Can you work from home while watching kids?

[jessnpaul]

What happens if your baby is asleep but then wakes up and starts crying while you're in the middle of a conference call? Do you realize how unprofessional that will make *you* look? I can't imagine anyone lasting in their job while handling childcare at the same time.

Sorry, but your husband has absolutely no concept of what babies are actually like! Even "good" babies require a lot of attention!

[Deleted]

While I never tried to work from home, my husband also was rather naive in the child care department. There were many days while I was on maternity leave where he'd get frustrated with me because I'd done "nothing" all day. He was kind enough to not let t frustration show thank goodness. Now I'm back at work and he has the baby during the day and works evenings. He's done pretty much no housework for two weeks because he's always busy with the baby. Note I'm the one who has to remember that he's just learning and this is when he adjusts to being a parent and learns to juggle a baby and life. Have him hang out with a new baby for a bit too see what it's like. He'll still stay way too optimistic, but it should help some, and hopefully hell see his error as he learns with his own child. Mine really has and it's turned out great for us.

[Deleted]

I have/always had an amazing sleeper and did consulting work when DS was 12wks old. It was around the time he started staying awake more. I literally wanted to cry 24/7 by the time my contract was finished after 6 weeks. I had a very hard time focusing on my work in b/w taking care of DS since I would lose track of where I left off. My work was numbers intensive and it can be hard to pick up where you left off for that particular project. So, I ended up working all night while taking care of DS all day. I got lucky that DS was STTN by then. However, I had zero sleep besides a cat nap here and there and I was pulling my hair out. I can't even imagine how to do that with a mobile and active kid at home.

With your type of work, I would hire a sitter to do showings. I would not trust my kid to keep quiet when taking calls, which I assume is a big part of your job. If you can hire a sitter for x hours a day to take care of calls and showings, then perhaps it is doable. However, I never recommend working at home without childcare available. Everyone suffers, IMO.

[Deleted]

DH won't even work from home if I am there to watch the kid. No way can you actually work without another caregiver.

Your h sounds like a d bag. Everyone else complains because they aren't doing it right? And does he actually realize that a good part of maternity leave is recovering from childbirth? You know here you either push a watermelon out of your vagina or get cut open and have your organs removed and then replaced?

[Deleted]

No, absolutely not. I have worked from home for 5 years. I could not do it without childcare.

[Deleted]

Dec 14, 2012 9:51:32 GMT -5 pugz said:

and it sounds like he is unrealistic about the nature of your work in addition to parenthood. He has no business becoming a parent yet.

Agreed. I think you guys need marriage counseling before TTC. I would really not bring a baby into your lives yet. You both need to work on your communication. He's being unrealistic yes, but you're also enabling his behavior by labeling it simply "optimistic." Plus even though you're already married, you've never talked about life with kids before? ^o) You need an impartial 3rd party to work through this. It sounds like you're having trouble compromising which is a huge part of life with a child.

[knitty]

A day at home with the baby while he tries to work will cure him of that.

With a tiny baby it's not too hard to have them in a sling and type, or bounce on a yoga ball and read. But ... yeah, you're right and he's wrong, and I don't think anything will convince him until he's tried it.

[gibbinator]

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha no

I had a week of online seminars I needed to attend for my freelance job when ds was around 3 months. I managed one day ok. The second day I was so tired and frazzled and ds was so bored and cranky from not having any real attention that I broke down sobbing that evening. And all I had to do was try to listen to presentations!!!!!

I skipped the rest of the sessions except what was airing after dh got home

[bunch]

I mostly gave up my re career when dd was born. There is no way I could have handled it. Even with my parents close by, there is no way I could line up care for showings, listings and closings. I also don't feel comfortable taking re calls with dd around, because she loves to scream when she sees me on the phone. Maybe my kid is just a banshee (possible) but the mix is not possible for me at all.

