Work load when pregnant

[glass]

2 weeks ago my wife had her first ultrasound and we found out it's twins. She is 10 or 11 weeks pregnant with twins. Last week when we were at the Doc. And were asking about what to expect with it being her first pregnancy. We were told there would be a good chance of bed rest at some point.


I own and run a stained glass and glass art company out of our basement. Currently she works about 50 hours a week. I have 1 other full time and 1 part time employee. We are looking to hire someone to replace part of my wife's hours. I work about 65 hours a week.


Right now we have about 12 weeks of work lined up with our current workers. I'm also looking at a new church that would take about 15 weeks from start to finish.


I want my wife to cut her hours back soon to get everything ready. At some point want to drop down to working 8 hours a day 6 days a week but don't know when. My wife wants us to take on the church job, but I don't want to get stuck working around the clock to try and get a huge project finished at the last minute. She has talked to her mom and she says she will come over a couple days a week to help out around the house.


I know for more than half of my life I have put playing with glass in front of everything else in my life. I'm one of the worst when it comes to relationships or even doing something special for my wife. But I know I know this is the time that I have to change to be there for her.


I would love to to hear some thoughts on this as my art dose not talk back to me.

[Float On]

Congrats on the babies.
Your wife could end up with 3 weeks to 3 months bedrest depending on how the pregnancy goes. We just closed our art glass business (blown) in December, from my experience I would encourage you to set boundaries now. We were building our business when our boys were babies (they are 11 1/2 mts apart). My husband missed out on a lot of their baby years because he was working for another studio while building our own and put in close to 80 hours a week between the two.

[Tussiemussies]

All that stress could affect the babies, she must start now to put the babies before all else as she will have to do during their lives anyway. The time to start or acting that for me, would be now.....

[Rachel]

I applaud your dedication to your family! I think with twins and the possibility of bed rest you should set things up so that you can manage without her being on her feet starting around month 6. And consider strongly cutting back to 8 hours as of now. Maybe there is an online group somewhere for parents of twins that you could look into.

Congratulations--you have a wonderful new adventure ahead of you. My mother had two sets of twins. They are a lot of work when very young, but they will entertain each other and keep each other company almost from day one, and that will be a beautiful thing to watch and enjoy.

[glass]

She told me today it is sinking in. She is going to teaching me the program we use to draw out thewindows faster and at some point she will show me how the financialdatabase is setup so I’m able to do estimates and billing. Shesays in 2 more weeks she is going to cut back to 40 hours a week. The new full time lady starts this week. She also talked aboutgetting the house keeper to come twice week in the a couple months.


She still wants us to take on the newchurch job and is laying it out on the computer. She is on her buttat work more than she is on her feet.




I did do a 3 day class a couple yearsago on glass blowing and the amount of equipment that is needed ishuge and the maintenance that goes with it. In my 3 days I was onlyable to make a few things worth keeping.


We do stained glass (foil tape, cane,and repair work), I also do glass slump, and I do some custom glasssheets in my kiln.