Avril Robinson is the Founder of Love In The Moonlight, a Sydney-based start-up which offer beautiful, curated gift sets for pregnancy, postpartum and beyond – acting as a gentle reminder for mothers to nurture themselves whilst caring for a new baby.
Tell us about Love In The Moonlight.
Love In The Moonlight offers curated gift sets to support women in their transformational journey into motherhood – honouring the birth of a mother when a baby is born. Our selection of gifts are perfect for your hospital bag, maternity leave, a baby shower or Mother’s Day; supporting all mothers at any stage of motherhood.
We ensure the brands we partner with are tested and recommended by mothers and align with our ethos – caring deeply and whole-heartedly about the wellbeing of mothers, their babies and our natural environment.
What inspired you to start Love In The Moonlight?
Love In The Moonlight was born to support and nurture new mothers and their wellbeing, as my own journey into motherhood was surprisingly isolating, stressful and exhausting, which unfortunately took a toll on my mental health. Adjusting to becoming a parent and learning to care for a newborn was hard enough, but what caused me additional and unnecessary stress was not planning properly for the birth and my postpartum recovery. This is why I am so passionate about nurturing new mothers through this time, as it can make a huge difference for a mother’s mental health and wellbeing.
Secondly, many years before I became a mother, I remembered how frustrated I was when I had to buy someone from work a maternity leave gift. I (physically) went shopping on my lunch break to find something, and I walked around in circles in the search of a meaningful and useful gift. I didn’t know what new mothers needed most and other than creams and baby paraphernalia, I was lost. I also didn’t want to buy a lot of bulky items on my lunch break and then have my heavily pregnant friend have to carry everything home with them from work!
When creating Love In The Moonlight, I wanted to solve both problems. Support mothers to do the most important job in the world, as well as make it convenient and easy for other people to also support mothers – through ready-made gift sets that can be delivered Australia-wide.
Tell us about your career and background.
I have worked in Digital Advertising for over 14 years, leading teams and helping clients to drive eCommerce sales. A big portion of my career has been focused on human connection, emotional intelligence and motivating people – all of which has helped me to become a better leader and continue to learn.
My perspective of the world completely changed after growing and nurturing two little humans – which has ultimately given rise to Love In The Moonlight. I am fortunate enough to be able to follow my soul’s purpose while drawing on all of my career experience to date.
Describe a typical work day for you.
Mornings with small children are more often than not chaotic, so my work day doesn’t start until they are on their way to school/daycare, as I work from home (and have done so ever since Covid).
My mind is overflowing with ideas and endless to-do lists, so the first thing that I tackle is to write my to-do list. And then I choose my top three things from that list that I have to achieve for the day and highlight them. That way, as long as I complete the most important three things, I can feel like I have accomplished enough in the day. For a long time I would feel frustrated as I was never completing my list, this has helped me to prioritise and to put more realistic expectations on myself.
It’s really hard for me not to jump straight into working, but I always function better if I go for a quick walk with the dog to get a coffee. It’s a daily ritual that is just for me, to help me to decompress from the chaos of getting two children (and myself) fed and ready in the morning and to focus on what I want to achieve for the day.
After this I go straight to packing and fulfilling orders to go out to my customers. This is my favourite job, as I absolutely love wrapping gifts and making them look beautiful and feel special for every single person. I do everything from handwriting the gift message to choosing the special extras to include in the gift (I have my favourite lactation cookie recipe printed on a card for gifts that include breastfeeding products, as well as special motherhood poems by Jessica Urlichs and even new product samples).
Once these are on their way to their homes, I do an update on my Instagram account @loveinthemoonlight_au. Building a community of like-minded mothers, a village if you will, is my privilege and something I don’t take lightly. I share and create content that aims to support, uplift and encourage mothers every day – it is so important to me to help other mothers feel seen, heard and not alone.
From here my day could twist and turn in multiple directions as I wear many hats, as all startup founders do! From writing blog posts, doing product and content photoshoots, sourcing new suppliers, ordering stock, liaising with PR and advertising agencies, uploading new gift sets and products to the website, and so on and so forth. I told you, my to-do list is never ending which is why it is so important to prioritise my tasks at the beginning of the day!
What advice do you have for those wanting to start a business?
I spent a lot of time procrastinating in the beginning because I was paralysed by the enormous task ahead of me. What helped me to carry on was my village. I told a few important people in my life of my vision and I got a lot of great encouragement and positive feedback. This led me to inadvertently build a village of cheerleaders, a community of people who lifted me up and encouraged me to keep going.
I found courage from the support I received from my career coach (who is now a dear friend). I got pep-talks from my friends and family. And most importantly, my husband was doing the hardest job of his life as a Stay-At-Home-Dad so that I had the capacity to focus on building my business.
A lot of soul searching and inner work, not to mention an unwavering belief in my business’ purpose, is what ultimately carried me through to launch day.
Oh and also the affirmation that I repeated to myself on the hard days, over and over again –
“You didn’t come this far just to come this far – so keep going”.
What’s next for you, and Love In The Moonlight?
The priority is focusing on growing the reach of Love In The Moonlight and in turn, growing awareness for the importance of supporting women as they become mothers.
Never before, in the history of time, has a mother had so much pressure imposed on them from society (or from themselves) to do and be everything to everyone. Never before has there been so much expectation that women can do it all. But the reality is, no one should be expected to do it all alone.
So I’m on a mission to advocate for women supporting women and be each other’s’ village, whether we have babies or not.
