Ten year anniversaries of your birth date are always exciting and are a definite cause for celebration!

When you get one of those milestones, pause and look back at what you have gone through, how successful you have been and what you have enjoyed. For others, reaching such a milestone can be a bit troubling, as you may fret whether you have really achieved enough and where you might be in another ten years.

We should all reflect on our stage in life, where we are personally, financially and emotionally. It's also quite common for a woman, busy raising a family, to think about her sexual appeal and its effectiveness when she gets to the big 40.

It's very true to say that we all become more philosophical as we age. Being philosophical is a result of experience as we have a lot to reflect on and a lot of positive knowledge to put in place. During our development as a human being, each milestone that we get to represents a significant achievement and a time for us to reflect and reinterpret our memories. As such, considering whether you are sexy or not as a 40-something mum will undoubtedly unveil a whole list of different answers than it would if you were 30.

Those of us who have experienced and loved being a 40-year-old mum, know that our sexuality owes a lot to our maturity, from an emotional and mental perspective. Dignity comes naturally at this age and those elements of insecurity seem so far away.

Whenever problems arise, we rely on our sassy approach to dealing with these situations, breezing through such problems with apparent ease and feeling good about it while we do!

Often times, professional coaching is a marvellous boost for mums, whatever page of life they find themselves on and especially if they find an upcoming milestone to be challenging. It's important to understand what "sexy" means and most importantly of all, what it means to you.

Maturity teaches us to celebrate everything we have, and make the most of how we look, even though we will certainly be different today than we were back then. For example, do as the old screen sirens did - learn how you look better in certain lights and always present your best side to a camera! Emotionally and mentally, however it is likely that you are much sexier and more appealing for every year that you age.

You have achieved a lot so far and should be proud of it and fully secure. Your children are a great reflection of you and you should be proud or both them and your partner. You have to love yourself before anyone else and this is at the essence of making life enjoyable. In most cases, online life coaching experts can be consulted whenever you are feeling a little down about those upcoming big milestones, so important to everyone else!

You have to believe, think and above all act young and I often, when coaching for women, remind them that their life begins at 40. If you did not know, how old would you say you were, right now? And no, it isn't “90”! Now, go strut your stuff, fabulous 40 mum!

Amanda Alexander is Director of Coaching Mums and a highly acclaimed ICF-accredited coach who delivers professional coaching programmes to working moms who yearn for success, balance and fulfilment. Are you a juggling mom? Download our free eBook for working moms that will give you 5 simple and instant ways to balance your life right now!

When you find out that a new arrival is on the way, there is little to match that feeling of ecstasy or exuberance that your whole family will share with you. This is one of the most momentous times of your family life and for an expectant mother can be simply amazing.

Friends and acquaintances will also be over the moon and will all look forward to the big day with much anticipation.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the whole World would be happy for you and while this is largely the case, sometimes you may encounter an element of negativity.

Surely, your boss is happy for you, but he or she may not be on quite the same level as everyone else and be particularly concerned with the operation of the business. You may soon come to realise that the business is classified squarely in first position in the eyes of your boss and if you want to consider flexible working hours as you go forward, you are going to have to be really persuasive.

You may come to find that your boss is really a dinosaur and can be very inflexible, unfortunately, so you will have to call on all your powers of creativity and persuasiveness.

Seek out a co-worker or friend who has been in the position that you are in now and sit down to have a heart-to-heart conversation with her, to see how the two-way communication with her boss was initiated and how the situation panned out. While you are at this research stage, talk to other friends in other industries or professions and see what solutions they were able to come up with.

This is the time to be very creative and forward thinking and consider telecommuting or working from home. The good news is that this is becoming more and more of a trend as companies seek to save overheads. If the type of work that you do can be handled in this way, this may well be an option for you.

Above all else, you must first decide what would be the absolutely ideal situation for you. Be sure of what you are doing, as after all, remember that you must be careful what you wish for!

Look for an ideal scenario and come up with options for less-than-perfect deals. Above all else, look at your home situation and understand what you will be able to accommodate before asking.

You should always be careful when you are discussing options with colleagues and you might have to exercise some strategy. If you all collectively share a workload, see how you could come up with ideas to divide the work accordingly, giving you a more flexible schedule. You must be willing to pull your weight in other areas and above all else make sure that you are confident it would be a win/win/win situation for the colleagues, the employer and yourself.

Some of us have jobs that expect us to complete certain tasks as part of a "job and finish” approach, regardless of the time that it takes and as part of your new schedule idea, contemplate whether you will be able to achieve this goal during your personal time.

If you look at your boss as a dinosaur, maybe you can cause him or her to stop chewing the vegetation for a moment and realise that you can be equally as productive, if not more so, by working this more flexible schedule.

In most situations, online life coaching can be another excellent source of research for you. Thankfully, coaching for women can always help by looking at a variety of situations and suggesting options. This is far from being the private domain of executives or sports players and you should turn to professional coaching, as well!

Amanda Alexander is Director of Coaching Mums and a highly acclaimed ICF-accredited coach who delivers professional coaching programmes to working mums who yearn for success, balance and fulfilment. Are you a juggling mom? Download our free eBook for working moms that will give you 5 simple and instant ways to balance your life right now!

