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How do you juggle WFH with a baby?
61–66 of 66 posts
Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
People do it all the time. We did it. In our industry, in two-tech-worker families, there's a norm of staggered parental leave. Contrary to a lot of popular opinion, taking care of an infants or toddler isn't a full time job. In fact, even if you're especially attentive, there are long, long stretches of downtime.
I do not doubt that this was possible for you, or that your kids turned out fine. But I think you are making a very bold assumption based on a sample of two, and also being quite dismissive of the challenges that other parents are facing. Personally I believe I would have broken down mentally had I not spent the vast majority of the downtime on getting sleep myself.
I think you are making a very bold assumption that my sample is two.
Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?
#63I don't juggle. At all. When I am WFH I am at work. My office is in the basement, separated from our living space. My wife is a stay-at-home mom, and I took 12 weeks off each
time when 2 of my babies were born. Even with these advantages, parenting is hard work. We are certainly blessed. I can appreciate now the recommendation to "Embrace the phase". It's a precious period of time and I only get to enjoy them like this and give them these memories one time. Who cares if the house is a mess? I'm reading them a book instead.
Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?
#64Living in abject chaos and constantly being surprised how little sleep you actually need.
I would say how much sleep you can survive on rather than need. I definitely feel the lack.
Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I took care of a newborn while working from home. It's quite doable. It helps to have long arms, but you can keep the infant in one of those baby slings while you tap away. They get all the attention they could need, especially if like me you tend to talk to yourself. With a baby you no longer seem like a crazy person. When they get a bit older, you can put them in a Bumbo and have them on your desk, if you can do it…
It sounds like you are assuming work = solo work. My day is about 25% meetings, my wife's is about 90% meetings. We can't participate in meetings with a baby in the room (let alone strapped to our body!) who might start screaming at any moment. Sure, we could fake it -- camera off, muted, jump out periodically to tend to the baby -- but then we're not really fully engaged in work. Even if I had no meetings, I can't c…
Well, sure, specific cases are different. But, FWIW, I did it with regular conference calls.
Infants aren't much of a distraction IMO. My cats were more distracting, at least until the baby got mobile. That stage is certainly more challenging.
Re: How do you juggle WFH with a baby?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point that people are trying to make is that if you are busy taking care of a baby at home you are not working, or at least not working at the same level of capacity or in the same fashion as as you would if you were not looking after a baby... And if you're not working when you're at home, you're not working from home. You're just home. Most countries in the world would call that parental leave. Is it possible t…
I am responding to a comment pointing out the untenability of going to a workplace while also taking care of a kid, which is specifically not what the article is about.
Thank you for calling this out. Most of the commenters seem to have never read the article. I intentionally left the type of childcare out of the article as everyone's situation is different. But plenty of people WFH with kids around.