A low-grade fever I barely noticed in my first trimester eventually changed almost every part of my life.
At the time, I had no idea I had contracted CMV, cytomegalovirus, or that it had passed to my baby before he was born.
My son was born hearing. By two, he was profoundly deaf.
What followed were cochlear implants, therapy, learning Auslan, appointments, language support and eventually seizures. We later learnt that the same virus that had damaged his hearing had also affected his brain.
For a long time, I thought about those changes mainly in terms of what they meant for my son.
It took me longer to understand how much they would also change the kind of working life I could realistically have.
I had trained for a teaching career I loved
Before all of this, I had a fairly clear idea of where my career was going.
I had trained as a teacher, worked hard to develop my skills and genuinely loved education. I was particularly interested in curriculum and could see myself eventually specialising more deeply in that area.
I did not leave teaching because I suddenly stopped caring about the work.
The problem was that full-time classroom teaching stopped fitting neatly around the reality of our family life.
Appointments did not conveniently fall outside school hours. Therapy needed to happen when it needed to happen. Medical needs could not always be predicted in advance. There were school calls, fatigue, seizures and the days when my son simply needed me to be available.
Eventually, mainstream schooling stopped working well for him and I brought him home to homeschool.
At that point, one thing became very clear: I could no longer build my working life on the assumption that I could drop my child at school each morning, go to work and know exactly how the next eight hours would unfold.
I needed another option.
The problem was not that I did not want to work
I think this distinction matters because special needs mums are often spoken about as though caring and working sit on opposite sides of a decision.
That was never how it felt to me.
I still wanted to work. I still wanted to contribute financially. I still wanted to learn, build skills and have goals outside the day-to-day demands of caregiving.
But the type of work had to change.
I did not need someone to tell me to become better organised so that I could squeeze our family into the structure of a traditional job.
I needed work that could fit around my son.
There is a difference.
And that became the question I started asking:
What could I build that would allow me to earn around my son’s needs, rather than constantly asking our family to fit around work?
That question eventually led me online.
“Work from home” and “flexible work” are not always the same thing
When you first start looking for work-from-home options as a parent, it can sound as though remote work will automatically solve the problem.
It does not always.
A job can technically be done from home and still require you to be online from 9am until 5pm. A role can be labelled “flexible” while still expecting you to be available for meetings at fixed times or meet deadlines that do not care whether your child has suddenly needed you for three days.
In Australia, flexible working arrangements can include changes to hours, work patterns and location, and eligible carers can request them from an employer.
There are also genuinely flexible remote and part-time roles available. Current Australian job listings include work-from-home and flexible roles across a range of industries.
But for me, I realised I was looking for something slightly different.
I was not simply looking for a job I could do from my house.
I was looking for a way of earning that could move with the unpredictability of our life.