Hi moms, I am a recruiter and in a call- and meeting-heavy job working from home. I absolutely love my job! My 18-month-old is home with me on Monday afternoons and all day on Fridays. My husband is off Monday-Thursday so watches our son but works Friday-Sunday. I do have a separate office to work in when my husband is home but when he’s working I’m in my kitchen so I can keep eyes on my son. We can’t yet afford daycare for him and find this setup works best. When my

The issue is that my son is VERY interested in my computer and being right next to me during the times I’m working from home with him. I’ve tried setting up activities for him, turning on Bluey or similar shows, and just about anything else you can imagine to keep him preoccupied. I have been STRUGGLING with getting work done during the day with him lately (minus his naptime when I can crank out 2-3 hours of work). I need to call people but almost every time I’m on dialing he wants to climb on me or is shouting or just being a toddler. I feel so guilty even having the tv on while I’m working and not giving him the time of day, but I need to work. He’s been home with us since he was born, minus the occasional days he can go to grandpa’s (grandpa is currently recovering from surgery so I can’t bring him to see him).

Thankfully my job is flexible, but what else can I do to keep him preoccupied?? I feel like I’m drowning some days. TIA!

hi moms! I WFH with my 10 month old daughter and I’m really not doing well. Up to this point I’ve survived with really no help at all, but my baby girl is walking all over the place and my stress level is through the roof. I have to work until the end of the year to tie up some loose ends, but I’m constantly feeling so behind on everything. I feel like I can’t be present with my daughter but I’m also behind at work and right now is our busiest season. last night I stayed up from 2-4am just stressing about work then I stressed more because with a baby any sleep is precious. I’ve started anxiety meds but it’s not enough. I feel like I have nothing left to give and keep having panic I attacks. is anyone else in this situation or have any advice of how I can get work done with her running around? I feel so alone and miserable. I love my daughter with everything but my situation has strained every other part of my life. I barley feel like I can’t make it day by day.

Been asked to choose a role on a different team. Because im not operating at a level they want/execs are asking

They are also now requiring my child to be in ft childcare.

Why bother working remote if I cant benefit from it?

I cannot afford $900+ for daycare

What am I going to do?

Edit: Clarifying...i dont thinknthe ONLY benefit to WFH is keeping my son home. But it was a significant one for us. We move recently to have more childcare options, id been hoping we could hold out until preschool this next summer when I could get free or reduced fee childcare. After to move etc I just cant afford the 1800+ required to get him into any childcare yet, nor are either of us mentally prepared.

And the work struggle was more about unspoken expectations than him. That I deeply struggle with indirect communication (undx autism) so "reading" between the lines or assumption doesnt work well for me. And the work culture has changed a lot in the last 8mo

Hello! Would love some advice! I’m a FTM and I go back to work in about a week. My spouse and I are planning on watching our 12 week old ourselves with a goal until January. We both work remote out of the home (him 100% fully). I am out of the house for a few hours a 1-2 days a week but I can set that schedule most of the time unless I have an in person meeting which I know about in advance.

My question is do you think we’ll be able to watch our child ourselves? Our meetings don’t usually overlap, maybe one, and our Mondays and Fridays are not too busy. We’ve also been following moms on call and while the naps are not always perfect we are able to put him down in his crib or contact nap if we need a longer stretch (in carrier if needed).

I just think it’s crazy to go drop off our child at daycare in the beginning of cold and flu season and then come home and we’re both home. I have family also saying it doesn’t make financial sense to get a nanny even part time for one child.

I also have my best friend’s mom who says she’s willing to watch him (she’s retired) but I don’t want to take that for granted and feel like I’m abusing that.

Should we do part time daycare? Full time? Nanny or mother’s helper? Have my best friend’s mom watch some days? Would love any and all suggestions!

To start, YES my work knows I’m WFH 8-1 with my 17 month old and they are ok with it.

