9 Tips for Working From Home with Kids

Motherhood is one big learning curve. Every day – no, every hour – there is a new lesson to be learned. I am eight weeks into raising my first. Welcoming Joshua Charles into this world has been the wildest adventure of my life. After 30 hours of labor, an extra week of hospital stays under the bilirubin lights, and six weeks of guests, I felt behind at getting into the swing of things. But we’re here, and we’re getting things figured out.

As my maternity leave comes to an end, the exciting (and daunting) thought of adding one more responsibility comes with it a whole new learning curve. Years ago, I decided that although I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, it was important for me to continue working to some extent. Throughout the last few weeks I have recommitted myself to that value. But I’m still in survival mode and accomplishing the bare minimum every day. On more than one occasion, I’ve thought to myself, how do women do this?!

If you don’t read the rest of this post, take this one point away: You just do it. If it’s a priority, you find a way.

Now, we all have a lot of priorities; probably more than we care to count. But there is a lot of fluff in our day-to-day to lives that can be trimmed. This is the perfect opportunity to channel our efficiency and time management skills –- or learn them in the first place!

For myself, my goals are: I will be intentional with my time; each nap and each feeding will be used to accomplish one of my top priorities. Organizing tasks will be imperative for home and work life. My Google calendar and any.do will be my best friends! Communication with my business partner will be key; both keeping her apprised of my time and only committing to what I am confident I can accomplish. Communication with my husband also will be crucial as, some days, there may not be a fresh dinner, and he’ll be taking care of Joshua when I need to work in the evenings or on weekends; I don’t want to bite off more than he can chew either!

That being said, I really have no idea what I’m doing! So I asked some working, stay-at-home moms who I admire how they do it. Here is their consolidated advice:

• “Be intentional about having ‘work time’ and ‘play time,’ otherwise you will get little work done, and you also will ignore your kids trying to do both at the same time.”
• “Have a child care plan for when you need to work, and make a real work space. Not a toy space that sometimes is a work space, or a living space that is sometimes a work space. Something you can dedicate.”
• “Those big blocks [of time] l’ll save for more concept/thoughtful projects … that demand my full attention. Otherwise I work in what’s called the “pockets of life” in my phone doing things I can when the kids are playing or napping in the car.”
• “Wear your baby in a carrier and work on your laptop while standing up. Work outside while they play in a pack-n-play. The outdoors is refreshing for everyone.”
• I’ve found that keeping an organizer and writing out everything I need to do in a timeline really helps. I’ve also learned it’s OK to ask for help from family and friends!”
• “I wrote a whole book typing one-handed while breastfeeding my infant. Hired someone to clean the house once a week when she was newborn because she was baby #4.”
• “At least once a month, I spend a whole day at the library while the kiddos spend the day with dad or a sitter. Usually this works well for us, but there have certainly been rough seasons where I just have to give myself grace, put work on the back burner, and wait until things even out again.”
• “The most important piece is understanding how you work — when you’re most productive, when you’re not, and how much you can get done — and balancing that with ruthlessly sticking to your priorities. When you start spreading yourself too thin, everything suffers.”
• “Know that if you are running a one-woman show, GRACE is your friend. Give yourself lots of grace. You seriously can’t do it all and that’s OK.”

If you plan on doing it all yourself, like my friend Amy Bushatz, check out her article, “How I Work From Home With My Kids and No Help.”

All in all, we as moms are capable of more than we ever dreamed possible (even more than we thought yesterday). Our lives are filled with countless unpredictable moments, uncontrollable circumstances, and loads of responsibility. With copious amounts of grace, time management, and arranging our priorities accordingly — working from home with a baby is possible!

P.S. Be sure to hit ‘SAVE’ before picking up your crying baby after naptime!