Working From Home Full Time & Looking After Baby

[MrsMiggins]

I am going to be returning to work very soon & I have been lucky enough to be offered a position with my company working full time from home.

I was just wondering if any other mums/dads have a similar situation working full time from home.

I will have certain amounts of work that will need to be completed each day & I will need to be available on the phone/email during office hours. This means that I won't be able to also look after my 6 (nearly 7) month old daughter while I work.

My mum & dad have offered to look after her for part of the week & my DH has a job which means that he is also home some days, but there will be days when I will not have anyone to look after her & I will have to co-ordinate work & looking after my DD.

Childcare is not an option at this stage (no places currently available).

What do you do?

[draught]

Approach your local family day care - they also offer "in home care" which means that they provide a carer to your home - and from memory mum's working from home get priority. They have set rates, you can claim their costs from child care benefits and the service that provides them will do spot checks (as well as you being there to keep an eye on things too.)

I have tried to work from home a couple of days when my childcare has fallen through - and all I can say is that mothering IS a full time job - you cannot do both. My big tip would be to find someone else to look after baby while you are home. You have peace of mind and can do the job you are being paid to do while someone else does the other full time job of looking after your baby.

[rynosmum]

I work from home too (with regular city appointments though). Similar to what Draught said, I found that even on my full-time 'home' days, I need someone to look after DS if I'm actually going to earn my pay.

My son goes to local childcare 3 days per week and my MIL looks after him in our home 2 days per week.

It does have a lot of family advantages though. I do sneakily drop him off late to Childcare and pick him up early some days. Also if there is something on that I want to take him to or something I need to attend for him, I can. If he IS sick, I will still get some work done without taking a day off - but it's very tough.

[MrsMiggins]

Thanks for the replies guys. I had no idea you could get in-home family day care. I'll have to look into that.