They told me I was too distracted to keep my job just a few months after returning from maternity leave. What I did next sparked a conversation that millions couldn’t ignore.
I was used to waking up at 5:30 in the morning. My son was already crying, red-faced and wriggling in his cot like a little fire alarm.
I took him in my arms, cradled him against my thigh, and opened my laptop with my free hand. Emails, pings in Slack, and a reminder on my calendar to meet me at 7am. The coffee in my mug was always cold by the time I remembered it was there.
This was my life: spreadsheets at dawn, lullabies by moonlight. I wasn’t thriving, but I was surviving. And in those early days, I felt like it was enough.
It was just me, my baby, and a house that was never quiet. I cradled him in my arms while I typed my weekly reports. I changed nappies in between Zoom calls and muted meetings to get him back to sleep.
One morning a colleague asked: ‘Is that a baby crying?’.
I smiled without blinking. ‘It’s probably just my ringtone.’
A few people chuckled, but after that I started keeping the microphone off more often than usual.
Before I became a mum, I was the one they all leaned on. I worked for the company for five years, starting as an admin and rising to project manager. I took night classes, got a certificate in digital marketing and helped train the last round of new hires. When a rebranding in 2020 nearly broke the site, I stayed up two nights in a row fixing the homepage. There were no complaints.
Rob, my supervisor, once told me, ‘If I had five people like you, this whole place would run itself.’
Another time, during a performance review, he said: “You’re stable. You’re smart. You don’t complain. Honestly, you are a dream employee.”
I remember smiling and responding, “Thanks, Rob. I love it here.”
And I loved it. I loved the work, the structure, the team. I liked knowing where I was.
Then I became a mum. And everything changed.
When I came back from maternity leave, I felt ready. Tired, but ready. During our check-in, I told Rob, “I’m back on track. Early in, late out. I’m here.”
He patted me on the shoulder and said: “I like that attitude. Just keep up the pace.”
I did my best. Even on two hours of sleep. Even when my baby was colicky and I couldn’t finish a sentence without extraneous noise.
I kept the camera rolling and smiling. But people started treating me differently.
‘You look…tired,’ Sarah from accounting said one morning. Her tone was soft, but her eyes spoke of something else.
‘Just a kid,’ I replied.
She raised her eyebrows. “Mm. I hope this doesn’t affect your deadlines.”
The next week, Rob announced at our team meeting, “This quarter, we’re asking for flexibility. We may have to work late. Maybe on weekends.”
I typed in a chat, “I can be flexible, just need a heads up. I have childcare responsibilities.”
No-one replied.
Friday afternoon an appointment came up. 6:30pm.
I texted Rob. “Can we make it early? I need to pick up my son from daycare.”
He replied, ‘Let’s chat later.’
But he never did.
Then I got a late paycheck. Three days late. I wrote to the payroll department. There was no reply. Then I asked Rob at our one-on-one meeting. He leaned back in his chair and said: ‘You’re no longer the breadwinner, right?’
I froze. “Actually, yes, I am. I’m divorced.”
He laughed awkwardly. “Oh, right. I thought you were still with that guy.”
I didn’t say anything back. I needed that paycheck. I couldn’t afford to rock the boat.
So I said: “It’s okay. I just wanted to check in.”
He waved his hand as if it didn’t matter. ‘I’m sure it’ll go away.’
But something about the way he said it made me feel small. And that feeling stayed with me longer than I expected.
The next appointment was set for 3:00pm. Just me, Rob, and someone from HR who I’d never seen before.
Her nametag said Cynthia, and she didn’t smile once. The room was cold. The blinds were half closed, and the fluorescent lights shone dimly overhead. The chair I was given was wobbly, but I sat up straight anyway.
Rob started talking as if we were just doing a routine checkup. ‘Thank you for taking the time,’ he said.
I nodded. ‘Sure.’
He leaned forward, folding his hands on the table as if he was going to compliment me. ‘We appreciate your time with us,’ he began, “but we need someone without…distractions.
