Publicist Annie Carroll and stylist Sophie Barker are friends, mums, and the co-founders of homeroom; a newsletter and digital community helping its thousands of subscribers get dressed.
Where some fashion and style platforms fill me with unease — where over consumption is normalised and vanity reigns supreme — homeroom just isn’t like that. It’s welcoming, it’s intentional, it’s safe, and since Annie and Sophie became mums some two years ago, I can see myself in a lot of their content. Motherhood hasn’t infiltrated the homeroom brand entirely, but it’s become part of the DNA, and it feels good to see how a pregnant or postpartum mum approaches getting dressed in a way that’s not too glossy, too unattainable. Instead, it’s fun. It’s the opposite of you-can’t-sit-with-us.
And so, when I discovered they were fans of Ready or Not, I was a bit taken aback, and after watching their homeroom offering evolve as their motherhood journeys and their careers outside of it have, I knew we had to sit down with them to find out more about how they navigate their creative pursuits and their day jobs alongside motherhood.
Here’s Annie and Sophie.
Please use three words to describe yourself outside of being a mother and career girl…
AC: Learner, writer, recovering ballet dancer.
SB: Open book, country gal, forever seeking connection. More like three phrases but you catch my drift.
Now, tell us about who you are as a mother and in business?
AC: I am a mum to a two and a bit year old boy, a partner in a strategic communications advisory and the co-founder of homeroom. In both parenting and in business, I have an almost crippling fear of failure, which underpins almost every aspect of how I operate in both work and life, in both good and bad ways.
I approached the logistics of early mothering with a level of organisation that only Virgos will relate to, but I was wholly underprepared for what becoming a mother would do to me on a physiological level. It has made me infinitely softer and stronger, which is why it’s so interesting, beautiful and hard.
SB: I am mum to an almost two year old boy Vivian who I cannot get enough of and currently 31 weeks pregnant with my second boy. In paid work, I’m a fashion stylist working predominantly in advertising but slowly shuffling more into personal styling, and co-founder of homeroom.
It will possibly be nauseating to read but I’ve never felt more at home doing something before in my life than being a mum. I was one of those people that always knew and was ready for it so early, it just took me a while to find the right person to do it with, otherwise I would’ve been pregnant at 16. V country of me. I feel more confident being a mum than anything else ever, even when I’m not sure I’m doing it the ‘right’ way. In fact I think motherhood is the only time I have ever held a natural ease, I second guess everything else I do and say.
In paid work I am almost the opposite — while confident and capable in my craft, I have a tendency to say yes far too much, go above and beyond what is required and have an eagerness to please that hasn’t presented itself in motherhood.
You both engaged in paid work in a range of ways – what did maternity leave look like for you, if in fact you had one at all?
AC: I run a business where I personally work with a number of retained clients as well as project clients. We’re not a typical ‘agency’, we deliberately don’t have a big team underneath us and I personally operate more on an internal, fractional level as opposed to an external partner.
Financially it wasn’t an option for me to stop working with my retained clients, so I engaged a trusted contractor to continue delivering the work while I stepped away. She worked alongside me for a few months in the lead up to my maternity leave. It wasn’t a cheap way to do it, but she was amazing and it meant that when I was ready to return to work, I wasn’t starting from scratch. I would check in with her every couple of weeks. I came back to work part-time around 6 months, and full-time at 12 months when my son started daycare.
SB: If I’m honest with myself I really didn’t allow myself a proper maternity leave. I spent the whole time trying to squeeze the newsletter into every spare moment of the day with a baby that wouldn’t sleep longer than 15 minutes at a time. My waters broke on the set of a Fujitsu commercial at 33 weeks so I didn’t actually get to wrap up work and ease into maternity leave and I think this definitely set the tone for me postpartum: I never actually turned my work brain off so I was always leaving myself open to work coming in the door. I was back on set after a couple of months, though it was about seven months postpartum before I engaged with care and went back semi-regularly.
