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Andrea McAuliffe

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Jenny Scott enters her store in a whirl of morning energy, her two-month-old son snuggled in a baby sling against her chest. She greets her employees, giving them a quick run-down of the day. She plops down her bag and turns her attention to me with a cheery smile, leading me past strollers, toys and high chairs back out the door of the shop.

Enlarge Photo

Karyn Fillmore

Between them, Jenny and Steven Scott own three businesses, but they make it a priority to spend as much time as they can with their children, from left, Quinton, Dexter and Emerson.

We grab a seat nearby at a small table on the third floor of Market Square, where Scott's two businesses, Stylin' Mama, Baby & Tot and Ambiance Day Spa are in view. We barely begin talking before a polite, elderly lady stops in her tracks at the site of little Dexter, cuddled close to mom. The stranger coos at the sleepy-eyed bundle, using words like "precious" and "handsome," before taking her reluctant leave.

Dexter is the youngest of Scott's three children with husband Steven Scott. The couple's daughter Emerson is three and son Quinton is 20 months.

With three children aged three and under and three businesses between them (Steven owns King Construction Ltd. in Fredericton) the couple somehow manages to strike a balance between work and family, making it a priority to spend time with their children.

But Scott acknowledges the juggling is not always easy.

"There are days when I feel overwhelmed or like I bit off a lot," she says. "But I enjoy what I do and I think that's a big part of it."

Scott, 29, opened Stylin' Mama Baby & Tot last December, capitalizing on what she learned from operating her successful spa. The store sells items such as maternity clothes, car seats, strollers, cloth diapers, glass bottles, baby carriers, wooden toys and nursing gear. They sold bisphenol-A-free products from the start, before the recent BPA scare.

Over the last year, Scott has noticed a trend toward a more natural approach to parenting. She says parents are using products that harken back to a simpler time.

"We're getting back to the way things used to be. Back to glass bottles, back to wearing babies, back to cloth diapers. A lot of moms are making their own baby food," Scott says. "I think we'll see more moms breastfeeding - I hope we will. People are just more aware of the economy and what's healthy for babies and raising babies green."

Cloth diapers are one of the store's top-sellers. When they opened, Scott wasn't sure how the diapers would do. She brought in a couple of brands; now, they carry six lines. Scott started her daughter out wearing disposables but soon switched to cloth.

"It's not the cloth that your mom or grandmom used," she says. "They're so different. They're cute, they're easy. It is no harder than putting on a Pamper. There's no pins, there's no needles. They're snaps, they're easy. Anybody can do it."

Scott says the amount of time it takes for a disposable diaper to break up in a landfill is disgusting, adding that Canadians throw out millions of them a year. For her household, the answer was easy.

"We probably spent close to $1,000 on cloth for three kids. On Pampers, you're going to spend about $3,000 per child," she said. "If you use cloth and you breastfeed - right there, you're saving $4,000."

Scott is also selling plenty of cloth diapers through her web store (www.stylinmama.ca). She has shipped to places like Nunavut, Calgary, Seattle - even China.

Back at the store, she is gearing up for her busiest season. She tries to work from home a couple of days a week. But until the Christmas season is over, she and little Dexter will be at work every day. The comfy sling he sits in represents one of the main reasons Scott opened her store. When she had her first two children within 18 months of each other, she wasn't able to find maternity and nursing clothes or the strollers, car seats and baby carriers she wanted. There were only a couple of places to go for baby gear and she didn't like the idea of buying maternity clothes out of a magazine.

"I guess I was just a little frustrated that there wasn't anything in Saint John," she says. "There was no boutique, there was nowhere to shop. And Saint John moms need that place."

Between the spa and the store, Scott sees plenty of people who are celebrating milestones - birthdays, wedding days, the prom, their first baby or their fifth, or the arrival of a grandchild. It makes all the hard work worth it. She says if you are self-employed, you have to be passionate about what you do and you have to work hard. Her passion has earned her the Saint John Board of Trade's Young Entrepreneur Award, which will be presented at a ceremony on Nov. 26.

She says some days are harder than others but she takes each one as it comes.

"A lot of people ask me how I can do it. I love being busy and I love working and I love being with my kids and I love how I have a little bit of everything in my life," she says. "None of my days are the same. Every single day presents new challenges and new things to do and new tasks. And every single day I meet new people at the store - like the lady who stopped off to see the baby."

Rising from the table to head back to work, Scott smiles down at Dexter, now fast asleep and breathing quietly against her chest, oblivious to their busy day ahead.

Andrea McAuliffe mcauliffe.andrea@telegraphjournal.com is an editor at the Telegraph-Journal and mother of two. Parental Guidance appears every other Saturday in Magazine.