Inspired by this daycare thread, I’m thinking about what it’s going to be like when I have a baby in about 10 weeks. I work from home but am planning to take off a month when the baby is born. Then I’m hoping to sort of start working from home again. We need my income, especially with a baby. I do independent contract work as a lawyer. When I work, I have to be at the computer and I have to be able to think. However, I can do it anytime of the day or night, and it’s sporadic – some weeks I have only a few days of work, which is great. I’m thinking about paying someone to come in a few hours every day (or maybe 8 hours a day for three days or something) to watch the baby so I can work (or sleep if I stayed up late working while he was finally sleeping or something). Has anyone else done this? Am I crazy to think I’ll be able to get anything done? For various reasons, I can’t pay a lot…but I think that I can get someone to do this for about $10/hour – maybe someone who is Spanish-speaking (as I am) and would appreciate a job where English proficiency is not required. Does that sound realistic to anyone? Have any other mothers (or fathers) around here done this?
The practical details sound realistic to me - I have done a lot of work from home since my son (now 10) was born, and when he was young enough I had someone in the house watching him. $10/hour sounds low to me, but I know nothing about US prices these days, so more power to you if you can find someone you trust for that price.
Here’s what you need to be careful about, in my experience:
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Get someone who knows how to take care of babies and respects your wishes, both. Then tell them you are NOT to be disturbed while working except in case of a true emergency. Otherwise, the moment the baby cries they’ll come running to you for help, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a separate caretaker.
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Get someone you feel comfortable leaving alone with the baby - so if you had to run down to the store and buy some paper for the printer, you’d be able to do it.
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Don’t be afraid to ask for other chores to be done while the baby is sleeping (if you arrange that up front, of course - and for low pay, maybe that isn’t appropriate). I had a maid spend 8am-12noon every day with my son, and as it turned out, he slept the entire time. She sat daydreaming on the floor outside his room until it was time to go home, just about as he woke up. Boy that used to bug me!
That’s all I can think of, except to say that for people whose work permits them to do it, telecommuting with a small child is a WONDERFUL solution to the dilemma of being a working mom. In fact, a few years ago one of my son’s friends pestered his working mom endlessly after spending a lot of time at our house – “Why can’t you be like CairoSon’s mom? SHE works, too, but SHE’s always home.” I feel sorry for the guilt that poor other mom (a single parent, no less) had to endure, but those comments did make me realize how lucky I was.
I work at home one half day a week - today’s it, in fact. My daughter is now 20 months and I’ve done this since I went back to work when she was 6 months old. Your situation does sound different to mine in that I have to work during normal business hours, but I’d say it’s workable, based on my own experience. I find that I can always find half hour bursts when she’s napping or occupied by something at my feet, so I manage fine. I’ve had the very odd occasion when a scheduled conference call has corresponded with the exact time she decided to pitch a fit, but other than that we’ve been ok.
I don’t have anyone coming in, so it makes it quite hard work. I find that it takes all day to get through my three hours working time, so I couldn’t do any more at home with her here than I already do. It’s worth the difficulties to keep her with me for that extra day, though. If I did manage to have someone come in it seems like it would work even better - although I’d agree with CairoCarol about setting the boundaries.
Like everything with children, plan as much as you can, but be prepared to adjust if it just doesn’t work for you both (all). My friend’s baby, for instance, is very high maintenance and screams constantly if he’s aware she’s around but isn’t engaged with him at that moment. In her case, there’s no way she could have day care in her own home, her son is too attuned to her presence. As my husband is fond of saying “no battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy”! 
And can’t help you with the cost, I’m afraid - looking at the daycare thread it’s very difficult to translate UK - US for childcare.
I work from home on Mondays as a project manager - but my kids are in school or daycare (they are now eight and nine). I find it very difficult to work from home when the kids are around - and it would have been nearly impossible when they were between the ages of two and four. Mine were never good nappers and were always fairly demanding of my time and attention - and no one else would do.
But I think if you have someone in to help you’d probably do fine. (Watch tax law.)
