Her Boss Snapped A Photo Of Her At Work, What Happened Next Could Change The World
Being a mom is never easy no matter how you slice it. Being a working mom is no exception. Daycare or not, working from home or not, part time, full time, there’s no magic formula for balancing work and family.
A photo of a very special working mom going viral right now has us hopeful that more employers will do their part to accommodate their employees who are trying to strike that balance.
The sweet photo was taken at Maryland Farms Chiropractic, in Brentwood, Tennessee. When the owner of the practice, Dr. Elizabeth Baker, happened to walk by the front desk, she just had to snap a photo of this heartwarming scene and share her message with the world.
https://www.facebook.com/MarylandFarmsChiro/posts/2149065808464771
As she takes a phone call while cradling her tiny, adorable daughter, Melody Blackwell, the practice’s billing specialist, is shown enjoying a peaceful moment in which she seems to have found that perfect family/work balance.
When the photo was taken, Blackwell had just returned from a 3-month maternity leave only a little while earlier. Blackwell now works from home four days per week and comes to the office, with baby Nora-Jo in tow, once each week.
Nora-Jo, Dr. Baker said in her post, is a “sweet and content” baby, and her mom “makes it look easy.”
She also encouraged social media users to share the photo to help make an important statement: “We need more small and large businesses to see this is doable and should be allowed more often! The newborn months are so short.”
Dr. Baker, looking to be as accommodating as she could be, first proposed that Blackwell work from home and be allowed to bring Nora-Jo to work once a week so she could be there for weekly staff meetings:
“Once she got pregnant I knew we needed to figure out a way to make this work,” Dr. Baker said in an interview with Yahoo Lifestyle. “We had nine months to plan, at least!”
“I was excited when she said that [working from home] was a possibility,” Blackwell shared with Yahoo. “I didn’t know if it would be.”
If Dr. Baker hadn’t been flexible and determined to retain her valuable employees, Blackwell would have had limited options. “I knew it was going to be hard for me to leave her when she was so young,” she said.
Blackwell knows for sure how blessed she is, and she sympathizes with moms who don’t have this same opportunity and have to utilize childcare so soon after birth: “I know it’s hard to drop them off at daycare when they’re just 2 or 3 months old.”
