The trade-offs no one talks about

Hey there!

I started maternity leave for my second baby completely burned out.

It was May 2023, and I worked right up until the night I went into labor.

Well, actually I had taken that last morning off.

Do you know why?

So I could go to OB Triage (the pregnancy ER) to get fluids. I had been battling a stomach flu and contractions for five days.

I needed strength—or at least hydration—before the inevitable labor and delivery.

But when I got home?

I logged back onto Slack.

I told my boss I’d wrap up some things—casually mentioning, “I’ll see you Monday unless the baby comes!”

Like… excuse me? Hehe, I’m going into labor, but don’t worry—I’m still thinking about that project update! Totally fine!

Looking back, I cringe.

I get why I was trying so hard, I do.

Having my second child was one of the main reasons I had this job in the first place.

But there was nothing on Slack more important than me taking a nap that afternoon.

Going from one kind of stuck to another

I learned from my first pregnancy that pregnancy and I do not get along. I was so, so sick—far beyond any “morning sickness” I had ever heard of.

The first time around, I had been running my own business, coaching and consulting. I had to slow business down so much while I was pregnant that I had to cut my take-home pay in half.

But I kept at it and was able to build a strong roster of clients and waitlist the final few months of pregnancy.

Then I had my baby, and it was like another wave of trying to make it all work.

I worked 6 hours during the week when a babysitter came over and took a few calls one evening a week.

It was a business in maintenance mode and it just wasn’t very motivating to me anymore.

I looked ahead, and I didn’t love what I saw. I couldn’t imagine myself career coaching and writing resumes for the next several years without getting completely bored.

I felt boxed in. Stuck.

I couldn’t invest more time or money (because I didn’t have them) to create leverage in my business.

I was also thinking about trying for another baby at some point—and terrified of being that sick again while taking care of a toddler full-time.

I wanted to provide for my family.

I knew I had the earning capacity to fast-track our goal of buying a new house.

So I made a choice.

When my first baby was 7 months old, I let myself consider going back to full-time work.

It felt completely out of left field.

To me. My husband. Family. Friends.

I had spent so long building a business—how could I walk away from it? And also walk away from being a stay-at-home mom?

I had so many conflicting motivations. So many conflicting desires.

I had to explain myself over and over again.

I felt ashamed for not being content. For not sticking with something.

But the jobs in tech in 2021—do you remember them?

They were fun. They paid well. The benefits were amazing.

So I took a job.

• $150k base salary

• Fully covered medical insurance—no premiums, no copays

• Unlimited PTO

• A flexible schedule

• Log off at 4:00 pm. Done for the day!

We hired a nanny.

I breastfed when my baby needed milk.

I laid him down for naps in the next room.

I even kept my career coaching business open, hiring an associate coach to take on most clients so I could work only with the ones who energized me.

Our savings piled up.

It was awesome.

I eventually closed my business six months later because things were going well at work and I didn’t want the extra mental load.

Then I got pregnant again. And my job? It worked exactly as I had planned.

My paycheck stayed the same—even as my capacity dropped.

Doctor visits? Free.

Urgent care? Free.

So we bought a house. A much bigger one. In the good school district.

But, like most things in life, the tide turned.

Layoffs started.

First round. Then the second. Then the third.

The culture shifted overnight.

New manager. New KPIs. New uncertainty.

And I felt stuck again—pregnant, locked into a high mortgage, with a childcare bill that suddenly felt like a liability instead of a privilege.

Interestingly, around this time, new writers and online business owners came into my ecosystem and I learned (for the first time) what some of them were actually paying themselves. I was shocked at what I learned and how little some of them paid themselves. But the catch was: their expenses were low. They made enough to support their lifestyle. It worked for them.

Hearing these stories felt like a dagger in my chest at first. I felt like an online idiot who had been duped by the dream of having it all. I realized that I believed a story that I needed to make the same amount of money from my own business as I could from a salaried position for it to be “worth” it.

