Behind every great baby idea there’s a mum who’s been there, done that, and had baby posset on her T-shirt. Babyworld takes a look at ‘mumpreneurs’ who have used their experience of parenthood to forge a new career…
Baby Experiences
When Jenny Davis became pregnant she knew that she didn’t want to return to her high-flying career in marketing but wasn’t sure what she could do instead. Little did she know that her experiences in motherhood would provide the perfect answer!
I knew it was time to change
When I returned from living and working overseas I briefly contemplated going back into marketing, my career for the last 15 years. It involved long hours, hard work and equally hard play. I wasn’t looking forward to it and I knew it would be difficult to combine having a family and a stressful job. Luckily, timing was such that I fell pregnant with my
daughter and that helped make my mind up that things had to change. I didn’t know how to change them but decided instead to spend the last few months of my pregnancy thinking about how I would bond with my baby and what activities we could do together.
When Aimee was about three months old, we took her to a local baby music class. She loved it! She quickly grasped the musical instruments and started kicking her legs, reacting to the other babies and the stimulating environment. It was one of the week’s highlights for Aimee and still is. From music we moved on to baby sign language classes, swimming and other activities.
I wanted to share the information I’d found
However, when I looked for information about activities, I realised that while there are so many great things for mums and babies to do, finding information on them can be hard. I really wanted to use and share the information I’d found and that led me to develop Baby Experiences. The website gives visitors information on all the activities in their local
area in one place. Our personal booking service for activities and experiences also saves busy new mums time and hassle.
You can overcome every obstacle
If anyone had told me how much hard work I would need to put into setting up a business, I have to say it wouldn’t have changed my desire to do it. When you have an idea and really want to make it happen, you’ll overcome every obstacle, including making mistakes along the way and learning lots of new skills. Luckily, all my family and friends were very supportive
and Aimee just seemed to sense that Mummy was busy at times and played happily whilst I worked. I was extremely fortunate that Aimee was late to crawl and, in fact, left it until a week after Baby Experiences was launched in November 2004!
Today, Aimee goes to nursery part time whilst I work on the business from home. The time we spend apart lets Aimee develop and explore and the hours we spend together are packed full of lots of activities and fun.
As Baby Experiences grows, I hope that we can build a team of parents who want to work from home with the flexibility to work around their babies’ schedules.
To find out about activities for mums and babies in your area, visit www.babyexperiences.co.uk
