New Baby & WFH. Is it do-able? Or am I kidding myself?

[expectinglittlebear]

Unfortunately my employer do not offer any enhanced maternity pay and therefore only offer SMP. I am due our first baby in January.

Due to finances, I am only able to take 8 weeks of maternity leave (6 weeks SMP and 2 weeks annual leave tagged on the end). Childcare is also extortionate (and also wouldn't want to leave my baby with anyone that young, bar family), so my employer have offered for me to WFH 4 days a week, and then my mum will be looking after baby the other day so I can go into the office (Husband works full time). I am very grateful for this opportunity to WFH around baby as we wouldn't be able to afford for me to be off work, or pay for childcare. So after my 8 weeks off, I will be back to working full time, while caring for our baby too.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation and gone back to working full time after a short maternity leave, working from home and caring for baby - is it doable or am I completely kidding myself thinking I can work around baby at home full time? For context, I am an office manager and PA, but my job is relatively easy and stress free. It would be the odd zoom call meeting, but other than that just mainly working from a laptop.

I managed to work, very few, very occasional hours (like 10 a week at the most) without hiring child care during dc’s first year. I worked mainly evenings and weekends when DH was available to take charge of dc because my employer didn’t care when I worked, just that I got the project done. It also was incredibly exhausting. There is absolutely no chance I could have worked during a regular work day because dc was a high needs baby who would not nap without being held.

I think if you had a very easy baby then it might be possible to do odd bits of work eg. Respond to emails, do bits here and there, make some calls. And you could maybe catch up with other bits in the evenings/weekends. I think attending meetings at specific times would be difficult as young babies tend to change their routines a lot. But you could probably get away wihh listening into meetings. Some babies it would be impossible though, sorry. I think you've had an unfair battering on this thread OP, it wasn't an unreasonable question to ask.

i worked from home with a baby. I had my FIL come over when DH was at work t help and even then it was a nightmare, especially as i was breast feeding.

it will 'technically' be possible, as in the basic work will get done and the basic caring needs for you baby will be carried out but

• your baby will be bored as hell and wont be getting the full range of interaction and stimulation that is ideal for a developing mind and body
• you cant stop a zoom meeting in order to feed/sooth/change a nappy so either your baby will be very unhappy or you meeting colleagues will be pissed off
• you wont be able to devote 100% attention to any of your work tasks as you will be either dealing with a baby or half an ear listening for baby to wake from a nap
• being distracted will make it more likely that mistakes will be made

I would be worried that your company will realise how little work you do if you will be able to do it will also full time caring for a baby and either decrease your hours in the future or pass your duties on to someone else.

so yes what you want to hear is that yoou CAN do both at the same time but its up to you if you listen to those who have experience and say its not a good solution for anyone involved.

** Don’t do that to your baby.

It’s neglect.**

^This

Everyone struggled during lockdown. Unless your employer was extremely flexible people couldn't, struggled or just didn't, work at the same time as looking after their children. I don't know if you've read my first reply, but I was fortunate to work for a very flexible and understanding company, and it sounds like you are too but, as PP have tried to explain, you will find it extremely hard. I have no tips to give as I struggled with just my 8 week old. The house was a mess, I was a mess and absolutely without a shadow of a doubt I wouldn't have been functional enough to work too. OP you will find it hard, but every baby is different so it's really difficult to know how it will work for you. If you can do your hours as and when you can then that's great, but if your colleagues and boss need to talk to you about something at a specific time then you may find things clash. Your thread does ask if you are just wishful thinking that it could work, and as many PP have basically said, yes you are. I really hope things work out for you x

Why isn't your DH taking shared parental leave?

Ok, it will not be possible for you to work full time with a baby.

However, you say your company are suggesting this. You need to find out if this is their way of giving you an extra few months, without setting a precedent to others. Is this a way of keeping your knowledge in the company?

If you have an honest conversation with your company about their expectations and they acknowledge their expectations are low, it might work, but I would not look at this as a long term solution - few companies can afford to do this sort of thing.

In reality, I think you will be able to work the equivalent of 2-3 baby-free hours a day and you will find it very tiring. If they agree to do this, you need to be scrupulous about working as much as you can.

When this arrangement comes to an end, how are you planning to pay for child care? How long do you anticipate this lasting?

I worked from 12 weeks to 18 weeks (many years ago) when maternity rights were much worse, from home. My company didn’t want to loose my skills which were very niche and desirable and I had recently changed employer and hadn’t enough service for the full package. Nurseries would not take children before 18 weeks. I felt like I was working from 6am to 9pm, to achieve the work it would have taken 4 hours to complete in the office.

I've done it.

After a month I caved and got a childminder. However, I did have twins.