Also, random anecdote- when dd was about 2 weeks old an agent called wanting to show a house that I own. For the life of me, I couldn't remember the lb code. Then I couldn't remember the password to the appt center to look it up. By the time I sent dh over to open the house himself, I was hysterical. To say that I wasn't very sharp those first few months is an understatement.

[MamaMaui24]

Overall I say no. But certain jobs and certain circumstances could make it work. My BIL is a REA and often uses a drop in day care for last minute appointments. They also have a retired grandmother down the street.

Re: your husband. A lot of this is hard to imagine until you have a baby. Yes, the big stuff needs to be planned in advance (childcare, jobs, budget, etc.) but a lot is learned once you have kids. There's no way to fully understand what it's like until you're in it.

I KNEW my SAHM friends don't just sit around eating bon bons, but it can be hard to wrap your head around as a childless couple. I'm not jumping to your husband isn't ready to be a dad. After spending all day with our son, my husband said "I take back anything I ever said or thought about stay at home moms." I think this frame of mind is very common for dads.

[bunch]

If you know this, you need to get your dh on board before you have kids. Our grand plan was that I'd flip houses on my own time once dd was born. We were both excited about it. I have not so much as painted a room in 16 mos and dh has zero problems with that because so both now understand our new reality. I'm doing a little random work now and then, but it's all stuff that's completely on my schedule, I can stop working on it on a moments notice and doesn't hurt anyone else if I don't get finished.

[hocus]

I skimmed the first page but did not read everything. I WAH and I have done so for 4.5 years. I have 2 kids 3 and 16 months. I have never attempted to WAH without childcare. On the handful of days in the last 3 years we've had no childcare coverage I've taken off and check email once or twice during the day. In the last 3 months or so my older child has learned how to wait patiently while playing with something very interesting (say an ipad) while I write an email. My 16 month old is pretty much up my butt at all times. Something as simple as cooking is a pretty big challenge. I gate him out of the kitchen regularly.

Now I have a very traditional job. I work 9-6 more or less with an hour of catch up at night most nights and maybe 2 hours over the weekends. I have to take meetings when they are scheduled if they fall during normal work hours. I can't say for example that I can only do meetings from 1-3 because that is when my kids are napping. So I have meetings all day and there is not way I could spend an hour on the phone with my kids awake.

If you have a flexible job it may be possible to work p/t with no childcare. However once you consistently hit 20 hours or more of work a week then you'll probably need it AND you'll probably want to consider it at 10+ hours an investment in the quality of your life. If you spend say 8 hours with your kids, 4 hours at work, 8 hours sleeping you leave yourself 4 hours for everything else -- keeping up the house, shopping, showering, having sex, seeing friends, watching TV etc. 4 hours is enough for some people but people I know get burned out that way. If you opt out of childcare then I would consider a house cleaners as a option to help you out.

[SusanBAnthony]

I think it depends on how available your parents and in laws are. If they can be on-call on different days of the week, and you can schedule say 3 hours a day with one or the other, than yes it could work. But that isn't really working with no childcare anymore. It is having 15 hours a week of scheduled care plus additional on call care. It just happens to be free. Plus, he has to be ready and willing for you to hand him the kids every night at 5 for you to either go to showings or lock yourself fin the office to make phone calls.

I think if you don't want to work, you don't need to work financially, and he is in favor of you cutting your hours and refusing to answer the phone at night, then do that! You will likely lose most of your clients, but if it makes you and your h happy, who cares? You don't want to work anyway, so no skin off your back.

If he wants to have kids more than you, you are in a strong position to tell him you want to work through some of his expectations in counseling (including talking about other parents with respect and understanding rather than judgement). Yes he is being a jerk about is, but honestly most people without kids are unrealistic about it. He just happens to be more unrealistic than most!