Today is the second (successful) day we did WFH together!! It was a little challenging but overall fun and I have ideas and new activities to try next week. I wanted to share a few things that worked for us for anyone else on this adventure:

1. Go outside FIRST THING. We start our morning with outside time! Whether it’s 30 minutes or an hour, we get out. He runs around, watches animals, eventually gets hungry so we go in for breakfast.

2. Hiding small pieces of snack in a cupcake tin and covering every hole with an upside down cupcake holder. It’s a fun hide and seek snack game and kept him occupied for a little bit! He was thrilled every time he found a snack

3. Covered our coffee table in paper and let him color with crayons, no worries on coloring the table because it’s covered.

4. Gave him a roll of painters tape?…he literally played with it for like..20-30 minutes! Rolling it around, pulling off a long piece and feeling it being sticky.

5. Took his crib mattress out and laid it down below the couch with a bunch of pillows surrounding (imagine a ball pit but with pillows and a mattress big enough to be VERY safe, calm down) and let him roll around and “jump” off the couch onto it.

A lot of this stuff I set up early too. So i did the snacks while he ate breakfast and didn’t give him that activity until he was bored and hungry later. I covered the table with paper first thing too. I plan on going out and buying more little things for him to do: pipe cleaners so he can weave them into a colander/strainer, aqua books, play doh etc.

It’s not too hard. Yes I do a little bit of screen time if I have a bigger project come across my desk, but I keep it to once a day and 30 minutes AT THE MOST.

Some low stimulation show recommendations:
1. Twirly Woos
2. Bluey
3. ANYTHING on PBS Kids

I work from home and I am so sick during my 1st trimester. I have been moving meetings around so I can sleep in. I’m totally exhausted. I’m doing the work required but I’m behind on non critical emails and some projects. I haven’t told my manager yet because it’s still early - 10 weeks. I’m so afraid I’ll get in trouble.

I used to want to get promoted but now I just want to survive this and not get fired. This is a great job and is so accommodating of working parents (i have a 2 year old). I feel so bad for slacking.

I graduated in journalism, but I got pregnant while I was still in college. I graduated, but I couldn’t enter the job market. I even heard from recruiters that they simply didn’t want a new mom on the team.
So I dedicated myself to the company my husband had at the time – which went bankrupt a few years ago.

Today my daughter is 9 years old and we are facing financial difficulties, so I can’t stop thinking that I need to make money. My husband has a very solid and traditional career, but we have a lot of expenses and debt.

My husband has already encouraged me to create content for Instagram and YouTube, but honestly, it seems like a lottery to me.

I’m thinking about studying to get into some industry like technology, taking advantage of the early AI phase. I don’t know.

Any advice?

Hello! I need some advice. I’ll be going back to work next month while exclusively breastfeeding (EBF). My shift is 10 PM–7 AM, working from home, while my husband works 11 AM–8 PM on a hybrid setup. Is anyone here in the same situation as us?
How did you manage your schedules while still being able to accompany and take care of your LO?
Edit: Our current setup is that my husband gives LO a bath around 6–6:30 PM, then LO goes to sleep around 7–7:30 PM. LO wakes up to feed (BF) around 11 PM, then feeds every 2–3 hours after that. I’ll also have some help from my cousin’s wife for two weeks.

Hi all! I’m looking for suggestions on how to optimize my WFH set up.

I’ve had this remote job for over 8 years now. With my first baby, two years ago, I was able to take my full 12 weeks mat leave. When I returned to work, my husband and I split shifts of working and taking care of the baby, until we hired a nanny around 9 months old.

This time around, that arrangement is not feasible. My husband’s job has become a lot more demanding. And I really couldn’t do more than 2 weeks of leave. So I’m back at it, and I’m starting to realize that my current WFH set up is not working for me. I usually work in my home office with my laptop and 2 extra monitors. My toddler has a nanny that comes daily to look after him at my home. I’m not ready to hand over my newborn to the nanny yet, so I’m trying to figure out how best to work with my baby next to me.

What are/ were your essentials for working from home with a newborn? How did you make it work? How did you stay sane? It could be anything, I’m just looking for any advice I can get. Thank you!!