I blinked. ‘Distractions?’
He paused, as if he wanted the word to sound softer than it actually was. “Someone completely free. Someone who wouldn’t mind late nights or weekends. Someone we won’t have to consult with before planning anything.”
Cynthia was silent, watching me as if expecting me to cry or scream. But I didn’t cry. I just listened.
‘You mean my baby is a distraction,’ I said, my voice flat.
Rob looked at Cynthia, then back at me. ‘We don’t say that.’
‘You are saying that,’ I said. ‘You’re saying that being a mother makes me a problem.’
He didn’t answer anything. The silence dragged on.
I stood up, smoothing my blouse, though my hands were shaking. ‘Thank you for your honesty,’ I said and walked out. No screaming. No tears. Just a quiet exit.
But I was burning up inside. They didn’t let me go because I couldn’t do the job. They let me go because I couldn’t sag anymore. I asked for notice, for a fair work schedule, for a paycheck that came on time. I had become something they couldn’t control – a mother who set boundaries.
That night, after putting my son to bed, I sat on the couch, still in my work clothes. Next to me, the baby monitor blinked quietly. I opened my laptop and switched on the camera. The living room was dim, but it felt right.
‘Hi,’ I said into the lens. “I got fired today. Not because I wasn’t doing my job well. It was because I became a mum. Because I couldn’t stay late without warning. Because I asked why my paycheck was three days late.”
I paused and looked directly into the camera. ‘They called me a distraction.’
I took a breath. ‘So I’m going to do something about it.’
Then I hit the send button.
At first, nothing happened. A few likes. A couple of shares. But by midnight, the video exploded – over 3,000 views and growing. By morning it had 2 million views. Messages sprinkled in from women I didn’t know.
‘This happened to me too.’
‘I cried watching it.’
‘Thank you for saying what we all feel.’
One comment stood out, ‘If you ever start something, I’m with you.’
And that was it. That was the moment. A week later I had a waiting list – mums who were coders, designers, marketers, virtual assistants. All talented. All tired. All ready to go.
I did the paperwork and bought a domain. I called it ‘The Napping Agency.’
We worked at kitchen tables and on the living room floor. During naps and after naps. We held meetings with babies on our laps and toddlers playing at our feet. We sent drafts at midnight and met deadlines while wiping saliva with one hand.
Amanda, our copywriter from Detroit, was working with a newborn in a sling. Maya, a designer from Austin, worked late into the night while her twins slept next to her laptop. We didn’t apologise for our lives. We built our business around them.
Three months later, I got an email from one of my old company’s biggest clients. ‘We watched your video,’ they wrote. ‘We prefer to work with people who understand real life.’
Two more clients followed.
By the end of the quarter, we had six contracts, a dozen women getting paid, and more women waiting to join. We weren’t just building websites. We were creating the kind of workplace we dreamed existed when we needed it most.
It’s been a year since that meeting where my son was called a distraction.
He’s two years old today. He sleeps through the night, eats like a champ and insists on picking out his own socks. We laugh a lot these days. Our mornings are still busy, but now they are filled with purpose instead of panic.
Naptime Agency has grown from one mum with a laptop to a team of 30. Designers. Writers. Developers. Project managers.
All mums. All geniuses. We’ve built websites for startups, launched branding campaigns for non-profits, and helped small businesses triple their online reach. Every win feels like a small rebellion.
Sometimes that old video comes to mind. When I see it, I don’t cringe. I smile. It reminds me of where it all started – one hard truth and one harder decision.
They said I was a distraction. But look at us now – 30 strong, 30 brilliant, and not one of us apologised. What they saw as a weakness became our foundation. Losing this job didn’t break me. It set me free.
This work is inspired by real events and people, but for creative purposes it has been fictionalised. Names, characters and details have been changed to protect privacy and enhance the narrative. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, or real events is purely coincidental and is not intended by the author.
