SURPRISE! I’m having a baby!

This is not a drill. 

There’s a mini Stevie and Jules on the way in t minus 7 weeks. 

Whhhhhat?! 

Kept that one on the DL, didn’t I 😉 Those who have seen me or spoken to me in the last 7 months would know (the growing basketball on my stomach is kind of hard to miss). 

But those who haven’t? 

Well, this would be NEW news. 

I must say, I’ve never really been one for a big baby announcement. 

One, because I think sharing your news with the people you know, love and see/talk to every day is really the most important thing. Sure, a million congratulations on a Facebook or Instagram post – whether your personal account or your work account – is all well and good, but at the end of the day? 

It’s your OG peeps that matter. 

And two, because a ‘we’re having a baby!’ post doesn’t really seem right when there is SO MUCH to this little baby and story – good, bad and everything in between. 

A couple of years ago, I wasn’t even sure I even WANTED to have kids.

The journey to getting there once I – or, I should say, we – finally decided that we did? Well, that wasn’t exactly easy, either. Nor was the pregnancy part, really!

And now that we’ve got a little bebe on the way, I must admit that even though it’s bloody exciting – there’s also a lot of things that scares the bejesus out of me. 

And so, a ‘we’re having a baby!’ announcement didn’t really seem like enough. 

For that reason, the latest The Lifestyle Business Sweet Spot podcast episode is dedicated to, well, the story BEHIND the baby announcement. 

It’s a departure from the usual social media tips and tricks, but I also know that there are a lot of us in the small business community that are future mums, would be mums, not sure if we ever want to be mums, and mums trying to juggle their business baby and their babies.

If that’s you – well, this is for you. Because a lot of it is info I wish someone ELSE would have shared with me before I embarked on this brand

Oh, and PS? 

It’s a boy 😎

So, let’s dive in!

Listen On: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Transcript

STEVIE: Surprise. I have got a big announcement for you guys in this episode. You can probably tell from the podcast title but I’m having a baby. Let’s break it down.

Hey guys, and welcome to the The Lifestyle Business Sweet Spot Podcast. I’m excited. And I am kind of nervous as well, because today is not your usual The Lifestyle Business Sweet Spot Podcast episode.

Now you’ve probably guessed from the title of this podcast episode that Surprise! I’m having a baby. This is not a drill. There is seriously a mini Stevie well, mini Stevie and Julian On the way in t minus about seven weeks. What? Now I kept that one on the DL didn’t I? Those who have seen me or have spoken to me in the last seven months would know that I’m having a baby.

The growing basketball on my stomach is kind of hard to miss. But for those of you who haven’t, for those of you who only see me on the socials, for those of you that maybe business friend that I haven’t seen you for a while, well, this would be news.

Now, what I’m going to say is that I’ve never really been one for the big baby announcement. Totally props to those people that love it. But I think that sharing your news with the people that you love the people that you know and the people that you see and talk to every day is really the most important thing, right?

A million congratulations on, you know, a Facebook or an Instagram post, whether it’s my personal account, in my case or a work account is, look, it’s all well and good. But I think at the end of the day, it’s your OG peeps that really matter. And all of those people are very aware that there is a little baby on the way. Now the other reason that I’ve never really been one for big baby announcement is because it doesn’t really seem right when this story much to this little baby into this story.

 And what I mean by that is that literally just putting out a posting saying you know, baby jus in August, or whatever it is, doesn’t really paint much of a picture. There is a lot of good; some bad look everything in between when it comes to the story of how I came to be seven months pregnant. Now the journey to having a baby was for me, probably not the conventional one. A couple of years ago, I didn’t even know whether I wanted to ever have kids

.

It’s not something that has been hugely on my radar. The journey to actually getting that one side or I should say way, because obviously it’s a mutual decision. Once we finally decided that, yep, biting the bullet, we want to have a little baby.

Well, that’s kind of was the start of a very tough process as well. And now that we’ve got the little bambino on the way, I have to admit that even though it’s really bloody exciting, there’s also a lot of things that genuinely scare the bejesus out of me. So literally just saying, I’m having a baby and announcing it like that didn’t really seem like enough.

So, for that reason. Today. The Lifestyle Business Sweet Spot Podcast episode is dedicated to; I guess the story behind the baby announcement. Now, this is a departure from the usual social media, digital marketing, online business tips and tricks. But I know that there’s a lot of us in the small business community that are future moms that would be moms that are not sure if we ever want to be moms.

And also the moms, you know, trying to juggle that business baby and the actual babies so, if that’s you, this podcast episode is quite literally recorded for you. Because it’s a lot of the info of that I wish somebody else would have shed for me before I embarked on this grand little adventure.