Every day, I wondered:

Did I make the wrong choice?
The vain choice?
The naive choice?
The smart choice?

The debate was endless.

And it didn’t help me.

But do you know what did?

Learning to see my choices as trade-offs.

The real trap is not considering trade-offs

Because here’s the real trap: believing that you’re stuck, rather than accepting if you’re willing to make a trade-off or not.

It’s not about whether you can have what you want.

It’s about whether you’re willing to shift something in your life to make space for it.

That’s how I ended up leaving my job 10 months later.

The power of vision + small steps

During maternity leave, I got crystal clear on what I wanted: to write.

So the first trade-off was simple: commit to writing—make it a priority in the midst of everything else. I kept my job. Kept the kids in daycare. But I carved out time to start this newsletter. That was my first small bet on myself.

To be clear: it was a simple decision but hard to do.

Finding alone time as a mom of two littles is very challenging. I wrote this post last year that captures the real-time struggle of trying to build my writing habit.

Equally as hard in a different way, I had to navigate the discomfort of dual professional lives. Sharing my writing online where my colleagues could see it.

But I persisted and life evolved. And the job that once served me quite well? It kept unraveling.

At the same time, a new, clear desire emerged.

My husband had a sabbatical coming up, and we wanted to spend that time together, traveling as a family in Europe. The way to make that happen?

I DIDN’T KNOW!

Since it’s already happened, I can tell you what we decided to do. But don’t let the handy bullet points below fool you—this was not a straightforward decision.

For a very long time we were so locked into the thinking that I needed to keep my job (because, financial stability and all) that most of our solutions included me being in Europe working somehow. It’s funny to think of that in hindsight because there’s no way that would have worked, and also it would have been horrible.

In the end, this is what we decided:

• I would become the primary at-home caretaker

• We would pull the kids out of daycare

• I needed to bring in $1k/month after taxes and expenses to keep our savings level. Which meant earning at least $1,750/month total—all while being the full-time at-home parent.

• My husband would adjust his schedule to be home and taking care of the kids by 2:30pm

We chose to make some trade-offs:

» We would prioritize quality family time and experiences over growing our finances

» I would get to build my own thing and bet on myself instead of grinding it out at a workplace that had soured

» My husband and I would trade having bandwidth and slack in our schedule to having none when we let go of childcare

Once we knew what vision we were working towards and the trade-offs we’d make, it brought the next steps into clarity.

I needed to build up a business on the margins of everything else.

So I got to work, often working the 10pm-1am shift to get things done (not a hustle-culture promo—just the reality of how it went down).

I reopened my coaching business—but in a way that I thought would fit my life using a membership model. I launched it and got my founding members in. I was feeling like myself and had some recurring revenue rolling in, and thought I could scale it up. But after about a month, the reality of what being a full-time stay-at-home mom required hit me.

I was not going to be able to keep up marketing, getting on sales calls, onboarding and serving another 10-15 people. So I adjusted again—taking on a small consulting contract to make up the rest of the income instead of growing the membership program.

Trade-offs. One after another.

And each one had real costs.

That’s the part people don’t talk about.

Trade-offs are never perfect. They are never easy. And they always require giving something up to get something else.

Waiting around for the perfect scenario—the one where you get everything you want without giving up anything—is just a fancy way of letting passivity rule your life.

At some point, you have to decide: What are you actually willing to trade?

The beautiful thing about trade-offs? If you don’t like where they lead you, you can always make a new trade.

Warmly,
Jennifer

Poll, Prompt & Recap

Journal prompt: 

Think about something you really want right now but feels out of reach. What makes it feel impossible, and what trade-offs could make it possible? Explore different scenarios—big or small—and consider what first step you could take today.

3 Daily Habits

Oh wow, it’s been really hard to stick to my journaling and writing! This week I never hit my 500 word goal. On Tuesday I was able to write 224 words describing a pivotal idea in my book. I think it sort of intimidated me to try and dig into it the rest of the week.

4 Weekly Habits

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