The Work and Families Act was lauded as being advantageous to mums-to-be when it was introduced in 2007. After all, nine months of statutory maternity pay was available, with up to a year off work allowable. For the family, much more time and attention could be devoted to the task of getting ready, receiving and raising the child during these critical periods. Within the caring society that we live, maternity leave is seen as a human right, even though certain pressures can arise between the employee and the employer as part of the ongoing working arrangement. While employers must accept that pregnancy is possible and must accept the letters of the law, they must also be prepared to take on temporary staff as necessary to account for the woman on maternity leave. This is bound to cause a certain amount of disruption, but in the majority of situations, this is taken in stride.

There is a new clause available for the mum on maternity, allowing her to "keep in touch" through the allocation of 10 legislatively permitted days, during which she can attend work and receive a certain number of payments. Parliament decided that this legislation was appropriate and that it would help to smooth over any element of "disconnection" or normal disruption that might take place in the work place and between the employer and employee over time.

Mum can take advantage of keeping in touch days from several different perspectives. She can certainly keep up with the latest trends at work. It is certainly possible to do a lot of research while remaining at home and to get all kinds of e-mails and other notifications when on leave, but there is nothing to replace that feeling of actually being at your work place, talking and interacting with other staff members and seeing how new policies and procedures are actually working. This is a strategic way of keeping in touch and when time approaches to return to work, the employee should be "up to speed" and ready to be highly productive, once more.

Mum may have been involved with a particularly challenging project when baby called. Those keeping in touch days would be particularly advantageous for her in this case, allowing her to continue to follow through and to impart her valued skills. In an ideal scenario, we would not want the business to suffer in any way and we would not want Mum to be at a disadvantage of any kind when it comes to her career, due to the fact that she was involved in a pivotal project. In this case, she may simply be "behind" in terms of time spent progressing.

Keeping in touch also will allow mum to interact with her temporary replacement and that could potentially help to smooth over any issues or problems that may arise without this type of informal supervision.

Each "keeping in touch" day is also paid by the employer and does not affect the amount of maternity leave pay that she may have. Don't forget that this can be a nice little boost, financially.

As an extended period away from your work can be challenging indeed, you may well have to seek out professional coaching to give you a good idea how to approach it. Generally, online life coaching helps us to cope with significant issues that arise in our daily lives and coaching for women can really help in this case, to balance personal and business issues.

Amanda Alexander is Director of Coaching Mums and a highly acclaimed ICF-accredited coach who delivers professional coaching programmes to working mums who yearn for success, balance and fulfilment. Are you a juggling mom? Download our free eBook for working moms that will give you 5 simple and instant ways to balance your life right now!

These are exciting times. As a mumpreneur/mompreneur you have so many opportunities available to you, some of which were totally unheard of only five years or so ago.

It wasn't so long ago that people who worked from home were vilified to a certain extent. People couldn't conceive how it could be possible to earn real, usable money in this way. Times are so different now and it's certainly possible to turn a hobby or passion into a worthwhile and rewarding business when you are working from home.

Rather than worrying about attending networking meetings, getting out and about and spending long periods of time at Chambers of Commerce meetings or otherwise engaging in "push" marketing, you can be creative and make sure that your business is seen online.

1. The first thing that you need to remember is that you have to have a profile on one of the top professional networking websites, Linkedin for example. Sites such as this encourage professionals to interact and your profile will show that you are engaged in a certain type of business which may be of interest to them, as well.

2. Social media has exploded over the last few years. This type of communication may well be more to do with interacting with friends and acquaintances and finding friends online, but can be used as a powerful business marketing tool for you. Consider Facebook. You can set up a business page as part of your Facebook account and by unveiling your creation to all your friends and contacts; you can create "fans" of your business.

3. Use Twitter as a social media "mini-blog" to send highly targeted messages to your followers. It's very simple to set up an account in your business name and to look for and start engaging with people who are interested in your niche. As you may know, Twitter messages are very short - 140 characters or less, but they can be very specific and can begin to show that you are an expert in your niche and know exactly what you're talking about.

4. If you want to create great looking blogs, why not use WordPress as your tool? Make no mistake about it, if you're going to service a blog creatively and well, you need to do some work on it every day. You have a lot of knowledge in your business and the blog can be a vehicle for you to transmit the fact that you know all of this, to those who may be interested and when you write one new post per day and publish, you're on your way. It's not at all difficult to do.

5. There are many, many ways that you can promote your business using social media. Once you have your blog set up and have your Facebook and Twitter accounts established, you can start visiting other "authority" blogs and begin interacting.

The area reserved for comments beneath each blog post is highly important and when two-way interaction is created like this, you benefit. As comments appear, others will realize that there is activity going on and this will start a stream of traffic and further comments. Your aim is to use social media in its most viral form to help you.

Consider professional coaching advice to help you create your social media presence as a mumpreneur. While you are online, seek out these online life coaching experts and you will find that many of them are focused on providing coaching for women, just like you.

Amanda Alexander is the Director of Coaching Mums and a widely renowned ICF-accredited coach who delivers professional coaching programmes to working mums across the globe who long for more time, balance and fulfilment in their busy lives. Download our free eBook especially for working mums with 5 easy ways to achieve balance.