I think it possibly is doable, if (big if):
Your baby is a good sleeper
Your baby is a good feeder
Your partner takes care of pretty much everything else
You don't mind life being 100% work/baby as you won't have much time to do much else.

However, once baby gets a bit older, it will be even harder. As a toddler it'll be nugh-on impossible. Are you expecting your circumstances to change between now and free nursery hours?

Congratulations on your baby.

I have three. It would never be my choice to work from home whilst they were so young, or moving and older for that matter... Bloody pandemic taught me that much!

Anyway- I suppose if you have an "easy, sleeping" baby (never had one of those) and you genuinely can cram all of your work into two days then I can't see why it wouldn't work as an interim measure. It would be hideous but you have bills to pay.. 🤷🏼‍♀️

If I were you I would be very concerned though that if your employer realises that you are underworked- as in you can fit 37.5 hours of work into 2 days- then they could potentially give you more work or look at the hours you work and drop them to reflect the fact that you aren't actually needed for the amount of time they employ you for. I'd be worried they'd be looking at what value they were actually getting from someone who manages to drag out 2 days of work to occupy themselves for a full working week....

In your situation I'd take the advice of a previous poster and try and use yours and your partner's annual leave for the year sensibly- a day a week each would give you adequate time for yourself, baby and work whilst keeping your pay up. Use kit days if you can as well. Can you work in the evenings when your partner is home? Can he take shared parental leave- does he have better employment terms?

What's the plan for when baby is older? At some point- when they get more mobile, sleep less and require more attention working from home will get pretty unsustainable. Childcare is hideously expensive- the only way my husband and I have been able to afford it is by both working part time and then using minimal childcare to cover the days we can't. We haven't had family help. It's absolutely knackered our finances and careers for the last 7 years but it was that or bankruptcy... we're now just clinging on for the youngest to get their 30 free hours so we can try and earn more.

So yeah, maybe it will work as an interim measure but I can't see it being sustainable for the long run.

Bracing myself to be shouted down here, but. Why isn't it possible?

I have friends who went travelling in a van for a year with a newborn - they had a great time.
I used to follow the blog of a family who were touring the world by bike and living out of tents - the woman had a baby en route and they kept going (they also had two(?) older kids with them)
My old boss (based in US, so no mat leave) gave birth and was back at it 2 days later. She was on calls all day, sometimes at ridiculous hours. (I'm not saying this is healthy or aspirational, just that it is evidently doable.)
In plenty of places it is totally normal for a woman to strap her baby to her front or back and go about her usual business, including going to work a manual job.

It is probably not going to be a whole heap of fun. But I think you can do it.

So, I did this and it was fine-ish. I'm not an office manager but a writer/ journalist, and when my babies were little I did event organising too. I took them everywhere, strapped to me, fed them on the go, and did the bulk of my work when they were sleeping. It was EXHAUSTING though. But we all survived.

If you are set on trying then you might be able to get a mothers help or au pair in. Obviously they can’t be in sole charge of baby but could be in house with you.
I think you sound naive as to how demanding a baby is and how awful you’ll potentially feel.
You feel ok and like you can do it. Think how you feel after a festival or with hangover or with flu then imagine it. It’s the day in day out. As a one off if baby was sick you’d be ok and catch up later but not 4 days a week.

I have worked from home (self employment) for around 2 hours per day since my baby was around 3 months old. I found that this worked out fine whilst he napped, sometimes in the sling on me, sometimes fell asleep in his car seat and I brought the laptop into the car.

For my mental health, I found it was key that I was free to go out and do baby-focussed things in the mornings, then did my work for a couple of hours in the afternoons. I would have found it stressful to have to be available for a Zoom call at a particular time, I was lucky that my hours were totally flexible, and that I could catch up in the evening if things just hadn’t worked out well for naps on a particular day.

I remember DH saying 25 years ago that he could WFH and look after the baby. I laughed hollowly then, even though I had no idea of the tsunami of sleep deprived drudgery that was about to hit us.

You can work or look after a new baby, not both at the same time.

@BigHuff in the US they have childcare that will take them from a few days old. I know several American woman who have put their babies into nursery from a week old and returned at 2 weeks.

They cried a lot!

I was in a very similar situation last year. Not by choice but childcare all stopped for the pandemic. So it was me and DH working from home with 12 week old and older child (who has ASD).

You will survive if you have to but I would not recommend it.

@expectinglittlebear

Wow okay, I wasn't quite expecting that much of a response. Thank you I guess! Have any of you actually done this though, or just assuming you couldn't do both...? (I'm looking for anyone here who has actually done this and then either failed at it or its worked for them).

Yes my employer is aware I would be doing both, and actually suggested the idea as they couldn't offer me EMP.