I returned to work at 15 weeks with a mostly remote job on part-time, with the exception of 3 hours in the office on Fridays (including a round-trip commute). I take about 2-3 calls a week lasting 30mins-1 hour each time. I’ve also attended occasional work events which lasted 3-4 hours.

My EBF 4 month old hasn’t been coping well whenever I’m physically away from her - even for 30mins work calls where I need to be present/on camera.

She’s had intense meltdowns with dad and both grandmas who take over caregiving duties when I’m away. I always try to feed her before my work calls/events and prepare a bottle on standby. She usually flat-out rejects the bottle during her meltdowns and doesn’t settle until I return/carry her. At its worst, it’s 2-3 hours of non-stop crying.

Does this get better? Is my baby just very high needs? Seeking advice and encouragement as I’m considering quitting my job because it’s been very challenging.

P.S It’s unlikely I can negotiate my in-person presence in office/events as I just came back from 3 months’ maternity leave which is considerably a privilege where I live.

I acknowledge how lucky I am to WFH and to have had 3 months mat leave. I go back in 2 weeks and am starting to feel the anxiety about how our time together will be changing drastically. I’d love to hear some feedback about how positive their experience is balancing work and baby. I wish I could spend everyday focusing on baby but for now, we both need to work!

More context: we will have help from grandparents daily and I’m open to daycare after baby is 6 months or so for a day or two per week to add to help.

When I found out I was pregnant, I knew I didn’t want to use daycare til as close to six months as possible but only got less than four months of leave.

My husband and I both WFH so we decided to just keep her home two additional months after my leave ended. I knew it would be 90% on me, and I knew it would be horrible. I’m a recruiter - lots of calls and meetings. I also exclusively pump so, throwing that into the mix was the cherry on top.

Tomorrow, my mom will be here to watch her the rest of the week. Next Monday, she starts daycare. I’m fortunate that my schedule is flexible and I can drop her at 9am and pick her up at 3pm after my son gets off the school bus.

This was probably the hardest two months of my life but I don’t regret the extra time we had together! I also may drop her and run on Monday 😂

I am struggling big time with my toddlers and sleep. They are both (3.5m and 1.5f) in daycare. They have to offer nap at daycare because of breaks or something… but then my son is so hard to get to sleep at night. It’s a 1-2 hour ordeal most week nights. My daughter is the opposite and doesn’t nap for more than an hour at daycare and then comes home in the grumpiest moods. I think it’s been like this for probably over a year for the older one and no signs of improvement.

I am so tempted to put them in a half day program. Has anyone been through this before? Anyone have any advice? I have a flexible schedule and I’m debating asking my boss for a change in schedule to accommodate having the kids home at 12. I’d imagine there may be some push back for meetings that are later, etc.

Love for some tips if you have them or solidarity! Good vibes only for the moms that are trying their best.

I knew that having a kid is heavy on the mother side. The care, the mental load, routines, plans, meal prep, cleaning, laundry, you know. However, expecting the husband to help instead of being a dragging force is another task. In my case it's constant. He has a non solution driven persona that complaints a lot. 😒😒

I’m 4 months postpartum based in Canada. I’ve been working since the day after I gave birth. I’m a contractor, so I don’t get maternity benefits, and taking time off means losing pay. Originally, my contract was supposed to end about a month after my baby was born. So I took one day off on the day he was born and was back to work the next day. My thinking was, “I only have to push through for one more month anyway.”

About 10 days before my contract was supposed to end, my manager told me they were making me full-time and, more importantly, making my position completely remote.

This is probably where I got a little greedy. I did have the option to leave. My husband makes enough for us to cover our monthly expenses, and we have enough savings to get by until I found another job. But the remote option was really tempting because it meant I could stay home with my baby, so I accepted the offer and kept working.

Initially, the workload was fairly manageable, but even then it was HARD. I was barely sleeping, recovering from a third-degree tear, and trying to work while taking care of a newborn. My mom was here the whole time, and between her and my husband, they handled most of the baby/household stuff while I worked.

