I escaped the 9-6 and became a freelance mum

After having a baby, Annie Ridout wanted to be her own boss – now she’s showing other new mothers how they can do it, too

Iwas working as a copywriter for a tech start-up when I discovered I was pregnant. It was a full-time position on a rolling contract – meaning I wasn’t permanent staff – but I’d been there more than a year and felt like part of the team. When I called a meeting with HR to discuss my role being kept open for me while I was on maternity leave, the room went quiet. They carefully explained that I’d be getting no maternity pay and that while they would make a verbal agreement to keep my job open, they wouldn’t put it in writing. They reminded me that they were free to terminate my contract at any point, with just a month’s notice.

I decided it might be prudent to stay quiet in case I wanted to return to that job after the birth recovery period. So instead of putting up a fight, I gulped back tears and worked right up until I went into labour. I’d managed to secure a pay rise – up from £185 to £250 a day – and this enabled me to save £10,000 to supplement the Maternity Allowance I was entitled to as a freelancer (£136 a week).

That summer, I gave birth to a baby girl and found my life consumed with nappy-changing, leaking breasts and attempts to soothe my colicky daughter. All thoughts of returning to that copywriting job disappeared as I realised that actually, I quite liked being a mother and felt rather attached to my baby. A Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-6 job no longer felt right. So, over the next few months, I started looking into work I could do from home, freelance. I’d already trained in journalism and written articles for local and regional

I realised that actually, I quite liked being a mother and felt rather attached to my baby

news, so I pitched to women’s magazines and nationals and secured a few commissions. However, I discovered that, while newborns sleep loads during the day – leaving plenty of time for writing articles – they don’t sleep much during the night. This meant I was sometimes too tired to do much more that just mother during daylight hours.

As I didn’t need the income – I had some savings to fall back on – I was able to work at a pace that didn’t add too much pressure to my already quite busy days. But as my daughter approached the nine-month mark, and friends I’d made on maternity leave started returning to their jobs, I felt like I, too, was ready to commit more fully to work. I took a part-time job on a parenting magazine and enjoyed leaving the house two days a week, getting a train into work and wearing lightcoloured tops with no fear of baby food being smeared across them.

Unfortunately, the magazine folded and I was left without a job. This time, I decided I wouldn’t rely on someone else to provide my employment; I’d create a career that gave me full control. I came up with the idea for a parenting platform that published content at 5am each day, giving early-rising parents something stimulating to read while their babies drank their morning milk. I wanted the articles to offer an honest, refreshing take on parenting – interviewing the parents we don’t hear from so often: gay dads, a surrogate mother, a Muslim mother, parents who had tragically lost their babies through miscarriage or stillbirth. It would cut through the gloss we more often come across within the online parenting world.

After a few months spent creating