I was the typical career girl, yep! I mean I was it right, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. You know, it was just how I lived and breathed, it was me and even now with the kids it still is me I can’t switch it off. But back then I didn’t quit take it seriously, when I was pregnant to my first born I thought I’m not crippled I’m just pregnant right? Wrong!!! I thought I should be able to do 12 hour days, I should be able to do exactly what I was doing before I got pregnant, right? Not quite!!! Because what am I? I’m superwoman, I’m super strong, I can do anything and yes I can. But here’s the thing that I failed to recognize, I have a miracle growing inside me and I needed to accept that.

You are Growing a Person

You are growing a person and it’s so important to give it the respect and the attention it deserves. Which is something I’d love to share with other women. I didn’t know how important that was at the time and so I ended up with preeclampsia but I didn’t know I had preeclampsia (talk about clueless). So Let me fast forward to how it played out for me. I’m 35 weeks pregnant and that morning I wake up with a few pains nothing to concerning. Anyway I get on with my day not really thinking anything of it other than to say to myself, “it’s OK I have a doctors appointment so if anything was wrong he would let me know”. Sure enough he wasn’t too happy with my progress and requested that I get a scan and blood tests that afternoon. So I went on my merry way, grabbed the bits of paper and said “I’ve got to go I’ve got a 10 o’clock appointment”.

Later that day I had a lunch meeting scheduled with a business development manager from one of the investment fund . So there we were myself, my business partner, fund manager and my husband, having lunch. I had a big bowl of pasta as you do, and everything was great and all of a sudden I got this incredible pain and I thought, wow, I wonder what’s going on here needless to say, my greatest fear had come to fruition in the middle of this restaurant.

As I got up to go to the toilet, my waters broke. Yes, my waters broke in the middle of a business meeting in the middle of a restaurant. So at this point I started racing to the toilet. I got to the toilet and thought, oh my God. And you know what, my first instinct was, “Well that’s buggered up the afternoon, hasn’t it”! Now, what am I going to do? It was almost like, oh, wow, how inconvenient I had all of these things to do in the afternoon and now you know what’s going to happen, I just hadn’t planned for it.

Didn’t Book in the birth of my First Born

But here’s the thing as a career girl, you’re in control of everything. And for the first time in my life I was in control of nothing and I’m not sure I was really comfortable with that at all at this point.

So there it is, in the middle of a business meeting my waters break and I end up in hospital and 24 hours later I think it was about 36 hours later I had my beautiful baby girl April and I remember thinking what am I going to teach her to make sure that she doesn’t inherit my financial blueprint.

What are we teaching our children

My financial blueprint as you know, was to live from paycheck to paycheck, I wasn’t taught to save or invest for that matter. Anything we wanted we purchased on credit, so when I blew out my credit card that was my personal turning point to change my life once and for all. I knew that my financial blueprint wasn’t going to help me achieve any of my goals nor was it going to align with any of my values. Instinctively I knew from that day on that I had to make sure I instilled the right money stories into my daughter’s life, I had to give her the right financial blueprint that empowered her to achieve financial independence. I now had to be the role model I never had.

What is your Career Mum Story?

So share with me if you’ve got any of those horror stories about being a career mum. Mine, well there it is out in the open. Yes, that’s what happened to me in the middle of a business meeting my greatest fear, what do they say sh…..t happens and it sure did but look at the outcome I got a beautiful baby girl who is turning 18 next month.

I’m Tracey Sofra and I believe women should take control of their money and create the financial independence they deserve to live a life of choice.

If you are ready to take the next step in your journey to live a life of choice, take the Financial Confidence Quiz and find out how you score to move forward in your financial life.