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.

I managed to work from home with both mine. The first one arrived very early, and no maternity cover was in place so I had to carry on as my company was making my team redundant - couldn't just drop them in it.
Second time I was working for myself, and maternity cover didn't work out so I was doing contract reviews and bid work when I could fit it in. I had to get people to review what I'd done as due to lack of sleep I couldn't remember words and phrases some times ("thingy thing thing" doesn't read well in a response to a bid....). I have great support with parents close by though and that makes a huge difference. If you have good support, and you're not committed to working certain hours and to tight deadlines then you can do it. Neither of my babies slept well, so it wasn't easy, but it is possible. best of luck xxx

I didn't do 9 hrs every day also, that was example. So weeks I would travel so do 36hrs solid, leaving kids with Dh. Or others I would work less hours over 7 days, or whatever

I had a no napping non sleeping baby that fed every hour or two for the first six months. I was driven to the brink of madness with sleep exhaustion.

Unless my job was crying and wishing my life away: no, I could not have worked at home whilst this was goin on.

It nearly killed me going back to actual work when DD was 5 months old....

Take it from me- no

I've just had a complete disaster of it, realised I haven't been able to enjoy my 3 month old at all and outsourced my work for the foreseeable future.

I am struggling to wfh at the moment with a kitten who is at the age where he is constantly attacking me, sat on my keyboard and catching my cursor on the screen all day. Not even mentioning the mewing at inconvenient times in the middle of audios.

A human baby? - not a chance.

I started a small business working from home when my youngest was 6 months old. I had no childcare ( and an older child)
At first it was just a few hours a week- what I could do during naps , early in the morning, weekends etc, but as the kids got older, started pre- school nursery I increased my workload.
Yes it is possible OP.

I find it doable when babies are very tiny. It is possible to get some computer type work done while they're breastfeeding or napping if everything is going well.. but from 4 months on it becomes impossible for a while - once they start moving and once they get clingy and want constant attention it's really hard to do any work from home at all. Even if you have your partner at home to do the food and nappies they still want mummy and "up" and are constantly climbing on you. Then it's impossible until they're 2/3 and you can set them up with a game that distracts them for a bit.

I worked from home in 2 different jobs - one where I had clients come to the house, starting from when DS1 was 6wo - but the clients were all pre-warned that there was a baby in the house and I might have to stop what I was doing to attend to him. They only came for treatment on the basis that they were ok with this; and I only had a maximum of 2 clients a day, one morning, one afternoon. Ds1 was introduced to baby videos quite early because of this.

The other job required more concentrated thought - reading, editing, writing stuff - and that was a LOT harder to do because of sleep deprivation, the fact that if I was trying to get my head round the contents of a paper, and I was interrupted, I'd pretty much have to go back to the start every time. I wouldn't do that again - it was very difficult, and DS1 was a pretty easy baby but didn't nap more than 2 x 30 mins in a day.

You will have to see what sort of baby you have, how you feel personally, how much sleep you get and then go from there - but writing reports sounds like it's going to need a lot more intensive concentration than you're likely to have space for.

I have worked from home through having 3 babies at home (now 11, 9 and 6), with no childcare at all.
I'm half dead, I look 100 years old and I have not slept for 5 hours in a row in years.
It's possible, but don't do it if you don't have to.

Cloud Cuckoo, sorry.

Caring for the baby is a job, and your work is a job. You can do one but not the other. Either you will neglect the child (not feed it, ignore its cries) and do good work, or you will care for your child and do poor work.

You need to have the baby, find a routine and see how you handle the sleep deprivation. Your baby will wake. You will sleep in short bursts. Your health and mind will suffer. Those are givens. You could get one with colic that screams for 20 hours straight each day and night, you might hallucinate, you might end up with post-partum psychosis. You need to actually be there, in the trench, before deciding what you're going to do with "all the free time" you think you might get.

I did it with a 9-15 month old, whilst pregnant with no 2. It was a dream contract in that I had total flexibility in when I worked and I pretty much set my own deadlines.

It was a nightmare.

I ended up working at night, getting a few hours sleep and then getting up when DD got up.

No 2 is very chilled out and sleeps more and I think it would have been easier with her but all it takes is for naps not to happen one day and you're playing catch up for a week - it's pretty stressful.

You can do both well. I did. There is a price to pay with your own wellbeing though.

It's possible, but don't do it if you don't have to.

With bells on. It's not a way to do both, you feel like you're not doing either well

It is horrible feeling like you're not mentally present for your kids when you're in the same room as them. Avoid if you can. If you can't, it's workable, but it's not nice.

