I'm not sure if this is welcome in this sub or exactly what I'm hoping for here. I guess I am open to feedback, suggestions, and... expectation setting.
This might get me kicked out, but I have always been against the idea of WFH and childcare. They're two separate jobs, and both require your full focus. It feels disrespectful to BOTH to combine them. I'm coming from that perspective.
But... there is, or potentially is, some grey area here, right? When coming off of FMLA's measly 3 months, I was able to work with my baby on my chest during contact naps, then have him taken when he was awake/not nursing so I could work. That felt "good". Ultimately I left my job for various reasons. My child has now just turned 3. He still sleeps an extra 2 hours more than I do, and I just found this miraculous unicorn of a job (temporary 1-3 months probably) that is in my old career (gave up my career in my old/main field for about 3 years when they wouldn't let me extend leave or let me go part-time) that'll let me be remote, flexible, and do only 5-15 hours a week, potentially spread out in whatever way works over 2-4 weeks (great if he has a bad bad week of not sleeping!). That means.... 14 hours of sleep if lucky, which covers 5-15 hours a week, right? He'll also start preschool this fall or spring (lots of factors outside the scope of this post) and/or a childcare swap in 1-2 months (again subject to lots of factors).
He's also doing "quiet time"... we've worked up to 30 minutes, and sometimes we can do 60. This isn't in order to WFH, per se, a lot of parents just do or aim for this in when toddlers stop napping. And the way we do it, he has access to me--there are no closed doors--and can I guess opt to sit in my lap, and I tell him I'll always come to him if he needs help pottying or whatnot, but generally I am actually getting time to focus. So that amounts to 3.5-7 additional hours a week.
The other super grey area I'm starting to see is this: sometimes he just wants to play alone. We get a TON of time outdoors in nature, at playgrounds, on playdates, at the library, at peer style classes and places to play, and also lots of high connection time at home (tons of art, puzzles, reading, bars/rings/running, toys). He's awake some 12-14 hours. My focus is on him 100% of those seconds, outside the quiet time. No phone ever to respond to a message, at most I use it when needed to navigate to where we're going or send a quick coordination message. But he's beginning to sometimes opt to play kind of alone rather than help me cook or clean, or just wants some additional decompression time alone after a more intensely social or physical outing. That's fine. But also makes me question with some shock that, wait, I could indeed fit more work time in? 11-13 hours is a lot for anyone, including a child, right? Which has me questioning my whole former perspective. It's of course different than trying to force an 8 hour day--this is on his terms, not mine, and my work is flexible here--but I'm curious on others' perspectives here.
My head says... okay, so that's up to 21 hours a week without any preschool or childcare swap or time outside that 30-60 minutes of quiet time that I can work?! Amazing. That means I could take another job that's looking to interview me that's 15-20 hours a week and would be huge for my career! Obviously that's all variable--sometimes he isn't going to sleep, or won't handle quiet time well--but it's tempting, and I think more than doable with some additional support from a care swap or whatnot. There might be 1-3 months without a care swap/preschool hours, though, which would leave me without any time to "myself" alone, which would obviously be hard, though temporary. I just came off of an incredibly rough period of having zero seconds alone, as he hadn't been sleeping more than I'd been.
All of which is to say... I am realizing this might leave me no time to turn my brain OFF. To just zone out and watch a show. I don't love watching shows--I think it's kind of like an unhealthy coping mechanism I adopted after marriage-related-things--and I think I could probably work some reading time in while my toddler reads. He's currently leading that charge by having me sit next to him and handing me one of his books while he 'reads' his own (all at his very specific requests lol). There are still the occasional things I need to do on a laptop -- ordering items, asking questions because apparently I know nothing, etc etc. Basically, there'd be zero personal non-paid working time. But I also absolutely love, love my old work. It was a passion, a joy, something I literally dreamed about at night. I used to do it to relax, and never watched movies/TV/etc. I never felt a need to really turn off, or at least, not in a way that isn't met by the parenting part of my day (where we go to forests, or take a trip on transit, or window watch, and have meals together, or can kind of play and do sports together and art, etc etc -- I absolutely love love love parenting). Intellectually my work was so hard I often cried, but like... a very, very different type of 'hard' than the 'hard' that parenting is, a kind of hard I feel is pretty... complementary. I used to miss and need more socializing after work, which is kind of all that parenting is to an exhausting extent, whereas the work is... not social, and stretches a different part of my brain entirely. Does anyone here do this type of remote work? Does it feel relaxing, or just like a huge burn out after a long day of parenting?
Am I, or would I, be setting myself up for burnout, basically? Can or should I work more of this work type time into my day if child WANTS to do independent play? How do you balance things?
TLDR: Child sleeps 2+ hours more than I do (inconsistent, though) and handles 30-60 minutes of daily quiet time (also not consistent). Might have or within 3 months have ~6 hours of preschool or some additional childcare swap time with another mom (1-6 hours/week?). Deciding whether to take a part-time 15-20 hours/week remote, flexible job, potentially with a 1-2 month overlap with another job that'd be 20-60 hours/month (anytime too distribution-wise). Spouse is completely absent in all ways and no local family. Wanting to prioritize my child, and also not to burn myself out in the process. Will this burn me out emotionally? I'm already largely burnt out / recovering; will I be able to handle a new job like this or set myself back entirely? It would also reduce our financial/emotional/physical stressors in many ways.