@JewelleryBox Yes it would be 'full time' hours but still working around baby, so yes flexi hours I guess you would call it.

I tried with my first baby, and it was a disaster. People tell you before you have a baby that you will get nothing done for a long time to come, but you have no idea what this means until you have one.

I probably managed half an hour or so per day. The rest of the time was spent feeding (bottle feeding, so much more predictable than breast feeding - but even then, it takes time), rocking, winding, nappy changing, etc, etc. I used to take him out in the pram every day because I was going crazy through staring at the same walls. I also went to baby groups, just to talk to other adults (and made some of the best friends of my life there, 20 years ago!) Add broken nights and it is a recipe for getting no work done. I probably averaged about 30 minutes a day (self-employed, so couldn't afford to do so little, but at least nobody else was affected by my lack of productivity). I also found I cared very much less about work - I couldn't summon up any interest in it at all, and resented every minute that it took me away from my baby.

I've known people do it - they tend to be workaholics and either self employed or very senior doing it when they have had nanny or childcare issues - so they are in a position where they can choose to say no at the time, but can catch up that evening/in the night on their work.
They were the sort of people that seemed to exist on little sleep pre baby so I think they were already used to the kind of disruption.
The other common factor was they were the higher earner of the couple, probably why they couldn't take time off and they had supportive partners who either didn't work or were part-time...

BigHuff is a man and a great example of the type mentioned upthread.

The old 'Women have been giving birth in fields then getting on with the farming' crap has been around for decades. Ffs

They also miss out the 'and then they died' bit

Oh OP I really feel for you. You can tell from your post that you're really just hoping that someone will tell you it'll all be ok. I can only imagine how stressed you must feel to know that you won't have the luxury of time with your baby. And I get you can't magic up a years worth of salary.

I'm afraid I have to echo the majority - I couldn't have contemplated working when my DC was 8 weeks old. And I had a "good" baby and recovered very quickly from pregnancy. Even if I did have time, I don't think my brain was functioning on the right level to hold down the most basic of duties associated with my job. DC was 9 months when I went back to work, then Covid happened so I WFH full time with her here. It was genuinely hell on earth. I was exhausted, as was my DH. We didn't eat properly, we didn't exercise, days went by without me going outside...it wasn't fun.

I also had a colleague in a very similar situation to yours. Unplanned pregnancy which meant no savings etc for a longer mat leave. She was authorised to WFH with the baby there. It didn't go well. Not only did she end up suffering from PND, her output was terrible so those in the office started to get frustrated at picking up the slack while she continued to get paid to do a fraction of the job. This was before I had kids, but knowing now what the poor woman must've been going through, I wish id had more compassion at the time. I guess my point is, be prepared for your colleagues to possibly be less understanding than you'd like.

Could your husband possibly do compressed hours? Giving you a day to work solidly? I get when you say his job isn't flexible, but it sounds like you're carrying all of the burden. If he worked 5 days worth in 4 and then your mum had the baby 1 day, that's 2 full days you'd have to work.

Newborn, probably. Mobile, forget it.

@expectinglittlebear

Thank you *@HotDiggidy2017*

In regards to DH he is a Mechanical Engineer, and so there is physically no way he could work from home. He will be picking up everything in the evenings, he is more than capable of sharing the load, which he will do as I know he is going to be an amazing dad, but due to his trade he won't be there during the daytime.

It appears that the general consensus is that I am naive for thinking I could do it - thank you for your opinions. I am most certainly not looking at this through rose tinted glasses, I know its going to be hard and I wouldn't be doing it unless needed, and therefore especially as a lot of people have had to do this during lockdowns over the past couple of years, I was hoping to get some tips on how to manage it all.

Thank you for all your responses regardless.

Everyone is asking about DH not because he should be wfh, but because he is responsible for the cost of childcare too. If he pays half or even more if you're splitting bills pro rata how unaffordable is childcare then?

Either your manager is a fool or smart. I'm not sure which.

Either way you're being naïve - there's no evening with a baby, they just scream. Everything takes forever, feeding, changing, winding, getting them to sleep. They start rolling from about 4 months and then you spend all day moving them round the floor. If you're lucky you get one that sleeps at night, but chances you'll be up at night at least once and it's exhausting.

I entertained this idea before my DS was born..i have a super easy low responsibility wfh clerical job.
No chance in hell would it ever have worked..caring for a newborn is a full on job and it gets even worse as they get older and need to be entertained.

I still can't get my head round why a small company would pay someone for 40 hours, knowing there are only 20 hours of work.
That can't be sustainable, even putting aside what OP is asking about not actually being able to be fully focused on her paid employment for those limited hours.