I’d be curious to see if you can work while the baby’s sleeping, perhaps while holding him/her in a sling. Some people can, they have that baby wrapped up and just go about their business. In fact, a snug wrap is a great way to soothe a crying infant (Harvey Karp’s Happiest Baby on the Block explains the technique in detail).
OTOH, you can be pretty sure there ARE going to be spells when you’re operating on very little sleep. You might need hired help even absent the work, in order to get some rest so that you’re not in so much of a deficit when called upon. Your need to be able to think clearly may be more difficult to manage than just sheer time.
But perhaps not - some babies are just easy from day one. It varies wildly.
But however it’s going at the outset, don’t be daunted – things WILL settle down after a while. And then they’ll get chaotic again (about every 6 months or so).
A mom with a flexible work schedule is a lucky, lucky woman, particularly if it’s a job you love – you need and deserve that.
I have twins, I don’t know what it’s like to have a single baby, everything so magnified with two.
I think it’s a good idea for you to hire someone to be around during the day. You’re going to need to get your sleep during the night.
To get an idea for your area, you could go to http://sandiego.craigslist.org/kid/.
I live in Arlington, VA (right outside DC) and $10 is a fair price here for a babysitter, it’s about standard for a spanish speaking nanny. Look for nanny-shares also since you won’t need someone full-time. You should be able to find someone who’d be willing to do some very light housework. I wouldn’t ask too much though, maybe a load of laundry or two and the dishes, maybe to prepare a light lunch for you and she. It would be very nice if you let your sitter have a real break to relax while the baby’s sleeping. My kid’s sitter was a recent immigrant from Peru and she would use nap-time to do homework from her ESL classes.
Good luck to you.
I’m guessing that in San Diego, $10.00 an hour is really going to be on the low end, which doesn’t mean you won’t find anyone. You just may have to be flexible. For instance, what if the nanny is a new mom, too, and wants to bring her baby while watching your baby? That may really work out for both of you, as babies often love to engage one another.
If you try it, though, you should have the nanny come in for a couple of “trial runs” before you start back to work, so you can see how your baby reacts to her. Also, the younger a baby is when he/she grows accustomed to someone, the more easily you can leave them alone with that person, and the less separation anxiety occurs. All this, of course, is just my experience.
Best of luck!
How big is your house? Will you be able to be far enough away from Baby when you work to not be distracted? My kids are now 6 and 2, and I still find it very difficult to get any work done when they’re around, even if my hubby is home. I work at home a lot, but the kids go to daycare.
I’m also inclined to think that one month isn’t long enough to get used to being a mother. It’s a pretty horomonally intense time, and it will be hard to get anywhere near enough sleep if you’re also trying to get some work done.
But overall, give it a try, and make adjustments as necessary!
Seconded (you’ve been beating me to the punch in a bunch of threads lately).
My wife and I both work from home, and we both have very flexible jobs. It was still next to impossible for us to get our jobs done with the little one around. We ended up going the daycare route.
Just posting to subscribe. I’m newly self-employed and working from home, which we hope means we can have a baby soon! I have no idea how the logistics of this are going to work, but it seems we’ve got a better shot with this than if I had to return to work outside the home.
Before the baby starts to walk, you will find you have loads of time. ( especially with one.)
Baby containment devices ( swings are the greatest thing evar until they get too big, jump seats that attach to the door frame that are harder to find because of Security Nazi’s are the next step up and great loads of entertainment and the Ultimate Baby Gulag; the play pen.)
Once they start walking, if you can babygate a room off and make it baby proof ( try not to use the tv.) toss them in there. Alternating a basket of toys as needed to keep them entertained in their wrath of destruction. You’re probably good for a few months. After about two, not so much. Then they start figuring things out.
I did this with two of mine and a rental for about a year. My house was a gated community.
Just remember, kept to a schedule for your sanity. I would say do your work in the AM, when kids are all YAY PHHHHBBBBBBBBBFFFFFTTTTT WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and easy to self occupy and the afternoons are more of a hassle with cranky times and nap time. ( My children decided to never nap after the age of two. They still don’t sleep. My husband wonders why I’m so tired all the time. No one in the house sleeps but me.)
