Tips for Working From Home with a Baby

These days, more parents than ever are opting to work from home. It's hard to live as a one income family...so while one parent traditionally stayed home with the kids—which, we know, is a full time job in itself—these days you almost can't afford to do that anymore. At the same time, daycare costs are prohibitively expensive for many. Now, we live in a digital world, and increasingly it's being realized that certain jobs are done just as well from home. So here's where side hustles/side jobs/part-time-work-from-home-jobs come in handy! So here are my top tips for working from home with a baby.

Work around your baby's schedule

Many people ask me...when do you get your work done? Well, I schedule my work around naps, bedtime, and play time. I slip in work here and there as I'm able (for example, I'm writing this blog post in between just having folded a load of laundry, and it's close to bedtime so my baby is happily playing on the floor with some toys!) After all the kids are asleep is when I get a nice chunk of a few hours to work, which is great because I'm a natural night owl. And that's why the next tip is important...

Choose a flexible job

Your job needs to be flexible. You're going to have a hard time working as a customer service representative, for example, with an unpredictable baby in the background crying or getting into mischief crawling around. The work you choose needs to be something you can squeeze into little snippets of time that we moms get throughout the day!

Play and work

Once your baby hits the stage where they don't want to leave your side, it can be a bit hard to set them up with toys and then get some work done. Or, you might be feeling bad focusing on work, and want to show your baby some attention while working. So play while you work! My mornings are often spent on the floor with my baby and laptop or tablet. I'll spend 10 minutes typing away a newsletter for a client or something, then play with my baby a bit. I'll play with a toy with her, or read her a book, or just talk to her and narrate what's going on. I get a small break in between working, and my baby feels my presence there even when I'm working, and gets attention and learning time in as I play with her.

Enlist help

So I mentioned above that my baby is playing. My husband is watching her while I'm off in another room getting this blog post written. I could write in the room with her there, and often do, but it's nice to be able to fully focus on work for a bit! He also watches her more often on weekends when he's off work, weekends are where I try to knock off a big chunk of my work for the week. It can also be an older sibling playing with the baby for a while (my baby adores her big siblings!) or even paying a babysitter once in a while to get some serious work done when things pile up on you.

Let work know

When I'm working on small one-off jobs (such as on Upwork) I don't do this, but my boss for my writing job absolutely knows I have a baby. As a mom herself, she's amazing and extremely understanding if I can't make it to a meeting here or there, for example. Of course, I do my absolute best to not let my home life affect work too much, but it happens! She also knows this means that while I might be unavailable at certain times during the day, I do make up for it by working most nights and weekends.

Get a tablet

Absolutely positively I advise you to get a tablet if you're working from home. A tablet is portable and allows you to work from wherever, rather than being tied to the table like with a desktop or laptop. At the same time, you're not stuck using a mobile browser like you would on a phone, plus typing things out it easier. I prop my tablet up and watch videos for work while cooking, type up blog and social media posts while laying down nursing the baby to bed, etc.

A dose of reality

I realized as I reread my blog post that this might make it all seem easy peasy to work from home with a baby. It's not. I've done it through 2 babies (and started working on my Master's degree when my first was 1). There are days where it all just gets TOO much and I wonder what on earth I've gotten myself into! There are days where I waste too much time browsing social media instead of focusing on work, and days where I feel pulled between work, a crabby or sick baby, fighting kids, doctor appointments that pile up, and more. There are days where I regret not spending more time with my kids, especially my sweet baby who is growing too fast (which seems ironic because I'm with them all day! But being there is not the same as being truly present). But the goal is to work smarter not harder, and I've been working on opening up other income streams, and my goal is to work just a few hours and make the most of those few hours, plus have other stuff working for me in the background (like my stocks!) So let's just all take it one day at a time, and try to balance out the time spent with the kids and time spent working.

Do you have any other tips for making working with a baby, well, work? Share them in the comments below!