Working from home with a newborn

[CursiveLetters]

I'm pregnant with my first and trying to figure out how to re-arrange our flat to accommodate work and baby!

We have a two bedroom flat, second bedroom is currently used as a home office. I know standard would be to convert it to baby room, but do babies really need their own room for the first 6 months or so? Is that an insane question? If it were a baby room I guess we'd have to stick my desk in the living room, which is also likely where the baby would be hanging out (with daddy) so I wouldn't be able to close the door and work.

Is working from home in peace just an impossible dream if we don't have the space for an office and a baby room? Need some advice from mums who have been there!

Medical advice is that your baby should sleep in the same room as you for the first 6 months (so that includes sleeping in the sitting room in the evening while you are still awake).

See here.

When are you planning on starting working again (from home)? Will your DH be looking after the baby while you are working?

I've worked from home w a newborn (now 18 months w a 3.5 year old brother). It's fine until they're around 6 months when they just want to start doing more and being entertained. My daughter spent her first 3 months in a bouncer next to my desk.

I did have help tho so I could give baby to someone else if I had important calls to make or whatever

Hi. Many people don't move the baby into their own room until the baby is much older, especially if they are Breastfeeding, co sleeping or the little darling is a bad sleeper - it means mummy gets much more sleep as she just needs to lean over, pick up the little sod from the cot & plump him next to her boob before she goes back to sleep.

(Can you hear the voice of experience?!)

Our 1 yo is still in our room & we all sleep fine. However other people do it differently. We do plan to move him into our spare room shortly but only because we have a spare room to put him in now!

From my experience If you were so inclined you could work from home until the baby is about 6 mo when they start moving about, babbling & asking for attention but after that you could only do it if you worked whilst s/he slept or you had childcare. These days I rarely get time to check my emails (or MN!) on my days off at home. He really keeps me busy and wants my attention. He also likes to steal the phone and press all the buttons on my laptop or pull the plug out.... It was so much easier when he didn't move but unfortunately at that time I barely had time to think, let alone work! Luckily he sleeps for 2-3 hours in 1 session during my day off so I get a chance to do stuff i want to do.

If you have an employer it is worth checking if you are allowed to work from home whilst you have sole care of a child. My employer does not allow it - i because they know we wouldn't get anything done & ii because their insurers do not allow it.

I shouldn't plan ahead too much though as you don't know what kind of baby you are going to get or how you will be. Motherhood is quite a change from my previous life and my wants, interests, desires etc are quite different.

I don't know what your job is but I can't see how it will work or be professional unless you are self-employed.

Is child care not an option?

They really don't need their own room until at least 6 months. I worked from home in a job that involved a lot of telephoning, and it worked well until she got noisy (around 8m). I was lucky to have a fairly quiet baby!

As soon as she was mobile I put the laptop and chair into a playpen and worked in there, so DD had the run of the room and all her toys whilst I worked with no risk of unplugging! I still do this, at 15m.

If you follow the advice the baby will be in hour room for 6 months. If your room is too small for a cot it may be worth considering a crib rather than a Moses basket as it will last much longer (wish we'd done that).

Really depends on the baby how much work you'll get to do. I'm normally a bit of a workaholic but getting anything done has been a challenge. Can barely put the baby down to eat as she starts screaming and she does not sleep during the day unless she's out in the pram. Great for being back to a size 6 4 weeks post-birth but not recommended. Have had to enlist help so I could complete projects I'd taken on thinking that I could do them while the baby slept. Ha! She's 4 months now and though she sleeps through the night days are absolute hell.

Thank you so much everyone, this is super helpful!

I own the company so I will be working at least a little (maybe like an hour a day of check-in) ASAP, maybe a week or so after the birth.

Wigeon that's interesting, didn't know that!

Suzietwo Trying2bMindful VikingLady thanks for the words of experience, so it sounds like I will need to get an office outside of the home at 6 months, but maybe not having a dedicated baby room up to 6 months would be OK.

So I guess my next question is do they need their own room for other stuff? We would have room for one dresser in our bedroom where we could keep baby stuff, and maybe get one of those sleeper things that attaches to the bed. (Bedroom does not have a room for a dresser/changing table AND a crib though.)

Are we also going to want a changing table? I figure toys will probably end up in the living room, whenever I visit a friend with a baby the baby only sleeps in the baby room anyway, all the playtime happens in the front room.

Keep the baby in your room til 6 months (or longer) then move your desk into your bedroom. That is probably the only option unless you can move to a 3BR or rent a desk somewhere.

What kind of work do you do and how much do you need to do?

I didn't work from home those first months but I'm not sure I could have if I wanted to, I was on my knees from sleep exhaustion.

You can still do some work when they're older but nothing with tight deadlines, they will start dropping naps, they will get sick and want to be held all day, etc. You have to be realistic.

sorry x-post

If you can afford an outside office, definitely do it

No you don't need a changing table. It's handy to keep a dedicated area for changing, so you can keep the nappies and wipes in one place, but for example we got a changing pad and put it on top of the clothes dresser, worked fine.

Hi

I have a 4 and a half month old and my own business. I work from home and whilst its not easy, I have managed okay but think that's because my wee one is very good! He is in a little routine now so I tend to make calls when he's sleeping and deal with the rest via email. I know it will be harder once he gets more mobile but I actually think me working has helped him settle himself etc as opposed to always getting attention straight away? I obviously wouldn't let him cry for more than a few minutes but sometimes if I'm on the phone and hear him cry, I end the call as quickly as I can and he has settled himself! Good luck!

