Working from home with baby

[lilseb]

Currently on mat leave with first child. In my role we normally do 4 days in office and 1 day at home. However I'm thinking of going 5 days in office when returning to work when baby is about 1, because I'm worried I'll end up getting very distracted by family.

Husband will be caring for child full time while I return to work. Having a day at home could help ease the load off him by having lunch together, being able to help with small amount of chores etc. However my instinct is husband won't respect this and baby won't understand what I'm doing and expect attention.

Red flag has come up as husband thinks it's fine to keep our computer desk in dining room and keeps refusing to put in a spare room so I can have privacy and quiet when working from home. There are doors to our dining room and could technically be kept private, but I think it'll end up being walkway between kitchen and living room, and will be noisier being between these two rooms. (Plus one set of doors is see through so baby could see me). I suspect in this arrangement I would be constantly bothered by child and distracted rather than just the minor flexibility to do household stuff that's appropriate for WFH
(Worth saying our spare room isn't perfect either because its a games room and where MIL stays when she comes up, which is at least montly. But husband shouldn't be using it if looking after child as we have another TV in living room and MIL likely wouldn't be in during day).

I liked having a WFH day and it would mean going into the office alone on the 1 day (I quite like the idea of this tbh but manager may not be keen). It'd also be nice to have a slightly more flexible day to help at home and see more of family. thinking on balance may be better just do have a clearer work/home split. I don't live too far from the office, I hate commuting but we're talking half an hour on public transport door to door. Plus, I previously liked WFH because I could lie in and work in pjs but I'm usually up earlier with child anyway.

Leaning to FT in office but interested to know if anyone's made wfh with child present work? (I think I would put my foot down about desk if I was to wfh but having the argument already makes me suspicious).

In my company you arent allowed to wfh with small children present due to interruptions or attention being on the children rather than work. Also, we need to drop things to be in the office if called in. It sounds ever so slightly that your DH may take advantage of you being at home for the one day . Its a paid working day,not supposed to be a leisure one.

If you were going to make it work then you would definitely need the upstairs workspace and your husband to be on board with treating the situation like you are out - I.e by not interrupting you or allowing your child to.

I work from home two days a week and am in the office my other two days a week. When I first went back to work my husband took leave for a few months. I still did my WFH days but tended to do one day a week while he was off work. He did treat it like I wasn’t there , except for bringing me the odd cup of tea. I had to basically pretend I wasn’t there as well, by staying upstairs except for at lunchtime, or if they went out, because if I went down at other times my baby would expect me to be involved and get upset if I couldn’t be.

Yeah I think this confirms my concerns re workspace. One of the issues is before baby we lived in a flat where I would work on sofa so in his mind I've not needed such demands before. But child changes things and tbh we live in a much bigger house now so don't really want to compromise!
I also don't know if I want to stay upstairs all day lol, I like being able to walk about and office might give me space to do so without triggering baby

I thought this was going to be about working from home whilst caring for a baby. I am a remote worker, when my DC are home DH is very strict with them that I should not be disturbed and has been since they were little. I take breaks to greet them when they get home etc but on my terms. You could do a trial and see how it goes but if he isn't going to be strict I'd recommend going back into the office.

Your husband is shooting himself in the foot here by being an idiot. If he was just capable of keeping the baby himself without disturbing you, he’d have the benefit of you having no commute and being around at lunchtime one day a week!

I agree - tbh I haven't spoken about this in a while with him and I've forgotten what he said when I suggested I would go back to office. Not sure he recognised benefits of me wfh anyway!

Would add I grew up with parents who both WFH before it was cool , we were under strict instructions not to bother them and keep noise to a minimum etc so I have quite set expectations. However I was at least 8 so able to understand this better (and the older we got the less I wanted to bother my parents anyway)