I think it’s been alluded to before, but I would emphasize that you’ll need to have some standard hours set if you want someone to come over to your house to watch the little 'un. You probably already know this, but it would be difficult to find someone - anyone - who is trustworthy and who has nothing to do during the day and can follow a varying schedule. And your schedule may vary wildly for the first few months until you and your baby settle into a pattern. (Heck, it keeps changing, sometimes abruptly, even after that.)
Either way, good luck. I think that’s wonderful that working from home is an option for you.
Here’s what I did: I went back to work when the baby was 5 weeks old, and he came to work with me. I wore him in my Moby Wrap (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!) almost all day, and he was happy as a clam – slept most of the time, was pretty quiet, loved being all snuggled up to me. We did that until the end of the year, when he was 4.5 months old. By that time, it was getting harder to have him with me at the office, because he wanted to play and make noise and stuff, and I wanted to not bother my co-workers.
My boss and I had pre-arranged that I would work from home 3 days/week after that, and be in the office 2 days/week. Here’s where it gets complicated. My husband works in a coffeeshop, so he works either 4:30am-1:00pm OR 12:30pm-9:00pm, so he’s home half the day. We live near a university, so we had a college student come in to watch the baby when I was home and my husband was at work. That’s been tricky because they have, y’know, classes to work around (so we never had full coverage – there were always childcare gaps), and their schedules change every quarter. We paid them $10/hr. So that covered 3 days/week. For one of the 2 days I was in the office, we had a friend watch him at her place, with her kids, also for about $10/hr. For my other office day, my husband takes a day off work and is home with the baby all day (which means that he works Saturdays).
Now that it’s summer and my college babysitters are gone, we’re using a couple of high schoolers from our church. This is great because they’re cheap and they don’t have classes to work around, but they do go on family vacations, etc.
We’ve been doing some variation on that since the beginning of the year, and it definitely has its pros and cons. It’s great that I’m around to nurse him most days (and it means I only have to pump 2 days/week! I hate pumping.). It’s been nice that we didn’t have to find a child care place, get on a waiting list, worry about getting there to pick him up on time, etc. It’s also nice that we’re saving on gas, and that I’m generally around if he’s really in a bad mood, is sick, etc. The cons are a) scheduling, b) cost (in terms of hourly rate, a child care center would actually be cheaper), and c) I think the baby’s actually getting the short end of the stick, to a certain extent. I mean, yeah, I’m home, but I’m trying to work, so I can’t really take him on a walk or to the park or whatever. He would probably have more “enrichment” if he were in a childcare center, where they have activities and stuff. That’s frustrating to me (but part of that frustration comes from the fact that I really, really would love to be a stay-at-home mom).
The other “con” is that now we’re kind of locked in. I mean, if I wanted a different job, it would either have to pay a lot more – so we could afford full-time childcare – or it would have to be similarly flexible, which I think is unlikely.
With all that said, here’s what I would recommend for you: check out babysitters – if business hours don’t matter, look at college students or even high schoolers (if you’re comfortable with that). They could come after school every day. Check out child care centers in your area. Most of them probably have part-time options, and you may find that it’s affordable. And ask around your friends who have kids - a nanny share might be perfect. Or you might be able to do a childcare swap – you watch her kid a few hours a week, and she watches yours in return. Whatever you do, I would highly recommend a regular schedule, because that will make it easier on you, your child, and the babysitter. And you will be able to be available to your clients at regular times, too. If you can afford it, don’t cancel the babysitter one week because you don’t have work to do – take some time for yourself!
One of the hard parts about having a babysitter around while I’m here is that I can hear what’s going on. I can hear if he’s been crying for 20 minutes. I can hear him laughing and having a great time! And I’m sure that it won’t be too long before he realizes that, hey, mom’s still here! Why is she locked away and ignoring me? The logistics can be tricky – I can’t go out to the kitchen and get more water/coffee/a snack because he’ll see me and go into meltdown mode again.
It’s getting easier now that my son naps better and is happier with people. I would say, in addition to the recommendations above: BE FLEXIBLE. This applies to all areas of parenting, but be open to something working for a few months and then not working, and you have to re-arrange everything.