My gosh, what an adventure it has been. And I am very aware that the little adventure is only just beginning. Right? My gosh, anyway, so what I thought I would do in today’s podcast episode is just have a chat to you about where I was at a few years ago, the process that I went through in terms of trying for a baby and the impact and thoughts that I have around my business, because this is obviously a business podcast at the end of the day, right?

So let me start with where I was, for God, the first 30 something years of my life. Guys, I have never really thought about having a baby, it has never really been on my agenda. And if I’m completely honest, I absolutely love having the freedom to do things on my own terms, all throughout my 20s.

And well into my 30s. The idea of having a baby for me was something that selfishly I kind of thought, Well, you know, I’m not sure if it’s for me, because there’s so much I want to achieve. I really love my lifestyle at the moment, and, frankly, is having a baby going to F it all up for me.

So, that was my thoughts around the whole thing. I’ve never been one of those people that have dreamed of a white picket fence that has dreamed of having, you know, a family in the really traditional sense, although I have the coolest family of my own. And when I think about it, I guess at the back of my mind, I did think one day it would be cool to kind of replicate that.

But I was never and still am not one of those people that really would have thought that not having a baby would be really devastating for me. And I understand that as a lot of people that are in that position and that struggle to have kids. So I do want to clarify that. That was never me. And that was never my own personal circumstances. Now what really kind of put the pedal to the metal for me is basically age. So my partner is actually a few years younger than me.

And one thing that happens as you kind of get into your early to mid-30s is that whether it’s right or whether it’s wrong, especially if you’re in a relationship, you have a lot of people that ask you about babies, you also have a lot of people that kind of tell you about the ticking clock. And look, it’s a fact I suppose that it’s something that you do need to be mindful of.

 So, for us. Essentially what happened is we had been together for a couple of years; we had done a lot of really cool things. I’m talking about my partner and I obviously, and it had gotten to the point where it was sort of, you know, the next thing on the agenda.

So we chatted about it for a long time. And it was never really a huge priority for my partner Ivan so, it’s not like that was one of us it was pushing one way or the other. After a lot of discussions about it. So, we kind of thought you know, let’s do it. Let’s have a family or at least let’s have one baby. Let’s just kind of leave the whole family thing for now. Because I think one baby’s going to be enough for me.

Anyway, after we made that decision, and I am the most naive person in the entire world, I thought that a baby would be just around the corner. It was not to be for us. So I have a condition. And I’ve talked about this before on my Instagram account called endometriosis. And essentially, that is a condition that can affect fertility.

So we tried naturally for around about a year to conceive and ended up going to see a fertility specialist. Now I had had issues with endometriosis for pretty much my entire 20s and 30s. I remember when I was 21; I first had really bad endometriosis pain. I thought that I was dying. It was that bad. And it’s been consistent issue throughout my life ever since.

Now, it’s not until you actually at the point where you’re thinking about potentially having kids that it kind of comes to the forefront again. And to be honest, I think that the way that they deal with endometriosis is absolutely appalling. But that is a story for another podcast episode and probably not mine. Anyway, so, my issues with endometriosis meant that I had fertility problems. So other things involved as well.

And I’m not going to go into a whole heap of detail around that. But it meant that I had to undergo a laparoscopy, which a lot of people with endometriosis do, and basically do a whole heap of things to try and improve my fertility to have a baby. Now, we did that for a certain period of time. And considering that I was getting older, even though I don’t like to think about it, I had been told by my fertility specialist that we will really at the point where we needed to start thinking about IVF, potentially.

Now that kind of threw a whole new Spanner into the mix for us. Because as I said, we’ve never really been those people that had really kind of thought about having kids. And it wasn’t a real burning desire, but it’s something that we thought would be nice to add to our lives. So we were really uncertain as to whether IVF was going to be something that we were going to do.

Now I had personally gotten to the point by that stage where I could see a really amazing life either way, I had literally had over a year to marinate, I suppose on the potential options both ways. And I could really and still can genuinely say an amazing life without kids, there’s so much that you can do there’s so much that you can achieve.

And I think that if you have fulfillment and purpose in areas outside, you know, potentially just having kids, it’s something to, or it was something that I really considered as a viable option. And something that would make me genuinely happy. So that’s a frame of mind that I was in when we found out that I was pregnant.

Now, this happened on the second day of the year, these years. A couple of days before I had literally been writing out my 2019 game plan, I had mapped out everything that I was going to be doing with my business, even though we were kind of undergoing all of these fertility measures and all of that sort of thing and had been going on for so long that it was really pushed to the back of my mind.