Depends how much sleep you need to function. Less than 2 hours required, crack on

I work from home with a four-year-old, and find it very difficult - he's very chatty, so I never get any peace, and constantly wants to show me drawings or play board games. The only way I can get any space to work is to put him in front of the TV, but then I feel really lousy for abandoning him to the telly.

The only solution I've found is to get up early enough that I can get a couple of hours work done before he wakens, and then catch up on stuff after bedtime.

I finished writing a book, an article and a conference paper while on maternity leave (I'm an academic). It was possible but hard. The second he napped I had to immediately start working, regardless of whether I was tired or there was housework to do. It was very bitty which meant it took a long time to achieve anything. It was good that I got those things done but it was quite stressful and only possible because he was an easy baby. I'm not going to do it again on my second ML. It did mean I didn't enjoy having a little baby as much as I could.

I thought I could do this with DS1 and took on some freelance work, happily assuming he'd sleep for large chunks of the day. As it turned out, he was fairly horrendous at night and I'd be lucky if he slept for more than two hours during the day, unless I took him out when he would sometimes fall asleep in the pram. When he was awake he was very clingy and didn't take to being put down to amuse himself at all. My days became a bit of a nightmare of trying to get him to sleep, and to persuade him back to sleep if he woke up, and whilst I had the freelance work I really couldn't do anything else much around the house. I packed it in pretty quickly.

It would be contract work, writing reports basically on an ad-hoc basis. So not every day 9-5. Entirely flexible and no conference calls either

OP, I work freelance from home (computer based) and have very little contact with anyone beyond the odd email to/from clients. My OH works part-time, 26 hours a week. When she's at work, I look after the relatively new baby (some wear and tear - no longer BRAND NEW). I basically get zero work done during this time. Replying to emails is possible, but sitting down and actually working is not. The baby needs so much attention - constantly! So now I pretty much only work lunch times, late nights and early mornings, when OH is home to take DS off my hands.

I think it would be too much. Also probably unfashionable and unpopular to say, but I think there is now proof that women's neurology changes around pregnancy and birth to make us focus on our babies needs - so what would have been an easy work task can feel like your brain is moving through treacle, whereas you become weirdly efficient snd amazing at managing all sorts of baby related stress and tasks. Also, don't underestimate your own recovery needs after birth and baby raising - it takes a lot out of you, and doing too much might increase likelihood of post natal depression. If going to do it, you would need to plan a certain number of hours when you can work free of distractions (when partner around) in order to be able to catch up or meet deadlines. And consider how that would feel (potentially working evenings when tired from looking after a baby all day). I wouldn't plan to regularly work from home with an under 8 year old, although I could have written reports with a 2-3 year old I think, in limited amounts and using my 'child free' time mainly (I studied with young children).

I'd say too definitely could. There's not that much to do with a baby really. As long as it's something you can take breaks when you need to feed etc it would be fine.

When they get a bit more active and vocal it can be challenging but I've done that too.

I actually find it harder now with a teenager who invariably wants to chat about the meaning of life just as I'm mid report than with newborns or even toddlers.

I have the easiest, low stress work at home job. Even getting an hr of it done after my babies arrived was very difficult. My head just couldn't switch to it, especially once the new baby adrenaline wore off after a few days. I worked the days I went into lanour for all 3 of mine so I had some tidying up to do after they arrived and it was very difficult.

So don't commit to doing any work after baby under any circumstances.

Also probably unfashionable and unpopular to say, but I think there is now proof that women's neurology changes around pregnancy and birth to make us focus on our babies needs

It's not unfashionable or unpopular, its just not true!

Caring for the baby is a job, and your work is a job. You can do one but not the other. Either you will neglect the child (not feed it, ignore its cries) and do good work, or you will care for your child and do poor work

Again, thanks for that from those of us who have done it. Nice of you to tell us we are doubly a failure!

When dd was about 2 months I remember sitting on the loo for a wee whilst brushing my teeth and breastfeeding her. I'd only bothered with the teeth brushing as I was going out. I often made it until after lunch to get round to brushing my teeth. But dd is a 'difficult baby' who either screamed or fed and didn't nap. You might luck out and have compliant baby.

Not a hope in hell's chance, sorry! A good day will be one where you can get dressed! dressing, washing/showering, eating etc - all become luxuries ... so working, ummm no (as many have said before me). In my experience it's not been possible yet and my DD is 4. It's even difficult to work from home when DH is looking after her in the house, she always wants to 'help' with my work. There was a brief time when she napped and I could get an hour or two of work done, but it was at the expense of everything else that needed doing - shower/eat/laundry/dishes/etc/etc- and that was when she was about 1-2 years old