As a freelancer, I was scared of losing my clients, momentum and relevance — everything you work so hard for, for so many years, getting put on pause.. Because there’s no one else that can take your place when you yourself are your work. I feel a little sad that I spent such a special and raw time feeling so desperate not to let go of work. I hope to do things (slightly) differently this next time around, though the experience is fairly typical of a freelancer.
And what did the return to paid work look like in the early days – biggest challenges and greatest joys?
AC: It’s the strangest thing to ‘return’ to something when you’re changed on a cellular level. I had a hard time letting go of this idea that everything could be exactly the same as it was before baby – my body and brain were completely transformed by matrescence, so it was like getting back on a bike with a new pair of feet. My son was a little unsure about daycare at first, and there were lots of tears from both of us before he settled in. Aside from that, the biggest challenge I’ve had to overcome is accepting that my ‘value’ at work isn’t connected to how many hours I log at the desk. Having a baby has forced me to be more ruthless about what I say yes to, getting more comfortable saying no and setting boundaries around when I let work ‘in’ (fellow people pleasers, I see you!). I am still figuring this out!
Biggest joy in returning to work? Realising I had made my maternity leave work, that I didn’t lose any clients in the process, and that I did what I had previously thought was impossible. Oh, and having time to sit down and drink a coffee was nice, too.
SB: I always thought the freelance nature of my job would be perfect for motherhood: that I’d be able to pick and choose bits of work and only take on what I wanted, when I wanted it. But the reality has been far from perfect. Kids demand routine, which is something I’ve never been able to achieve with my work.
I lost a couple of clients postpartum, which I mostly understood. Business needs to continue on without you and creativity needs a regular shake up. But it was fairly heavy on the ego for it to happen directly after becoming a mother and work hasn’t picked up in the same way since becoming a mum, which was both a blessing and a lesson. While it’s technically been forced upon me it’s allowed me to pause and reconsider what I plan to do with the next stage of my career and how I will make it work for me and my family. Hence a slow move towards personal styling, something I avoided previously which I now feel so much more inclined to chase since becoming a mum because of the major life transition and monumental physical change your body goes through, two very common reasons for someone to seek a personal stylist.
And the financial necessity aspect has been a rude awakening. We took on our first mortgage literally the week Viv turned up early, losing an income and taking on fresh crippling debt in the same week, I sincerely do not recommend. I’m of course thankful to be in the position to take on a mortgage to begin with, major struggle or not, but it’s still been a big challenge.
Hardships aside, my return to work firmly cemented in me the need to continue to create and connect through my job. And be really good at it. I haven’t quite been able to grow homeroom or my career at the pace I’d like since becoming a mum, but my eagerness and passion to keep at it is stronger than ever.
With some hindsight, what would you do to prepare yourself and/or your business for maternity leave?
AC: I feel like having someone I trusted to take care of my clients while I was away was everything here. If I am lucky enough to have another, I would take the same approach.
SB: Hindsight is 20/20 but I would have been far smarter financially. We should’ve budgeted earlier because everything we had went to the new mortgage and we didn’t have enough of a buffer, especially for a prem baby.
Workwise, if I had had the opportunity to wrap things up properly I would’ve come up with a clear end and reintegration date, as well as having a plan in place with each of my regular clients to hopefully retain them postpartum. In saying all of this, I am 31 weeks and without a strong plan! Plan incoming this week, promise.
In many ways, experiencing motherhood can make paid work seem easier. In what ways has this been true for you?
AC: Paid work is so much more straightforward. It’s a question with an answer. It has parameters and clear markers of success. It’s also finite: at some point in the day, you put it down and walk away. And when you do, there’s this little person who reminds you that work is just work.
SB: You get to sit down at work, have a break, go for a walk by yourself, have a lapse in focus. None of this is guaranteed in motherhood. Going to paid work is 100% easier.
