January 31, 2001
Working moms bring new definition to baby on board
Area mothers juggle business and baby needs
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
There's stay-at-home moms, working moms and work-at-home moms. To those well-known categories, add one more: bring-baby-to-work moms.
Some area mothers are forging a new path in the daycare-work-mothering dilemma by bringing their infant or child to work with them.
Heather Nietzke, a receiving manager at Oryana Food Co-Operative, is a newer addition to this group. Her son, Logan Keely, is two and a half months old and she is slowly easing back into her full-time working routine by bringing her son with her. Working part-time since the beginning of the year, she wears Logan in a sling for nursing or naps, working at the computer or on the phone all the while. She also has a portable crib in an office she shares with other Oryana employees and a bouncy chair to keep him busy while he is awake.
"He's a pretty good baby, he's only fussy when he wants to eat or needs a diaper change," said Nietzke, noting that when in the sling, Logan tunes out the noises from the store or her crowded office.
When she is up to full-time hours by next month, there will be two days a week when store deliveries preclude her from bringing Logan to work. Her husband and mother-in-law will pitch in then. She chose not to look for daycare for those days or any others because she did not want to miss any of his growing up.
"Babies need to be with their moms when they are so little, it is the ideal situation," she said, adding that other employees vie to hold him on their lunch breaks. "I really didn't know how it was going to work and it seems to be working great. I think it is actually easier this way, he's just right there."
Store manager Bob Struthers suggested the idea to Nietzke while she was pregnant, leaving the decision up to her. He saw her as a valuable employee and also believed accommodating her was part of Oryana's mission to be a model workplace.
"Certainly for us, we had the space to accommodate her bringing Logan," Struthers said. "It is a bigger hassle for the mom than for anybody else. Who knows what the future holds, but certainly what little we've done by rearranging some file cabinets or desks has been no big deal. We can do more in the future if we have to."
Rearranging furniture is small potatoes compared to rearranging a packed schedule to accommodate a baby.
Beckey Burden's daughter, Lililya, has grown up at the gym with her mom. Now 16 months old, Lililya came to work with her mom at six weeks and neither have looked back, though it is a delicate juggling act to make it all happen.
Burden, now the owner of Water's Edge Gymnastics, formerly Northern Michigan Gymnastics, planned during her pregnancy to bring her daughter to work with her. However, when Lililya was born, she was the organization's manager and her employer briefly had cold feet at the idea. They worried that given her position of responsibility a baby would distract her.
Burden asked them to let her try it and everyone soon found the arrangement worked just fine.
"I could use a computer and even taught a few classes when I had to," Burden said.
It is a challenging commitment, she noted, with teething, diapers, nursing and playtime shoehorned in around normal business duties.
"Some days, she just cried the whole day and I couldn't get anything done," she said. "It is like dealing with all the things of childhood and doing your work at the same time."
Through it all, Lililya has adapted to the situation. She spends time in the coaches' room, which is filled with toys or watches an occasional video. She naps there or in a playpen in the office. She takes breaks with mom to read or snuggle and has a host of enthusiastic playmates, including all the coaches, moms of kids taking classes and the members of the competitive team. Grandma working in the office is another added plus, adding a loving hand when needed.
"I always thought that I could use daycare but once she was born, I couldn't give her up," Burden recalled. "It was not anything against daycare, I just wanted her with me all the time."
Buying Studio 101 with a friend when she was six months pregnant did not intimidate Kris Haines. Her son, Nicholas, now 10 months old, just came along with her to work after he was born. Like Burden, Haines finds juggling childcare and retail a challenge at times, but she would not have it any other way.
"It is really an ideal situation, I couldn't imagine not having him with me," she said, noting her son likes to participate in everything that happens in the store. "It is actually more of a distraction when he is not here, like when he is at my mom's for an hour or two."
Haines readily admits that there are few jobs where having a baby on board would work out. However, being a business owner has its benefits and she finds her customers and co-owner very supportive of having Nicholas in the store.
"People come in and look for him," she noted.
Management consultant Sarah Rohl of Lake Ann makes it clear that her daughter, Onalee, nearly 3, is part of her consulting team. She worked downstate in her mother's store from Onalee's earliest days, carrying her in a sling and nursing on demand. She still takes Onalee to work and would not do it any other way.
"I wish everyone could have this kind of environment for their children," said Rohl, who relocated to the area in August and consults part-time with Creative Classrooms.