Have Your Cake And Eat It! How To Be A Successful Working Mum

Finding the perfect work to home life balance can be difficult at the best of times. When a new addition to your family arrives, nothing can prepare you for the overwhelming unconditional love you feel for your little bundle of joy. Everything else in your life somehow loses a little bit of its significance as you try to comprehend your feelings towards this little human being. The business that you set up three years ago no longer takes up your entire life. There is something, or rather someone, who now takes priority. But this doesn’t mean you can’t be a wonderful mum and enjoy a hugely successful career.

You will need to learn to juggle on a scale that you have never even attempted to comprehend before. Parenthood is the most demanding aspect of life with the daunting realisation that you are now responsible for the health and wellbeing of your baby. This jolt into your previously organized and serene life signifies that you should change your business plan. Consider delegating certain responsibilities to other members of your team such as marketing or human resources. The strategic vision of your company remains the same, but you may have to rejig the business plan to get there.

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You have a million and one things that you need to accomplish as a business leader every day as well as caring for your little one. This makes for a heady mix of daily tasks. Try not to let stress rear its ugly head and ensure that you give yourself time to readjust and settle into your new schedule.

While you are cooking up a slap up dinner for the family, schedule your work meetings for the following day. In your lunch hour, pop to the hairdressers to get your cut and blow dry. Your life has become a jigsaw that you need to complete successfully on a daily basis, and you can only do this by squeezing your daily activities into spaces as and when they appear.

There will need to be some crossover from home life to work life and vice versa if you are to stand any chance of having your cake and eating it. Just be careful that it doesn't become too much. When schmoozing a new client, don’t show up wearing your baby food stained Louboutins. Don’t bore your staff rigid with non-stop fascinating tales of how your baby now has three teeth rather than the two he had a couple of days ago. Keep it professional.

There will be times when you are hit by a dilemma. There is a twilight meeting to secure funding to launch a new product for your business that just so happens to clash with your little one’s first ever nursery play. You shouldn’t have to think too hard to realise that this is a no-brainer. Send your second in command to the meeting; they will cope without you. No one can take your place watching your precious boy singing his heart out to the latest playschool tunes.

Don’t compartmentalize yourself. You are not a business owner and a mum and a wife and a pretty darn good cook. You are simply a successful woman.