On the flip side, in what ways has paid work remained challenging?
AC: No matter how hard I try, there’s never enough time in the day for it all. While I love the flexibility that comes with running my own business, there are definitely some drawbacks. In busy periods, there are lots of working late nights and on weekends. To keep the guilt at bay, I’ll try to squeeze as much work in when my son is asleep so I can be present when he’s awake. But it’s not always possible. I am literally typing this while my son is sitting on my lap! I spend a lot of time feeling at odds with myself over how much I work.
SB: The juggle! The mental load! The constant push-pull between the two versions of myself. Because I can’t guarantee which days I need care for (freelancer, no routine, yada yada), I am constantly juggling extra care options when I need to take on work on his non-care days. I regularly fail at this and am forced into a last minute dash to actually find care. I hate this part. Peas in a pod has been a godsend for this very predicament, though it has meant I’ve had to leave my prized possession with a stranger on a few occasions, absolutely racking me with guilt. But I haven’t been let down by them yet.
You’re both roughly two years+ into motherhood now – what does parenthood feel like to you now compared to the early days?
AC: The early days were so tender. I felt like my purpose as a mother was so clear and so vital. Motherhood really does a number on you because even though rationally I know how hard those first few weeks and months were, I can’t help but look back on them with an ache in my heart and a longing to relive them all over again. I am pretty sure that’s going to be true of every phase.
The biggest difference between then and now is the nature of the love I feel for my son. When he was born, I felt a level of primal love and protectiveness over him that was shocking to me. It was animalistic, subconscious, and debilitatingly fierce.
But as he’s grown older, that love has grown and morphed as well. It feels a lot like falling in love. And that’s been such a beautiful surprise.
SB: Everyone tells you and it is true - it really does get easier the older they get. Or maybe it’s that the hard is just different, it changes and evolves. But the relentlessness of the early days was the killer for me. It felt like there was no air between each moment: one cry, one feed, one bath rolled into the next. Then rinse and repeat. Of course, I adored the early days but I don’t ache for them like some, I think I’ve found toddlerhood more rewarding. Each day the love grows bigger than you thought possible the day prior. And while it was so hard to send him to childcare initially, it was the best thing I could have done for my mental health, to have some space from him.
RAPID FIRE ROUND
Describe motherhood in three words.
AC: Untamed, selfless, transformative.
SB: Visceral, relentless, transformative.
Navigating motherhood and paid work is…
AC: Hard but often necessary.
SB: The hardest juggle of my life but 100% necessary both mentally and financially.
I wouldn’t be able to navigate motherhood and paid work without…
AC: A supportive husband who really gets it.
SB: An equal partner and my mum community.
My go-to mum-friendly office uniform is…
AC: Loose, slouchy tailored trousers, leather thongs and a soft cardigan.
SB: A tee, slouchy knit and an elevated elastic waist pant - paired with a necklace and a slide.
The best way to help a new mum is…
AC: Bring her nourishing food.
SB: Feed her.
The best way to help a mum returning to paid work is…
AC: Tell her she’s doing an amazing job of it all.
SB: Listen and share - the only way I got through it was by sharing stories with how other mums have done it before me. It’s trial and error.
If I could solve one problem for working mothers, it would be…
AC: Transforming the childcare sector – we need new and better incentives for the childcare industry so that it is safer and less expensive.
SB: Longer paid parental leave, so that you can return to work on your own terms.
To get out of the door in the morning, I need…
AC: To breathe.
SB: Supreme patience.
My biggest current challenge in making work, work as a mum is…
AC: Finding time for myself.
SB: Too many ideas and balls in the air.
My biggest focus for 2026 is…
AC: Building for the future I want while being grateful for the present I’m in.
SB: To simplify and enjoy. My partner recently asked me to think about where we were five years ago and what we were hoping for — we now have everything we so desperately wanted for in the future. That was a huge realisation for me.
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