AIBU to think I could work from home with a brand new baby?

[SanitysSake]

Just mulling over a few ideas to keep the funds coming in whilst at home.

Is it possible, or am I living in cloud cuckoo land?

Would be grateful to hear from any stay-at-home mums who also manage to work from home.

Any hints, tips, experiences, advice would be most appreciated.

For me personally looking after a baby is hard not the hard bit, it is the lack of sleep. Loads of people manage work when their children are still babies, most people returning after mat leave still have a baby! Only you will know if you can manage this. Life circumstances mean I now work full-time in an incredibly stressful job as a single parent of primary aged DC. No family support, 24/7 sole responsiblity as I am a widow. It is emotionally exhausting at times (tween hormones) but we manage because we have to. I guess what I am saying is you adapt to your circumstances and just get on with it.

willstarttomorrow - How beautiful you are x

Sanity I wish! But just to prove my point instead of packing to fly off tomorrow I have been updating work records in case it all goes horribly wrong next week and no one knows what the hell is going on. I am now procrastinating and not going into the loft to get the skis and suitcases down. But we will get on the plane tomorrow. I will be knackered and grumpy but TBH no one will notice! I am sure whatever you decide you will make it work.

Just to add - enjoy your baby! S/he will take their cues from you so if you are okay and chilled they are more likely to model that. Obviously this is from the person with DC used to mum being grumpy but I am paid to know the theory. Not paid to put it into practice!

I am very supportive of you trying to do consultancy after the baby arrives...but I think to give yourself a chance of doing succesfully you need to really think what you mean by brand new. People have spoken a lot about the baby and whether it sleeps being an issue but actually with a very supportive partner and a nanny for a few hours a day or some other light touch childcare the baby will just fit in. You might just be very tired but you have said you are good with little sleep. However, some of these people that worked from day 2, 3, 4 and 5 were working before I was discharged from hospital. I was on iv steroids, antibiotics and had a lot of stitches. I don't want to be alarmist but to plan to be working so soon after delivery would be risky. If you were an employee it would be illegal to work that first 2 weeks (4 in a factory) and you aren't officially discharged by the midwife until day 10 for a reason. There was a long history developing the rights for maternal health. I think you'd have more chance of making it work well by saying to your client that you won't be available for 2 weeks after the birth. Then if you are it's a bonus. I hope your pregnancy remains straight forward and your birth simple.

Before about 4 months, it depends on luck - you would have to be issued with a "textbook baby" - the mythical creatures that feed, sleep quietly in their moses basket for a couple of hours then wake cooing gently for their next feed. There are not many of these. I got issued with a colicky baby who needed to be walked up and down over my shoulder for the first 4 months. (I use the word "issued" because somewhere out there, there is a cosmic baby warehouse and a baby quartermaster who issues babies of varying personality types and degrees of neediness completely at random. Parenting skills have nothing to do with underlying baby personality.)

From 4 months on, they will expect mummy to interact with them whenever they are awake.

It would be possible (but still totally hellish) if you are totally in control of your work, i.e. no boss/colleagues to 'hide' the fact you have a child with you, no conference calls, no deadlines, no problem if one day, you actually only manage to work for 1 hour, rather than the 4 hours you had planned to.

If you are doing any type of employed work (where others dictate your working hours, deadlines, output rate, can call you up at any point) then no, I wouldn't even go there.

This thread is funny. It is telling me my life is impossible.
My babies were far from easy, the first one had colic for 6 months. The second one needed operations. The third one cried a lot and did not sleep much. I co-slept (still do), BF, didn't have a cleaner or any childcare. I still met all my deadlines.

Just because you can't imagine doing something doesn't mean it is impossible. What do you think women did in the past?

What do you do for a living, Fa? Because I can assure you, there's no way I could have written computer code while walking up and down the sitting room with a colicky baby over my shoulder.

Lecturer and some consultancy work.
I changed jobs to work mainly for a distance learning university when the babies were born, so I only had the odd Saturday out at work. Did the rest from home.
It is possible to write a lecture in your head, plan a seminar, plan a course of study, think about a report etc etc while walking about with a colicky baby. Not possible to mark though, so that was the bane of my life.

It seems that you clearly were gifted 2 easy babies and have a job which can be extremely flexible. Other people are giving their experiences. The % of people who are advising OP to not even think it is possible, presumably reflects the fact that, statistically, it is unlikely she will be able to do this

Not remotely (which I said, you must not have rtft). I had one easy baby and one with a lot of additional needs. One time working at home worked well, and one didn't, I'm sure you can imagine which was which. So tbh, out of all the people replying here, I think I'm probably in a pretty good position to say that sometimes it can be done, and sometimes it can't.

I don't like women being told that they definitely can't do something that they think they can. Tell them your experience (if you have any, most on this thread don't yet feel qualified to state its impossible!), tell them your opinion, tell them the difficulties and the things they may not have thought of, all good.
But DON'T tell women something is impossible and they are ridiculous for trying. And certaintly don't say it in the company of people who have actually done it and expect them not to say so!