Sorry this is so long, and I don’t mean to sound discouraging! It’s just been a lot more complicated than I thought it would be, and managing all the details is kind of a PITA. It’s really great that I can spend lots of time with my kiddo (who is 11 months old today, btw!) and still work full-time. I love that I don’t have to rush out the door in the morning, and I can even keep on top of the laundry! …mostly.
…and he’s waking up now, so I have to go!
Ooooh, that moby wrap looks awesome!
Why does all the really cool stuff come out after we are done with kids?
Wow, thanks for all the helpful responses. Even though many challenges were presented by the posts, it sounds doable if we are willing to be flexible. It does sound like a regular schedule is the way to go, whether I have work or not – that way I can maybe sleep or clean the house or work out or something. The only awful thing would be if I had some sort of deadline that did not coincide with the schedule. However, maybe I could have a couple of high schooler/college students sort of willing to fill in gaps. That sounds good. I have a neighbor who I paid to help me clean the apartment we just moved out of — when I offered her $10/hour, she said that was more than she makes at her job! She doesn’t speak much English. That’s sort of where I got the $10/hour…it seems low to me too, and I’m not trying to bargain-basement my childcare, but she, as an example, is a person who I would completely trust with my kid.
Yeah, a month doesn’t sound long enough to me either to get used to motherhood, but I don’t know how long we can go w/o my income. I’m trying to save up now. My husband is also taking off some time — maybe three weeks after my parents leave, which will be at half-pay. (California lets the husband stay at home to bond with the baby up to six weeks for half-pay in the first year – really cool.)
Ooh - on the hubby staying home topic, one piece of advice that we got (didn’t apply to our situation, but a good one nonetheless): if your husband has 3 weeks of paternity leave/vacation/whatever, have him take 2 weeks when the baby is born, and then have him take the next 5 Wednesdays off. That way, you will only have 2 days in a row with no help, and then a day with help, then 2 more days, then the weekend.
Other than that I have 4.5 bits of pregnancy/new parent advice:
- Get a copy of the book Baby Bargains. It is GREAT for helping you sort out what baby stuff you need and what you don’t, and which kind of the millions out there you should get.
- The best book about labor that I read is The Big Book of Birth by Erica Lyon. It’s amazing. Very positive and very informative, and I found it empowering in a big way.
- Once that kiddo is born, remember this: You are the best parent for your child. Doesn’t matter what Grandma says you should do, or what I say you should do, or how anyone says you should get your kid to sleep through the night – you know your child best. Trust those Mama instincts!
- Especially for the first 12 weeks or so, do whatever works for your family. Who cares where the baby sleeps, if it works for you? You won’t be forming good or bad habits that early, so if it works, go with it.
4.5. I got the last 2 bits of advice from a fabulous, fabulous website called Ask Moxie . Start reading it now, and absorbing the wonderful information there. Don’t skip the comments from other readers, they have some incredibly valuable stuff in there!
Also: congratulations! 
Thanks for these tips!!! And thanks for the congrats. We’re excited. 
I work from home, with 3 little ones, but I can work any hours I choose. I did hire a very part-time “mother’s helper” last year, so I could get a little more done, and she was really good, but I was always here just in case. (One of my sons has autism, and his behavior is unpredictable at best.) My helper was here about 10 hours a week, and my boys just loved her. I didn’t pay her a lot, but she had free access to the fridge, meals, snacks, whatever, and all I asked was that she keep them entertained and out of my hair.
Now I just resign myself to working from kids’ bedtime until 2-3 a.m., when I need to. I found it very easy with an infant, less so with a crawler, nearly impossible with a toddler, and now I have two toddlers (well, 2 and 3 years old), plus a 7-year-old.
I have high hopes for a sitter that I found through the local university, because she’s a Psych major focusing on special-needs and autistic children, but she’s out of town until fall semester. That’s a great idea, to check out local colleges or universities.
**Stargazer ** is right, and you’ll find what works for you. I fumbled around a bit, with each of mine, and finally discovered what worked. Hell, I still do that every day, but it all works out, and I love it (most days).
Congratulations on your little one!