What three maternity leaves taught me about a business that doesn’t depend on me

I answered client emails from my phone while I was in labor with my first child. That’s no badge of an impressive work ethic. I share it because I wish someone had told me that being needed for every part of my business would cost me something. If you’re thinking about maternity leave as a practice owner, or any long stretch away, I hope my three tries save you a little of that.

I founded Liberty Type in 2016, and I’ve had three babies since. The business grew in naptime work sessions and phone calls from a parked car outside preschool. Each leave taught me something different about capacity, about clients, and about how much of a business lives in the owner’s head.

My first maternity leave: I was the plan

When my first child was born, Liberty Type was young. I had no team and almost no margin in the schedule.

I did the work, talked to every client, and made every decision. So when I stopped, much of the business stopped with me. Naturally, I tried not to stop.

I designed while learning how to care for a newborn, and answered messages when I should have been resting. Every request felt urgent, because nobody else could handle it and there was no system for what could wait. Somehow, projects kept moving through a hard birth, colic, and my own mental health struggles.

I was proud of what I was building. I also needed far more support than I’d let myself plan for.

My second leave: client work had a plan, marketing didn’t

By my second baby, I had help and a better idea of how to prepare. We planned deadlines around the due date. Other people kept parts of the work moving.

Then I caught myself writing emails and posting on social media with a newborn and a three-year-old at home. Marketing was the piece I hadn’t planned. No single post felt essential, so it was easy to dismiss. Still, the steady question of what to say next kept pulling me back.

That changed how I thought about leave. Planning the client work was only half of it. I also needed to decide what could pause, and what needed a simple plan before the baby arrived.

My third leave: a plan with room to bend

Before my third, I looked at capacity, roles, and marketing months earlier. I knew which projects had to wrap up first, which could keep going with support, and which we shouldn’t schedule near the due date.

I also stopped giving myself a hard return date. Birth and recovery don’t follow a calendar, and neither does life with a new baby. So I planned for a gradual return and made fewer promises about my availability. Having more support helped. Making fewer promises helped just as much.

What this means for maternity leave as a practice owner

Most of the owners I work with run health and wellness practices with a team, so maternity leave as a practice owner involves more people than mine did. Your version of this looks different from mine, but the pattern is the same. The question is how much of the practice depends on you being in the room.

Some of that is clinical. You may carry your own caseload, and your patients will need a plan for continuity of care. That’s a conversation for you and your clinical team, and you know it far better than I do.

A lot of it isn’t clinical, though. Who answers when a referral partner calls? And who decides whether to take a new type of case? When a prospective client is on the fence, who explains what makes the practice different? In many practices, the answer to all three is the owner.

There’s a policy side to maternity leave as a practice owner, too. The federal Family and Medical Leave Act gives eligible employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for the birth of a child. But it applies to private employers with 50 or more employees. Many owner-led practices are smaller than that, and as the owner, you’re writing your own leave plan regardless. So it helps to start early.

Plan maternity leave as a practice owner around real capacity

Before you take on work that overlaps your leave, think like a practice owner planning maternity leave for a key clinician. Look at what each commitment needs from you.

Make a list of active projects, partnerships, and decisions. For each one, note:

• The next big milestone
• Decisions only you can make
• Anything you’re waiting on from someone else
• A realistic finish point or pause point
• Who will be the contact while you’re away

Then decide what to finish, what to hand off, and what to delay. I’d rather tell someone a later start date than squeeze something important into a calendar that depends on the baby arriving on time.

Tell people what they need to know, and keep it short. Clients and referral partners don’t need details about your pregnancy. They do need to know who to contact and how they’ll get updates. I wrote more about setting expectations early in how your brand sets client boundaries before anyone books.

Give your team the words, not only the tasks

Delegation works when the other person knows what she owns, and that’s as true for maternity leave as a practice owner as it was for me. Before leave, decide who can reply to referral partners, approve routine decisions, and tell someone a request has to wait.

But here’s what surprised me most. Handing off tasks was easier than handing off the explanation. My team could do the work. What they couldn’t always do was describe why we do it this way, in words that sounded like the business.

Practices run into the same wall. When the positioning and messaging live only in the owner’s head, every new hire, front desk person, and associate clinician explains the practice a little differently. While you’re there, you correct it on the fly. Once you’re on leave, nobody does. For more on that, read how to keep messaging consistent across clinicians and locations.

A practice brand that keeps working during your maternity leave

A clear brand is one of the few things that keeps working through maternity leave as a practice owner. A good website tells a stranger who you help, what the first visit looks like, and how to get started. Your branded materials, from intake documents to employee manuals, give your team one consistent voice. That way, the practice can introduce itself without you in the room.

It also takes all the pieces agreeing. Strategy decides what you’re known for, while visual identity and copy carry it. The website turns it into a path to booking. That’s how we build the Complete Brand, so the practice has one clear story your whole team can tell. If you want the bigger picture, read how to build a practice that runs without you.

Your business can matter, and so can your recovery

My first leave showed me what happens when I’m the only plan. The second taught me that preparing client work while ignoring everything else still leaves a door open for work to find me. With my third, I finally made room for the unknown.

If you’re preparing for maternity leave as a practice owner, start with your real capacity, tell people what to expect, and decide what can wait. You deserve a practice that makes room for the person who built it. You can read more about my own path on my About page.

And if planning your leave shows that new clients can’t understand your practice without hearing it from you, that’s worth fixing. The signs often overlap with a practice that has outgrown its website. When the timing is right, start a conversation with us.