I agree with Narky.
One thing that kept me working while I had small babies was mumsnet. When I felt like I couldn't cope any more I used to search the forums for 'should I give up my job?' There are some great threads on this and the consensus is always 'no'.
Thanks to MN I kept going and I'm pleased I did.

But surely the point of all of these posts from different women, recounting their different experiences, is that you can't predict what' it's going to be like!

Especially with a first baby. So it's tricky to really commit to something.

No one's suggesting the only options are work with the baby napping in its moses basket by your side or give up work entirely. We're just pointing out that the "nap in its moses basket" scenario may not turn out to be reality (oh god, the things I committed to while pregnant thinking I'd be able to pull that one off - including offering to play the walking-up-the-aisle music at a friend's wedding when DS was going to be 6 weeks old ). We're just saying be open to the fact that it may be more difficult than you think, and have a contingency plan - e.g. a couple of afternoons a week with a childminder for those tasks which require 100% concentration.

But surely the point of all of these posts from different women, recounting their different experiences, is that you can't predict what' it's going to be like!

IF it was women giving their actual experiences, that would be great. No-one has argued that you can't predict, that it may well not work, that it could be a disaster etc etc.
What I and others are complaining about are people without any experience of doing it at all, for good or bad telling others that it is definitely not possible, and not only that, you will be a bad parent and a bad worker as well.

I'm not sure how much clearer I can be on this point, I've said it several times now.

That's true BIWI, but if you need to work then committing to something will force you to find a way to do it.

Fa - it is simply not true of the work I do. I have tried (and failed) to do it when horribly sleep-deprived. If I make mistakes, I lose clients. So I know I couldn't have done it with a non-sleeping colicky newborn.

I had horrible difficult babies and I have a very demanding job which is different every time. While I rely on previous experience, every single solution I deliver has to be tailored to the individual solution. If I were a widget-assembler or did admin, that would be fine. But I'm not.

Also I felt under enormous pressure when I had my first child - to get sleeping right, to establish breast-feeding, to cope and love it and all the rest of the pressure women put on themselves (and yes, it was largely self-inflicted). I know that if I had added a pressure to continuing to turn round high quality work for my clients, I would simply have gone under.

We're all talking about our own experiences and I'm really not liking the way some women on this thread are rubbishing other women's experience of not being able to cope with work immediately after giving birth.

This feels like one of those FF vs BF threads of old.

Just because you can't imagine doing something doesn't mean it is impossible. What do you think women did in the past?

I don't think they were expected to take conference calls or sit at desks concentrating for hours on end!

For lots of jobs it is impossible even working from home to have a colicky baby that needs to be walked up and down for hours on end (presumably you can't simultaneously walk and work?) or a baby that needs to breastfeed in a particular position for hours on end. Obviously it depends on the baby and the work but it is impossible for lots of people.

I haven't seen very many people claiming it's impossible for everyone but it would be crazy to assume it will be possible for you - by all means entertain the thought and give it a good go but it would be crazy to guarantee that it will work out.

I don't think it is.
I'm really not liking the way some women on this thread are rubbishing other women's experience of not being able to cope with work immediately after giving birth

I don't think anyone has done that, only the opposite in fact,

I did it once and it worked fine. I did it another time and it was a disaster. That doesn't mean I failed at anything, circumstances make it one way or the other. There is nothing I could have done better or differently to make it work, it wasn't possible in those circumstances, even though it was in others.

I don't think its something anyone should approach lightly, and I think personally that if you don't really have to then you'd be better off not, but thats up to each woman. I didn't have any choice but to try, desperate times and all that.

I know I couldn't have done my work with my small baby. I don't need to have tried and failed to have done it in order to know that. Also particularly after DS1 I was knocked for six physically and emotionally and that would have exacerbated the issues as well.

However, I can see that my situation is particular to me, and that other people could have been able work. I think it's hard to be able to predict in advance.

Yes of course for some jobs it is more difficult than others. It depends on your personality too. I am stupid and will push myself beyond normal tolerance, it does me no good.

And this: "Also I felt under enormous pressure when I had my first child - to get sleeping right, to establish breast-feeding, to cope and love it and all the rest of the pressure women put on themselves (and yes, it was largely self-inflicted). I know that if I had added a pressure to continuing to turn round high quality work for my clients, I would simply have gone under."

By having deadlines and babies I could only put pressure on myself in one area and that was the job. The babies I did by instinct (or the path of least resistance in other words) and did not pressure myself at all.

I did this with my first, and it was ok (note, ok not great!) for the first few months. By the time he was mobile (an early starter too) and he was napping less, things got tricky to manage but we got by, with help once a week from mil (back when she was more involved) and sometimes by paying a childminder for a few hours when the workload was at its highest.

I now have 3 dc and I would not recommend trying to do this efficiently once there is more than one young dc to look after 😄 I have only been able to return to freelance work in the past 18 months whilst the youngest has been spending some time out of the house at preschool.

'Mam's working days' are the days we have unmade beds, unhoovered floors, and pasta for tea, but a touch more money in the bank!