[MadamePresident]

I have a scheduled half hour phone call next Friday. I asked my mom to come over to watch the baby. Sure she might nap the whole time (since she usually takes good morning naps), but you have no guarantee. She can go from sleep to cry in 15 seconds. Unless you are fine with ignoring crying, it may be hard to have regular phone calls with your clients.

[redheadk]

LOL! Your DH sounds like a...well, there is nothing to call him that won't be offensive to you.

I'm a SAHM to a 5-month-old with severe reflux (and the associated poor weight gain) who is just now growing out of colic. I have to add formula powder to breastmilk to get her additional calories (she needs 24 calories/oz rather than the 20 calories/oz in regular bm/formula).

This is my day:

7:00ish She wakes up, I run in to get her, nurse for 30ish minutes. Change diaper, administer meds.

7:45-8:15 Play with her (make coffee and eat a Luna bar for breakfast while she plays in the jumperoo for a few minutes

8:15-8:45 Put her down for a nap (yes, it takes about 30 minutes and it's worse if I wait longer and miss her sleepy cues)

8:45-9:15 She naps, I pump and go to the bathroom

9:15-9:45 Prepare and feed her a bottle

9:45-10:00 Diaper and change outfit

10:00-10:30 Play with her, do some dishes or fold a load of laundry depending on how close by she wants me and how much interaction she is demanding

10:30-11:15 Try to get her down for a nap

11:15-11:45 She naps, I pump and eat lunch simultaneously.

11:45-12:15 Prepare bottle and feed her

and so on. She gets a bath from DH at 7:00. During this 15 minute break, I pick up her room and get everything ready for bed. I then nurse her and she goes to sleep at about 8:00. I wash bottles and pump parts, put away laundry, etc., then shower. By then, it's normally about 10:00 so I go to bed. She wakes up twice to nurse at night so I'm up for anywhere from 1-2.5 hours during the night each night.

I'd love to know what he thinks I'm doing wrong. I would enjoy time to sit around and eat bon bons, particularly when I'm not being milked and not having to ignore my child to make it happen. If he has some ideas for making her naps longer, I'd love to hear them. I'm clearly doing it wrong!

[pugz]

I think some marriage counseling would be a good idea before you TTC

[Deleted]

It is a big red flag in my mind if anyone's husband requires them to do anything that they find really stressful. Of course life has its stressful times and experiences, but your partner should support you during stressful times, not demand that you just "deal with them" or dismiss your concerns about your mental health. It's mean of him really to "want kids more than you do" but expect you to do all the heavy lifting AND work FT, especially when it's not necessary financially for you to do so. You should be approaching parenthood as a team, with some compromising. Not just him deciding how things are going to be.

He sounds like he just wants it all. Income from a working wife, a happy wife, and a happy baby. But he's not caring at all about how that situations makes you feel. And he's not listening to your concerns at all, he just expects you to work and have kids "like a normal person." Well you don't think that will work for you, and you've told him so, but he's not listening. Time for counseling.

[sugarbear]

There's no way I would have been able to work from home with DS.
And also, yes, they sleep a lot, for, like, two months. This is not sustainable long-term, even if you can make it work immediately after birth.

Finally, even if I worked from home, I was way too emotional and all post-partum-y to work after even a month. No way.

[drloretta]

I'll just give you a couple of examples.

My SIL and brother have a WFH business. They also have 3 kids. They have only had an au pair one summer the entire time they've had kids (and the kids are 12, 10, and 4). My SIL "solves" the dilemma of dealing with 3 kids AND working by doing a chunk of her work from the kids' bedtimes until 1am. NOT the lifestyle I would want. She's been chronically sleep deprived for over a decade.

I freelance for my old company. I know that, at this age, DD will nap for 2 hours a day, give or take. And she goes to preschool a couple half days a week. So if I have work, I try and fit the majority of it into the times she's either not here or not conscious. But I have had to turn down outside freelance jobs because I have a limited number of child-free hours to work with.

