A guest post for Daily Bread and Butter

My friend Devi asked me to write a guest post for her blog, Daily Bread and Butter, while she is on holidays. Devi and I met when we used to go to the same church. She lives in Switzerland now with her husband and beautiful baby who is a bit older than Milo. We decided a post on the phenomena of mumpreneurship was a good idea! So here is my guest post for her blog, I hope you enjoy!

I hadn’t even heard the term mumpreneur until I sold some of my handmade baby bibs to one of my Dad’s colleagues. He came home from work and told me how his colleague had said I was one of those mumpreneurs. He asked what that was and she said smart, previously career focussed women who have had babies and realise they want to stay home with the kids so for intellectual stimulation and income they start their own business.

I have always loved babies and worked fulltime as a paediatric nurse prior to having my own. As much as I wanted to be a mum I did think that after a while at home I would start to feel a bit bored, start to crave some stimulation and start to look forward to going back to work. Or at the very least, start my Masters very part time. I was surprised to find (among other things), that I loved being home with my baby, it was the best job I had ever had, and I had no desire to be back in the workforce.

My mumpreneurship was born out of my son’s reflux, actually. He vomited from dusk til dawn and went through eight to 10 bibs per day. In the end all the cute outfits he had been given or that I had found were covered under bibs. I got two beautiful handmade bibs and presents for him and I thought to myself, hmmmm…. you haven’t sewed in a while, but these can’t be that hard. And I decided to make some nice ones for him to wear. A morning spent with a friend who is a great sewer and yep, it was confirmed, the bibs weren’t that hard.

I started to look out for nice, unique, quality fabrics. I started hunting around online. I started to get a little bit excited. I realised that just maybe I could do this. I knew I would still probably have to go back to work, but I realised I could supplement my income and work a bit less by working from home.

My mum got excited and got me some even more beautiful fabrics when she was in London and Paris. I hunted around the net like crazy and found those fabrics in America and Paris and have ordered them online. I started making taggies too, a form of comforter with tags sewn into the seams for babies to play with. My son loves playing with the tags as he is going off to sleep.

And I started to wonder, what has made being at home so great for me? Why do I love it so much? I think there are several reasons:

- I love being a mum, everything about it. I love being able to cuddle my own baby every single day, I love that he is always happy to see me, I love spending time with him.
- He is a great baby. He sleeps well and I am not exhausted and feeling harassed.
- My friends are great. I thought some may drop off a bit and I would see them less, but my good, close friends I still see really regularly and they are so lovely to Milo. He has lots of aunties.
- Family support. I have a great husband and great parents who support me in my parenting and in pursuing starting my own business.

This weekend I will be holding my first market stall. It’s really happening and I am really enjoying it.

It turns out home based businesses are the fastest growing business sector in Australia. I am a part of that and happy to be so. I enjoy doing something productive, and I love that I can do it at home, on my own terms, so I can spend as much time with my little bubba as possible. If you are interested in buying any bibs or taggies leave me a comment with your email address and I will be in touch.