From Wife to Mompreneur

Starting a business in the midst of being a mom to a one-year-old isn't easy. Add in being 31 weeks pregnant in the middle of the hot summer months...it's a struggle. My name is Chelsea Thurman-Westling and I am the owner and founder of Delilah's Maternity. It's truly a joy to get to live the life that I do. As hard as I'm working, and as exhausted as I feel, I've never felt more assured that I'm on the right path and felt more fulfilled.

I began dreaming about this business while pregnant with my daughter. After nearly two years of trying to conceive and one miscarriage, I found myself pregnant with a little girl. I was incredibly excited to become a mom. I was so thrilled when I could see my baby bump starting, but I rapidly started outgrowing my clothes. During a day my husband and I had off, we searched on Google Maps for maternity clothes in our area, and I was specifically looking for a pair of nice, work-appropriate jeans. We went to seven or eight different stores and either discovered they had an extremely limited selection of maternity clothes, or they had nothing in-store at all and directed us to their online stores. We finally found one store in a mall that had a slightly larger maternity selection, and it was the first store that had pregnancy jeans. I found a few articles of clothing, but not enough and I left disheartened.

A few weeks later, I ordered some clothes online as well, and about half of them fit well or were flattering. It was better than nothing and I decided to just live with what I had found. At 20 weeks, I had my anatomy scan ultrasound and throughout the process and measurements, our ultrasound tech was cheerful and telling us what she was seeing. We laughed at how offended my daughter was getting about the ultrasound and how active she was. She was perfect and healthy. She couldn't get a great image of her heart, so we decided to get another ultrasound in a month to see if we could get some better images when she was bigger. The last thing she needed to check was my placenta.

She scanned around my abdomen for a moment and then stopped and went silent. Her demeanor subtly changed, and she asked me if anyone had mentioned the placement of my placenta yet. We told her no one had said anything about my placenta. She said she was going to take some pictures of it and she would leave a note for my OBGYN. Her note was a post-it on my file that said, "Complete Previa." We went to meet with my OBGYN within the same office and the nurse got us into a room, saying the not-very-reassuring, "Don't worry, sometimes previa resolves itself."

I would be diagnosed by my OBGYN with a complete Placenta Previa. My pregnancy was filled with restrictions, doctor's appointments, a bleeding episode, and an overnight hospital stay. The unmedicated birth I had envisioned for my daughter was no longer a possibility, my only option was a cesarean at 37 weeks if we made it that far.

Though this diagnosis clouded my entire pregnancy and filled my husband and me with fear for my unborn daughter and myself, we were still so in love with her. She was extremely active and funny in the womb. In August of 2022, at 37+1 weeks, we welcomed a healthy baby girl. She was nearly 7.5 pounds and came out screaming! We were incredibly grateful.

We had some difficulties establishing breastfeeding but made it after hiring a lactation consultant to come to our house. Postpartum was a struggle. I was on maternity leave from my corporate job, and we were incredibly lucky that my husband also got paternity leave. I couldn't seem to handle the option of sending my child to daycare, which would have cost more than half my paycheck, and I was terrified of entrusting strangers to care for my baby I had fought so hard for. My husband and I realized we could make things work financially on just his income, and I left my job.

I would later be diagnosed with postpartum depression and anxiety, which would explain my difficulty in leaving my daughter. I was so lucky to have the support system and coping tools behind me to keep it from getting too severe or overwhelming. In trying to help myself with it, I explored things I'd never tried before. I grew a garden with delicious fruits and vegetables. I had a sourdough starter on my counter and learned to bake bread. I learned about homesteading and providing for my family. I researched becoming a doula, as I realized I had a passion for the journey of pregnancy and motherhood. Becoming a mother unlocked depths of myself and a strength and passion previously unexplored.

One night, my husband and I were talking about our dreams for our future and our children. He said he had always wanted to leave behind a legacy, and maybe start our own business. I mentioned an idea we had joked about during my pregnancy. That we could start a maternity store. My husband was immediately on board and that began a year of researching how to start my own retail business.

I had worked in retail much of my adult life in different capacities and felt confident I could successfully own my own business if I set my mind to it. I had worked for mostly small businesses and had learned a lot about what makes a small business tick. Some were very successful, others were not. I learned lessons from both and also read a lot of books about the different aspects of running a business. After the research phase, we began the actual preparations to start our business.

After getting our business started, ordering our first small batch of inventory, and starting our website, we started working on finding a brick-and-mortar location, as that was the entire point of starting our business. Then I found out I was pregnant with our second child after only a few months of being off birth control. We were incredibly excited to have another child but also worried about how we would balance starting our store while I was pregnant. We finally found the right place for our first location in a community staple: The Shops at South Town Mall in Sandy. We also obtained our first business loan as we had been entirely self-funded at this point and I wanted to have more cash on hand to pay employees and pay for renovations of our storefront.

We've since had our doors open for a few months and have been much more successful than we had initially dared to hope. I believe we found a true need in our community and I'm so glad we were able to fill it. I'm so lucky to have the support and help of my co-owner and husband. I never would have thought I was capable of doing this without him. I feel so grateful that I'm getting to pursue something I'm truly passionate about and be able to help others while doing so. Motherhood has been the most difficult and incredible journey for me, and I hope to help others find that same joy in theirs. My life is beautiful in all the ways I'd always longed for. Thank you for hearing my story, and I can't wait for you to see more!