FWIW, DD was a very easy baby. Slept a lot, ate like a champ, etc. And we adopted her, so I didn't have to deal with recovery from childbirth. However, I was still very, very busy. For one, there was the issue of dealing with sleep deprivation since, um, they wake up in the middle of the night to eat. And especially when they're young, there's no real schedule, so they can wake up and start crying, or need to nurse, at unpredictable times. It makes it really hard to schedule anything because you never know when your child will need to be soothed, fed, etc.

And your DH is dreaming if he thinks you'll be ready to go back to work after 2-4 weeks.

I don't know if there are any books suggesting that SAHMs do stuff, but there are a lot of newborn/infant books that talk about what life may be like with a newborn.

I also agree that your DH will change his tune about other kids' behaviors when you have your own. if you do. Because I agree he's an ass

[bunch]

I left the app open and dh saw the title of your thread. He laughed out loud.

Fwiw since there's a big pile on your h (who I agree doesn't sound awesome in this thread), I was really worried about my h's expectations with me sah. He really values productivity and can be critical. He totally changed his tune when dd came along and has been mostly very understanding about how much time dd takes. Whenever he forgets, I leave them home together for most of a day

[Ashley&Scott]

Not a chance.

[curbsideprophet]

Dec 14, 2012 13:07:49 GMT -5 @fivedogs said:

Dec 14, 2012 12:39:40 GMT -5 honey987 said:

He told me plenty of people work and have kids and I need to just act like a normal person. (he didnt use those exact words)

Who exactly does he know that works a full-time job with no childcare/kids not in school? I don't even know that many people who work from home, much less who try to get away without childcare.

I would be seriously worried about a lack of support from him.

I agree with fivedogs. DH and I both work full time and have one child. She goes to daycare during the day. Is he against daycare or hiring a nanny? What do you want to do? There is nothing wrong with sending your child to daycare and working from home. If you can afford it and are both on board with the loss of income it is also okay for one parent to stop working. (sorry if this was address in a reply and I missed it).

There is no way we could both work full time without daycare or some other type of childcare arrangement. DH recently switched jobs, but he mostly worked from home the first year of DDs life. This was actually really nice for me while I was on maternity leave because he could take short breaks to help out if needed. There is no way he would have been able to watch DD and get in all is hours required for work. If she was too sick to go to daycare he maybe was able to get an email here or there while watching her. We would try to split the day so that I took half a day off work, and he would make up his missed work time from home in the evening.

[lindyanne]

My friend does. She uses a sitter when she has out of home meetings or important conference calls. Otherwise, her husband is a professor so he is able to support her some when he's home and she also has flexible hours to be able to get her work done. Definitely a unique situation. I know I wouldn't be able to juggle it all. I have a few other friends that WFH and they all use daycare.

[arch01]

yeah, i could work when he naps. otherwise? hell no.

[Deleted]

I have a friend who does this. She is a REA & works from home with 2 kids. When her first was an infant she had a nanny 2 days 4 hours a day. Now she sends her DD to dc one full day & her MIL takes both kids one full day. Her DH got is also a pt agent & took over her listings/ buyers when she had her DS for 3 months. If your Dh keeps being a jerk maybe you need him to do that.

[momof2boys]

When they are newborns and sleep a lot, sure you COULD get work done. Except you'll be so tired and sleep deprived from being up all night that you won't be able to function.

Once they get more mobile again you COULD get a full time job done, however, you are going to have to start early in the morning and stay up later trying to fit it all in...something that really is fair to you.

Can you borrow a friends baby and leave DH home alone with it all day while giving him a list of things to do? That sounds like it would be fun to watch

I'm going to give your DH the benefit of the doubt and assume he just has no clue and isn't being a jerk. My DH took off one day a week the first 6 months my son was born so I could work that day and often called me at work and told me I was his "hero" for doing this 4 days a week alone, ha.

[chessie]

Where I work they require documentation of childcare of some sort if you do work from home, there are no exceptions for anyone.