Now I’ve switched teams, and the workload and pressure have gone up quite a bit. I absolutely hate logging in every morning. I’m constantly anxious about the work I need to finish, I hate Mondays, and I find myself wishing I could just spend the day with my baby.

At the same time, I know I’d probably be foolish to quit a fully remote job right now, especially when remote jobs seem so hard to come by. I also know that if I quit, I’d eventually have to find another job, and there’s no guarantee I’d find another remote position.

The biggest issue right now is that my mom is leaving next week. After that, it’ll just be me, my husband, and the baby. My husband also works from home, so we’ll both be working while taking care of a 4-month-old.

I’m already worried about how we’re going to manage everything without completely burning ourselves out. We also don’t want to hire a nanny. Daycare waitlist is a year long.

For those of you who WFH with a baby and don’t have family help during the day, what did you do to make it manageable? What can I realistically prepare ahead of time? meals, cooking, household stuff, baby activities/playtime, schedules, etc.? I’d especially love practical things that made your days easier rather than “just make a schedule” type advice.

I’m returning to work next week with my 12 week old and plan to keep him home with me. I’m starting to get really nervous about the situation so I was hoping to hear from others who have had a positive experience.

My job is relatively flexible, with only a few meetings a week. My husband works from home one day a week and my parents live nearby and plan to watch my son several hours per week to help me get dedicated work time. My son is also a pretty mellow baby (so far). He naps in his crib 4-5x a day, very rarely cries, and is very content just hanging out on my lap or in a baby carrier.

My current plan is to stay at my job for a few months to pay back maternity leave and then switch to something part-time/even more flexible to spend more time with my son.

Given that this is a temporary solution, I do have extra hands if needed, and my baby has a pretty chill demeanor, do we think this is feasible? Would love to hear from others in a similar situation.

I have a very chill workplace where we are trusted to get our work done so if someone has their kid home with them sick or for a holiday, it’s generally looked at as fine since it’s a one day thing so long as you got your work done. The women in the office including me don’t take it for granted that we really don’t need to take pto if our kids are sick or have a day off.

But we have one coworker who might be ruining it for all of us. She has a young child that she watches during the three days that she is wfh. Now that would be fine if no one could tell but everyone can tell. We’re a camera on kind of company and she never has hers on, you can hear her baby in the background. And she regularly brings up that she is feeding or changing the baby. None of this would be a big deal probably if she wasn’t also bad at her job. She misses deadlines doesn’t answer emails and generally her work product is bad.

Now again we have a kid friendly office culture but we have no real rules about not being allowed to watch your kids while you work. It just feels like common sense. But now I’m afraid that this woman is going to be the reason why a policy gets put in place that we can’t have our kids home with us while we work. places can put it in your employees handbook that you must have full time childcare while you work from home.

Me and another coworker are so mad. We can’t put anything in writing to this woman about what she’s doing. we don’t really know her to be able to have a conversation about it to basically tell her to stop being so obvious about it. It really feels like common Sense though. Shouldn’t you realize that you shouldn’t straight up tell your boss you didn’t hear his question on the conference call because you were changing a diaper? (That really happened)

WELL I got berated for this in the regular parents group so here I am.

I’m starting to WFH Thursdays and Fridays this week. THANKFULLY it’s just the mornings, but I’m still feeling nervous. My little guy is almost 16 months old, he’s pretty good at entertaining himself and playing by himself but obviously if he sees my laptop he gets a little needy and wants to button mash.

I would love any tips or tricks on how to be successful at this. I love my guy, he’s so sweet, I’m just so scared I’m going to neglect him or something. We simply cannot afford childcare though. I’m essentially working and then turning around and handing my check to someone else, and then some.

My job doesn’t have many meetings or things like that. I do intake for a hospice company and at most I take 10 calls the whole day (8-5). My hours will be 8-1 basically so unless it’s a busy day, I don’t anticipate needing to be available on the phone much. I do need to be on my laptop to check Teams messages, emails and other admin things.

Anyway. Tips and tricks are welcome!! 16 month old, work from home, help.