You might need to move the baby into his own room before 6 months as many babies outgrow their Moses basket before then. 4 months is not unusual.

I started working from home from about 3 months, but only an hourish a day, and usually in the evening when DD was asleep. Technically you could work while the baby is awake - depends on the baby! DD was very alert from an early age and wanted attention, but other babies are sleepy and calm for months. It also depends where you can get the baby to nap - some are best in their buggies, which means you're mostly out when they're asleep. It's not uncommon for the days to disappear without having achieved very much ..feeding and getting the baby to nap can be very time consuming.

I would say it's totally possible to work from home a small amount, though. Best of luck.

We only have 2 bedrooms as well and what we have done is adapted one of those large ikea pax wardrobes so it has a little pull out desk tray for keyboard and shelves above. It works quite well and I wonder why we didn't do it before. Ok so it means we have to keep the 'office' reasonably tidy and can't have a massive desk full of papers but it really does work without being too intrusive on the bedroom if you know what I mean. At the end of the day switch computer off and close wardrobe door and it is like a bedroom again!

I didn't know about the 6 month recommendation, we have planned to move the baby into his own room a bit earlier than that as my SIL did this because BIL snoring kept waking the baby up and I can see the same thing happening with his since my husband often wakes me up with his snoring. If this doesn't work I guess I'll have to kick husband out to sleep in the nursery for a while!

This thread has made me worry - I was planning on taking 2 months off completely then taking on a few days' work here and there depending on how I get on.

I really was hoping the baby would sleep quite a bit...

I really cannot stress the importance of getting some childcare if you need to work with a baby - you can 'get a bit of work done' from time to time (I did a small amount of editing in my first four month maternity leave) but you can't do a full day's work at all.

I worked from home from a couple of months old (once I was into the swing of things really) - No, you don't get a full day's work done, and you can't guarantee that you'll be able to make a meeting at a certain time, but for my work, I did just fine working around his (and my) naps and in the evening when his dad could take over a bit.

DS is now nearly 3, and we basically have a bunk room - for a while he was in his own room, but it seemed such a waste (he didn't play in there, just slept in there), so now we have his and our beds in the same room - which is just used for sleeping, and a whole spare bedroom which is used as office/playroom.

I found that the first year was fine to get work done around him/naps. Between 1 and 3 things became too difficult as he wanted to play with me so much, so he went to childminder/playgroup from 2

Unfortunately there's just no way of predicting how much work you'll be able to do, because babies differ so much.

Some of my friends had babies who almost never napped and needed to be amused constantly or they would scream. My DS took lovely long naps during the day but was a wretched night sleeper so I was too exhausted to do much quality work.

Then there's always the unexpected, you have a lovely baby who sleeps all day but the day of your big deadline he throws up every hour.

You can definitely do some work, especially if you have a supportive partner, but you would be pretty lucky to get a lot of work done on a regular basis, I think.

Plan for the worst case scenario! When my DD was born she became jaundiced, had to go into neo-natal at 2 days old. Mums stay with them for breast feeding. But DD was not feeding well for days. Don't even try to suggest formula feeding your baby when you're in hospital. It turned out DD had cows milk intolerance and refused formula, if I had any milk in my diet the proteins would get into my breastmilk and make her sick. Everything I ate had to be prepared from scratch and took ages (milk is in everything). Although we were prescribed dairy free formula, it took 4 months to get referred to see consultant in order to get it. I was breastfeeding, and it wasn't classed as urgent. It doesn't cost nhs anything if you breastfeed. I remember crying at the GP that I needed to go back to work and demanding dairy free formula because we couldn't afford to carry on with me at home much longer. You can only by infasoy in the shops, and DD needed a scratch test before she could have soya.

All hopes of wfh vanished, and I was a fool to think I could. DD weight had dropped through the centiles and HV told me to continue feeding at night until we started weaning. It was hard. I went back to work at 6 months, and DH stayed at home, he wfh 3 hours a day. BUT DD is a good napper now and has 2 hours in morning and 1 in afternoon. When she is awake you can't ignore them nor is it fair.
Also I seem to remember it took my body at least 6 weeks to heal, and those 3 hourly feeds... I forgot all my passwords and pin numbers, I was so exhausted, quality of work would have been horrendous!

Very much depends on the baby. First time round (prem DD) there isn't a hope in hell that I could have taken on any work for at lest 12 months. She didn't sleep very well at all, and on the rare occasions she did, I had to sleep as was so exhausted from not sleeping at night. The mere suggestion of working from home at that stage would have been enough to tip me over the edge.

However, 2nd time round, I worked days and evenings from 2 weeks, including lots of meetings (breastfeeding in front of the press is interesting). I then went back to FT work (out of the home) at 5 months, continued the evening work, voluntary work and PhD.

Part of the difference was about how I felt (DTD1 stillborn, DD2 prem, so I was in a bad way), but mostly it was to do with the amount that the babies naturally slept. DD3 is, and has always been, a good sleeper. Older DD is still shocking.

serious that story about babies sleeping.... Well ... It's just that... A story!!!
Most babies don't sleep when you want them too &, tbh, in the early days the parents need to sleep when the baby does!

Yes in theory I could do loads of work when my 1 yo sleeps but when would I sort out the laundry, the dishwasher, my dinner, the shopping, the ironings, my emails, my calls, the garden, the deliveries etc!
SAHM get my sympathies. It is hard work doing what most of the population consider "nothing".