And it’s not something that I was even thinking it might potentially happen. Anyway, we had a really quiet New Year’s Eve this year. But we decided on New Year’s Day that we would go to place a local place and basically do a long lunch. So we had a long lunch.

 On the New Year’s Day, I had a few wines and I woke up feeling less than average. But I kind of felt like it wasn’t how I should be feeling with a hangover. I hadn’t drunk that much. But I was feeling really, really rotten. And for some random reason, I thought, you know what; I’m going to get a pregnancy test.

And I’m just going to see, and I hadn’t been doing this on a really regular basis, because well, I just hadn’t been doing it. So I went to the shops, I got myself a pregnancy test, and it came back positive. And I just stared at it in complete disbelief. I put it back in the drawer, I shut the drawer.

 And I completely ignored it for that entire day, which is the weirdest reaction in the entire world. So, I told my partner about it that evening. And he kind of said, well, let’s go and get another one and make sure that you know, we know whether it’s right or whether it’s not.

So we didn’t know the one and I procrastinated for about an hour to actually going into it because it’s such a life changing thing, right. And it came back as positive straight away. And I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that after all of this time. After literally getting into the mindset and creating a game plan that really didn’t involve kids. We found out that yes, there is a baby on the way. Now obviously, this was really amazing news for us.

But it still took me a little while to get my head around. Now, the whole process of being pregnant, these year has not been the way that they talk about it in I guess the movies, you know, you get that pregnancy glory, things are hunky dory. It has not been that way for me. Morning sickness hit me like a complete Bianchi in a roundabout kind of the 11th week of my pregnancy.

Now, this was the time when I was delivering my very first online course I needed to be doing weekly live calls I was doing consult call and consult meetings over an hour away from where I lived. And I felt like absolute death. Now there was a couple of weeks in there was I just got completely overwhelmed by it all? And I was so sick that I could not get off the couch. It was the first time that I had ever gotten Netflix.

And I remember watching this really horrible show for almost two weeks straight and eating potatoes and potatoes only because it’s the only thing that I could stomach, the nausea was next level. And I know a lot of people go through this, but my God, for me, it was probably the same as everybody else. But it really knocked me for six.

So, that lasted for a few weeks. And it really meant that I wasn’t as productive. I wasn’t taking off all of the things that I normally do. I was just feeling really, really, really horrible. But I also wasn’t allowing myself to feel like that either. So I wasn’t doing myself any favors. Now I came good.

 Eventually, I will say that the second trimester of my pregnancy has been an absolute dream, like I have felt really good. I have not felt morning sick at all, which is pretty normal for the second trimester. I also haven’t looked pregnant at all, I think the fact that I’m really tall means that I’m not somebody that naturally looks pregnant, or a kind of hasn’t shown on me until very, very recently, there’s been a few little issues, my iron levels were low, blah, blah, blah, I won’t go into all of that. And I have been tired towards the end of the second trimester.

But in general, it has been pretty good. Now one funny little story that I think some of you might resonate with, and it’s not something that people talk about very much was the whole story behind finding out the sex and the agenda of these little baby.

 Now for some reason, and I don’t know where this came from, because as I said, I’ve never had these complete, you know, burning desires to have kids before. But when I found out that I was having a baby, in my mind, for some reason, I kind of just thought that my baby was going to be a girl. Maybe because one of my best friends has two girls, I don’t know where it came from.

But that is what was in my head, I just for some reason, thought I was having a go. Now there’s a test that you can do at 12 weeks pregnant, where you basically can find out the gender of your baby, and we decided to do this test.

Now this should be a really exciting occasion, right, and to hear about things like gender reveal, and whatever else now, thank God, we decided not to do one of those because what happened for me is that I picked up the envelope from the obstetrician. And basically what they do is they have Congratulations, it’s a little girl or it’s a little boy in the envelope. So I took that home, and my mom invited me over for dinner. And so it’s my mom, my brother and my partner.

And we were all going to open the envelope together. So when it came time to open the envelope, essentially what happened is that Jules said he was going to do it, I was fine with that. . And I still I guess I didn’t really have in my mind what a burning desire, or what wasn’t even a burning desire or thoughts that I was having ago was and he opens up the envelope. And he was so happy. Because it said congratulations, t’s a boy, I for some unknown reason completely burst into tears, my brother was filming it. 

If funniest home videos or any of those kinds of shows ever come out again; seriously, it needs to go on there. Actually, it never needs to say live update, let’s be honest, but it is a pretty funny video to watch. I am now completely on board with having a little boy, I am so excited about it.

But I think sometimes the hot and feelings of pregnancy, your thoughts around this way that you think that your life and you know these sorts of things are going to go. That is how it manifested for me and I look back on it and think how hilarious it is. But I was crying at the time. Anyway, where I’m at the moment is obviously in the third trimester.

