try to schedule as much as I can in the mornings and afternoons. I am super open with my clients and in return, they’re so understanding so many of them are moms themselves! Just a few weeks ago I had a consult call where I called her a little late because I was doing a drug store run for Tylenol for my daughter who had spiked a pretty high temperature and was refusing to take liquid medication. So I am apologizing to her letting her know what was going on and she was so understanding it turned into a conversation of her telling me about how if my daughter was fighting the tablets, they did have a suppository. And it’s things like this that take away all that stress and anxiety about leaving my kids.

“It’s taken me 3 1/2 years but I am finally at a place where I have found some balance. ”

My kids are great about me leaving for work now. I typically schedule things when my husband is home so there isn’t the stress of getting them to a sitter, I can just get myself ready grab my keys and walk out the door solo. Being that the kids are just home with dad I am also not on someone else’s schedule. So if I am running late it’s just a quick text letting him know. No worries about how I have to get back to pick up the kids by a certain time. So just as I have this all figured out and things are running smooth, we’ve decided to add a third coming February, 2020!! I feel so much more confident in returning to work this time around though. I already have it planned that when I am ready to pick back up I will do it gradually and slowly take on more as I am ready!

Asif:

So Nicki and I were watching a stand up comedy show last night by Kevin Hart in which he joked about dads usually getting the role of being the “fun” parent. Speaking of working parents, our kids were asleep upstairs while we were both working away during “our time” in the office with the show playing in the background. Anyways, Kevin had some hilarious thoughts about the subject but what he said really struck a chord with me. While there are many hats to parenting beyond just being either the fun one or the bad guy, I want to take a minute to divulge my own not-so-fun struggles with being the “fun” one. I don’t believe there is a lot of “fun” in being the fun one at times. The role is scary, overwhelming, tiresome, downright intimidating and requires the best of you when you might not have much left in you at all.

Picture yourself coming home from a long hard day of work, you are exhausted and all you want to do is collapse on the couch once you get home or perhaps get a quick shut-eye. Just the thought sends you into a full-blown day dream of all the me-time you could possibly have. However, you roll up to the house and are greeted at the door by tiny people with the energy of ravenous giants who seem as if they were locked in solitary confinement all day and deprived of: let’s just say. . . LIFE!

They are so excited to see you and cannot contain their excitement, fists clenched, neck veins popping, screaming “daddy!!” through gritted teeth and like race horses they charge at you as if the gates just flew open. You either ante-up and charge full-steam ahead to meet the oncoming army with like-affection. You raise your energy to match theirs and wholeheartedly engage in play. Or you can opt to play the tyrant, call time-out and set everyone straight through fits of anger or you could choose to turn right back around and RETREAT! Not gonna lie, I’ve chosen all three options at times before.

#block-yui_3_17_2_1_1569456392186_15353 .sqs-gallery-block-grid .sqs-gallery-design-grid { margin-right: -6px; }#block-yui_3_17_2_1_1569456392186_15353 .sqs-gallery-block-grid .sqs-gallery-design-grid-slide .margin-wrapper { margin-right: 6px; margin-bottom: 6px; }

“Dads need to learn how to manage our emotions and meet our children at the level of their energy with kindness and generosity. ”

For me it is this arena of being a working parent, handling excited kids who just want to play with their daddy when he gets home while he has given all he has at work already, that is at the forefront of my mind for the time being. I read a book by Brendon Bruchard called “High Performance Habits” in which he talks about the absolute necessity of developing the habit of managing our daily transitions from one arena to another and setting our intentions for it beforehand. I will come back to that in just a moment. In another book that I cannot recall the name of, I remember reading that we, dads, need to learn how to manage our emotions and meet our children at the level of their energy with kindness and generosity. These two concepts present a great challenge of me at the stage of life I am in as I find myself deprived of sleep, overwhelmed with the amount of work needing to be done and depleted of energy constantly while having four children between the ages of one to nine.

So the idea of addressing our children at the level of their energy with kindness and generosity seems pretty straight forward. What Brendon is suggesting by managing our transition is this: I have a certain set of circumstances at work and completely different circumstances on my commute to home from work. There is a transition between work and my commute. When I get home I am again faced with another set of circumstances and yet again there is another transition from my commute to being at home. If I do not carefully and proactively manage these transitions then the stress of each stage piles up and follows me into the next phase of the day. Hence I have to prepare for the transition by setting my intentions for the next phase. In this case, for me, before coming home I need to pause and prepare to go home. Leave behind the stress of the day, reset and set my intention by envisioning myself being kind and generous, full of loving energy as I greet my kiddos at home. This is the pressure of being a working parent that I am currently dealing with.

I would love to hear what you are currently working on. Let me know in the comments below!

Final Thoughts:

It is an absolute process to find the balance of being a parent and working for your family. Whether you are a stay at home mom, working mom or some kind of hybrid between the two. . . we want to remind you that you are enough. This has become our new mantra at The Boudoir Studio and can be applied in all the areas of our lives. So maybe you need to hear it again, you work hard enough, you are a good enough parent, you are skinny enough, you are beautiful enough, you are everything! Don’t forget that.

Trying to Find the Balance: Working Parents

Trying to Find the Balance: Working Parents

Baring it all for feminism and empowerment

Philly Boudoir Session!

boudoir studios new york