Dealing with a bad day when you are 6 months pregnant and work at a tiny startup
Gotta keep remembering that these are the reasons I do what I do everyday.
I’m sure every entrepreneur knows that there will be good days and bad in the journey to start a business. That being said, the bad days get amplified by about 1000% when you are 6 months pregnant, it’s 100+ degrees outside, and you also work at that startup with your husband.
This week I had a very bad day. One of our top vendors announced a relationship with our primary competitor, my business partner would not answer my time sensitive questions since he was out at a conference, and a flight I was supposed to get on to go and visit my grandmother who just had gall bladder surgery got delayed by over 24 hours (causing me to have to cancel the trip). Any one of these things would have been enough to turn a day from good to bad, but the combination of all three left me reeling and panicking. I was literally Slacking my husband, who was out doing some training with a new hire, that our business was ruined and that he needed to look for a new job ASAP since I could never get hired anywhere while 6 months pregnant. I was making mental contingency plans for how much we have in savings and how we would be able to survive this turn of events when all of our business went to our competitor and we were left with nothing. I was also simultaneously on the phone with American Airlines feeling completely defeated and overwhelmed with my lack of options to get on a flight to see my grandmother. I continued in this death spiral of helplessness for several hours until I finally packed my stuff up and headed home.
Here’s how I turned my day from “the worst day ever” to “a memorable bad day that will not ruin me”:
I went home and hugged my son and cuddled with him, but then I sent him out to dinner with his dad on their own so that I could have time to just decompress.
I called my dad and asked for his advice on the flight situation. He told me that if he were me he would just scrap the trip, and after a little time thinking and several calls to the American Airlines customer service line to evaluate my options, I did just that. I made a decision to cancel my trip (and received a full refund due to the circumstances), and rebook for another time when the universe was not so stacked against me. My grandmother is in no immediate danger of passing away and fighting to get on an overbooked flight 24 hours later did not sound like a good plan.
I put my computer and my phone away. I made myself an easy dinner of a sandwich while my husband and son were out and ate it on the couch while watching Big Little Lies. I took the much needed time to disconnect and relax.
When my son got home, I gave him a bath, got him ready for bed, gave him his milk, and cuddled with him while he sang me his new favorite song “happy birthday to mama” and then passed out in my arms. The reality of his little life and how much hope he is filled with at any given moment grounded me back in the goodness that my life is filled with.
After my son passed out, I bitched to my husband about my day and let him bitch back. We then both pulled out our laptops and started our normal routine of working in the evening. The normality of it recentered me in the idea that the wheels are still turning on our business and that we aren’t ruined.
The main point of this is that I took control of my reality. Being pregnant, I literally didn’t have the choice of doing some of the escapism based things that I might have done in the past (when I worked in a previous high-stress role I would literally drink about 3/4 of a bottle of wine every night), but instead I had to deal with the stress by dismantling its grip on my life one piece at a time. I did not dismiss my feelings of overwhelm or helplessness, but instead I figured out how I could take control of the situation - even if it meant not getting what I wanted - and move forward. In addition, I leaned on those who are important to me - my dad, my husband, my son - and used my connections with them to ground myself and see what moves needed to be made. In addition, I took the space that I needed and allowed myself time to just wallow in my feelings a bit. I didn’t go overboard, but that hour and a half at home by myself to eat dinner and watch a TV show that didn’t involve tractors was a gift on a day life that. Finally, the thing that I learned the most from, was to relish and cherish the experiences I wouldn’t have been able to have if everything had gone my way that day. I would not have snuggled my son extra close after his bath, I would not have sat with him sleeping on my chest for 20 extra minutes, I would not have had my heart swell so much as he sang me “happy birthday to mama” - instead I would have been alone on a plane working.
I am a firm believer that the universe pushes us in the direction that we need to go, and apparently this was my day for a course correction.