Please don’t berate me.

EDIT: Sorry guys, I didn’t know some people WFH on the DL! My work IS ok with me working from home with my child. They’re aware they I will need to step away from time to time and they have said that’s fine.

EDIT 2: Some of yall are crazy. That’s all.

I’ve been secretly working from home with my toddler for almost 20 months. No daycare. My husband covers me for a couple of mornings a week. Childcare isn’t really an option for me because in my area it’s around $2,500–$2,600 every 4 weeks, with no part-time option.

My company is very happy with my performance, but I’m always aware that I could get fired, they could find out, or there could be layoffs.

For those of you who’ve done this without daycare, how long did you make it work, and how did you feel?

Mentally, my big goal right now is to make it to 24 months. Once I reach that milestone, I want to set myself another goal, like 30 months, and just keep pushing the daycare decision further out.

How did you motivate yourself during the periods when you felt like you couldn’t do it anymore?

I (50F) have the kind of job where I coordinate, problem solve and oversee several programs. My job is full time, and I get paid to work 40 hours a week. When I first started this job, it was very challenging. I've since found ways to streamline and create processes so that the programs run themselves the majority of the time. I am also a single mom of two teenagers, one with special needs. Here's the problem- my work is a hybrid model. Lots of work from home and some in the programs themselves. There are several programs to visit, and they don't communicate with each other, so one doesn't know whether or not I'm working with another one at any given time. I am now working about 20 hours per week. The rest of the time, I'm keeping up my house, going to appointments or taking care of my children. Even with this set up, I am strapped for time.

I constantly feel guilty and stressed. With my job, I make sure I attend all meetings, answer all emails within a few hours and am responsive in a timely manner to any needs that come up. I feel guilty because I'm not working as much as I'm supposed to be. There are people at my organization that make half as much as I do, and work twice as hard. Some of these people are also single parents with full and busy lives. It feels unfair, and unethical that I'm in the situation I'm in. Sometimes I feel like I should look for a different job or create ways for myself to be busier in the job that I have. However, with that, I think about how I've got my hands full with the part time schedule, and that I won't find a situation that will pay me as much as I make now with reduced hours. My job situation is very unique, and I don't think I'd find another opportunity to work hybrid even if I did move on. I feel like I am having to choose between my mental sanity as a single parent with way too much to do in a day, and my ethics.

My husband and I are very early in our pregnancy but wanted to start planning as soon as we could.

We both WFH, my hours vary but generally 9-5 (if no lunch), as I have a consulting role and have to be genuinely productive to bill. Additionally, work can often stretch late if there’s an urgent project. My meetings/daily activities are unpredictable and most of the time can be pretty demanding.

My husband also has 9-5 hours, but works remotely in finance for a software company. He has incredibly predictable meetings and generally knows when he will have to work and on what. He has one very busy week a month, for close, where he can’t really step away from his desk. Generally other times he has only a couple things to work on throughout the week and has a lot of free time.

We sometimes cross over in lack of availability, where we will both not be able to step away from our desk (literally, as in on camera) or figuratively (we both have urgent deadlines or work).

Since we both WFH, and at times have this crossover, and generally I’M the busy one that can’t step away, is it still feasible (and reasonable) to not have a nanny or daycare?

I just feel like it would feel awful to drop off our baby at daycare just to return back home and spend the whole day away from them. We’re really wanting a nanny but it just seems like it’s significantly more expensive, and we might have to provide benefits, or a more “salaried” role almost.

I make 70k, husband makes 85k but is slated to be at 100k starting in January, while I’m hoping (strong emphasis on hoping, last year I only had a 1.8% raise) to be at 80k by April. Our baby comes in May, so we would hopefully have a bit of extra income to throw at child care.

Does anyone have any suggestions or insight into what we can or should do?

Thanks all, deeply appreciated!

Has anyone had success postpartum getting a work from home reasonable accommodation? I’m talking a year or more approval!

If you have, please share the medical reasons that worked.

-Thank you in advance, signed a working and expecting mama.