And what I will say is that everything is starting to feel a very, very, very real, we are in the process of getting everything together. In terms of the nursery, we are getting prepared; I’ve had to be really diligent with things like batching content and making sure that everything’s prepared in advance. And my gosh, there is a lot going on in my mind, it is a really full feeling at the moment, my life feels very, very full.

And I realized that things are only going to get more full, this little baby makes his appearance. Now what we’ve decided in terms of our business, and in terms of the way that Jules and I have decided to kind of manage things is that he is actually going to be the stay at home dad, at least for the first six months of the little baby being here.

So I will actually still be working. Now this is a decision that we both came to because number one, my business is my other little baby. Number two, it makes sense for us. Number three, I really love the idea of him being home and helping out with everything along those lines. So it’s really been driven by me. And it’s really in terms of the way that I feel about how everything’s going to roll out given me so much. It’s really kind of made it more positive for me in my mind in terms of the way that I hope that things will go having him around, having the ability to continue to work on my business, having the ability to I guess have more than one set of hands and having it not just be me at home by myself is something that I’m really excited about.

And it’s something we’ve only decided to recently. So it has been the best thing ever, essentially. The other thing that I’ve really been forced to do, obviously, in the last few months, as the baby’s due date gets closer and closer is I’ve really needed to think about the fact that I can’t see everything. And this is something I’ve known for a long time.

If you follow me on Instagram, I’ve spoken about it quite a bit on my Instagram account. But it’s made me realize and put measures into place to help my business run without it just being me on the tools. And that has been a lot of hard work continues to be a lot of hard work. But my gosh, it is one of the best things that I have ever done.

One of the biggest things around this is with hiring so, having people to help me do the jobs that I would normally have done myself. Now I shouldn’t have been doing a lot of these jobs myself, they are not the best use of my time. But I have had superhero syndrome and I have literally tried to do everything. So, the GJ for the baby is looming. And it’s really forced me to prioritize, to outsource to get systems in place. And I think that that has been a really cool thing.

So, I guess where I’m at the moment is that I am currently extremely excited for what is to come. I am equally pot scared. And my gosh, the stories that I hear from other people, I’m going to remember when I have my baby to be a lot more mindful of the way and the stories that you tell when a pregnant woman kind of presents themselves in front of you, because I feel that there’s a lot of scaremongering out there. Do I realize that it’s going to be tough?

Yes. Do people talk about the good times? And not really? Do people look, telling me the birth and labor stories without being asked? Absolutely. My gosh, it’s funny, I don’t know. I’m kind of feeling like being pregnant at the moment. And watching people’s interactions around how they talk to me about certain things is the ultimate kind of lesson in human behavior.

I am weird like that I kind of Yeah, anyway, I’m going off on a tangent. But I found that very, very interesting. One thing that I really want to make sure that I do and I think this comes back to the fact that having a family is something that I really value. But I also never want to lose myself in parenting; I know that life will never be the same again. And I want to be an absolutely excellent parent. But I also want to as much as I cannot lose myself in parenting. And it’s something that, obviously, I have no experience in any of this yet. And some of the mums are probably giggling as I’m speaking, but it’s something that’s on my mind.

So anyone that has any tips around that will be very, that’ll be very, very gratefully received. Alright guys, that’s kind of my thoughts on this whole thing. And yes, Surprise, I’m having a baby, I’m having a beautiful little boy. It is very, very close now.

And as I said, I’m excited; I am scared, I am nervous. I am all of the things. And I think it’s kind of good to be honest about your feelings around these things. Because I think sometimes when you see the baby announcements on Facebook or Instagram, it paints a certain picture and it doesn’t give the full picture or the full backstory when it comes to everything that’s obviously involved.

So, I guess watch this space. I’m going to have obviously a lot more to say once I’ve got the little baby here with me. And I guess I’ll do a little bit of a report back in time and let you know how everything is going. In the meantime, it is business as usual. As I said, Jules is the stay at home dad, which I’m very, very excited about. And yeah, there’ll be a little baby on the way in about seven weeks. So, there you have it, guys. That is my surprise.

I hope for anyone that is thinking about having a little baby that has a little baby that I don’t know is in a similar both to me potentially. I hope that this has been something that has been interesting. As I said, it is all just my perspective, everyone is completely different.

But these are my thoughts. These are my feelings. And this is my experience as I go through one of the biggest kind of life changing moments of my life. Anyway, back to this social media and digital marketing tips from next week. I hope that this podcast was at least entertaining and hopefully useful for some of you and I’ll see you next week.

Keep Listening!

Listen On: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

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