Working From Home With a New Baby

If multitasking was a superpower, new moms would all wear capes. Unfortunately, your baby doesn’t know or care that you have a job other than mom, so don’t expect much cooperation from the little one when you’re trying to land a new client or meet a looming deadline. Don’t worry: you’re up to the job. (Both of them.)


Prepare to Adapt
Working from home requires equal parts structure and flexibility. The structure part you can prepare for now; the flexibility part, you’ll get to work on every day.

Analyze your daily tasks and productivity style (do you work better in long, uninterrupted chunks or short bursts with lots of breaks?) to create a general daily schedule of your ideal work/parenting balance. Then, slowly adjust it to suit your baby’s changing schedule. For instance, if you have to be free for a 2:00 conference call every day but your baby is at her most active then, you might want to hire a sitter to come in from 1:30 to 3:30.

Marie Knowles, who started her PR and marketing firm from home after becoming a mom two years ago, suggests taking your operation on the go if you have a fussy or active baby. Her daughter would only sleep while moving, so Marie started taking long walks with the stroller and making business calls during those strolls.

Find every opportunity to fit productive work into your day, she suggests. “If your child doesn’t sleep unless she’s in the stroller, bring your laptop with you and take her to a noisy coffee shop where you can tap out a few emails. ​Get a headset for your phone so you can make calls on-the-go, and if you’re not sleeping in the middle of the night anyway because you’re rocking or nursing a baby, put your laptop or phone screen on a dark setting and get some work done.”


Simplify Everything
If you can afford to do it, outsourcing household tasks lets you focus on nothing but your job and baby. Find a house cleaner who’s willing to do some laundry, hire a dog walker to give your pup some exercise and have groceries delivered or subscribe to a meal delivery service.

Let technology take some tasks off your plate, suggests Lisa Kipps-Brown, who ran her own business from home while her kids were babies. “Try to find ways you can use the web and/or apps to streamline your work and automate some tasks,” she says. She suggests using online calendars so people can set their own appointments with you and downloading apps that help you track outstanding tasks.

Granted, altering the way you do your work is easiest if you have a job with a lot of flexibility.

“If you’re self-employed, look at what takes the most time in your business and brings in the least revenue, doesn’t move your business forward, or stresses you out the most,” says Lisa. “How can you get rid of those things? If they have to be done, consider outsourcing.”


Baby-Proof Your Space

You can’t spend all day engaged with your baby, but you can at least show her that Mom’s always nearby. Set up a playpen in a location that you can observe from your chair. Keep a basket on your desk filled with spare pacifiers, burp cloths, wipes and toys so you can attend to your baby’s needs without leaving your desk.

Tangela Walker-Craft, who has been a work-from-home mom for 15 years, suggests investing in wraps, slings or other carriers that you can use to hold your baby close while working — and once your little one is no longer so little, upgrading to something that’s nearly as portable. “I LOVED my baby’s highchair with wheels,” Tangela says. “I pushed it from room to room without ever leaving my baby unattended. The height was adjustable so that I could raise it when I was standing up to do work and lower it when I needed to be seated to work.”

Your baby might not make the best coworker (although she’s probably the cutest). But when you can see that she’s happy and safe, you can do your best work.



Kathryn Walsh is a freelance writer specializing in parenting and travel topics. Her work has appeared on mom.me, TheBump.com, and USAToday.com.