7 Tips to Work from Home with a Baby

Are you a new parent who is wondering “Can I work from home with a baby?” Between phone calls, nap time, your work schedule, and providing your child care yourself – it can be a lot. Combine that with the fact that just bringing home a new baby, no matter if they are an easy baby or not, is complicated, and unexpected, you may be juggling family members popping in, and finding that work-life balance can be challenging.

As a work-at-home mom who has been doing this since I brought my first baby home in 2016, and have since brought 5 more babies home since then – I can tell you that being a working parent is hard. But even harder when you are trying to juggle a workday from your living room while bouncing a new baby along the way.

Here are my top 7 tips to help you transition into working from home with a baby as easily as possible, help you set your expectations realistically, and hopefully help provide you the confidence to say that you can integrate both family life and work hours! You’re not super mom, but gosh, mom, you are SUPER!

7 Solutions for the Question “Can I Work from Home with a Baby?”

#1. Establish a Flexible Schedule

Babies, especially new babies can be some of the easiest or the hardest, just depending on the child. I have one child who would sleep three hours at a time, in her playpen starting at 7 weeks, and I just kept a monitor on her. She was the EASIEST baby, but I didn’t think it at first, because she was the first! Then I had babies who stayed up all night crying and were then super cantankerous all day long. But I’ve also had two other babies now who worked so well with me to create a simple routine that we could both keep and they were amazing!

Don’t be afraid to set up a flexible schedule, but don’t be AFRAID of a schedule! I know that BabyWise gets a back rap amongst modern mamas – and I’ll be honest, I’ve never actually finished the book. But my biggest takeaway was that you feed babies as soon as they wake up, let them play for a bit and then put them down for a nap, and then repeat! This schedule has worked so well for each of my most recent children. It’s an easy rhythm to fall into, that doesn’t require any training, other than to just always feed them when they wake up! I also baby-wear my children as soon as I’m comfortable enough to get a wrap on (my favorite is a Moby Wrap style, but you can get any brand that has good reviews and is more cost-effective!). All of my babies learned how to quickly fall asleep in a baby carrier, and it was an amazing way to get my flexible hours in, and manage a full-time job, while also keeping the most important things at the forefront – my family!

If you are a new mom, don’t worry or fret! You can’t help but overthink things, make it more complicated than necessary, and wonder if you’re messing up your child for good. But as you get more comfortable doing this, and as you possibly add more children, becoming a work-at-home parent will start to come naturally to you, and adding another may not throw you for the loop that you thought it would! I’m currently pregnant with #5, and it feels like adding this sweet little bundle is going to be just another day in our crazy home!

#2. Set Realistic Expectations

Remember when you started a new job, a new hobby, or learned a new concept in school? It required your brain to expand and grow, you may have gotten frustrated at your lack of ability to do this skill, and you may have questioned why you ever did it at all. But then, a few weeks into it, something happened, and something shifted. You finally got the hang of it, and before much time had passed, you were having a good time! This is what it will be like transitioning from being a full-time employee without young children to now being a home daycare with a home office – essentially.

Give yourself a lot of grace as you learn how to manage conference calls with a baby in the background, sacrifice your uninterrupted work time for an early morning work session, and find ways to somehow bounce a baby while working from your standing desk.

This is a new part of your life, and it will require some stretching, growing, and adjusting for you, while you also learn and grow in your new role of mother … and while your baby adjusts to life on the outside!

A good rule of thumb is that whatever time it used to take you to do a task beforehand… double it, or maybe triple it! You may have to take a lot longer to attend to the baby’s needs while also still getting your previous work completed. But eventually, it will come naturally to you both.

As I’ve mentioned, my last two children fit in and adjusted so easily. One of my little guys would sleep in his playpen for the first three months right next to my desk even with his older toddler siblings running around like mad – he never even jumped! And the last baby put himself to sleep in his playpen while I was taking care of a sibling – no crying, no neglect, just a sweet happy little fourth child who was used to the chaos of our life, and happily fell asleep and waited on me to come back and get him when I could! He also spent his first three months like a little Kangaroo Joey strapped in my baby carrier and only came out to eat, play, get his diaper changed, and then right back in he went. So he got PLENTY of cuddle time in 🤣.

Be patient with yourself, and allow yourself to realistically adjust to the expectations that life may have for you in the season!

#3. Create a Dedicated Work Space

You don’t HAVE to have a home office to work from home, but you do need a space that you can call your own for your work. Whether this is the bar (because I didn’t have a sit-to-stand desk at the time!) or you already have a beautiful home office, you just need a converter for your desk and you’ll be golden! Here are a few other things you may want to add to your office space now that you have a new best friend sharing your home office:

Sound Machine
MamaRoo
Floor Playmat
Playpen
Diaper Pail
Comfortable Rocking Chair
Sit-to-Stand Desk Converter
Comfortable Office Chair
A Wireless Keyboard and Mouse

These are just a few of the things that you may find helpful as you adjust to life as a work-from-home parent. You may like some, you may not use others, and the list is exhaustive because we can always add one more thing. But based on my interactions with my children, these are the items that I’ll be hauling up to my office as baby day approaches! And if you don’t have an office, only a space to set up your laptop, just make sure that it’s clean so you can easily set the items you need in your space, and make sure it’s going to be conducive for keeping baby while also working!

#4. Utilize Babywearing

I have already touched on this, but I will expand by saying that I have worn every single baby that I’ve had and worked from home with. Based on my season of life, I’ve appreciated different carriers, but the point is that you need a baby carrier of some kind, and you may want to try several! If you have a few friends who have already had babies, see if you can borrow their older carriers for a season and see which ones you like more! They can be a pretty solid investment, so you want to get the one you’ll like the most – but don’t overthink it and then put it off. Here are my favorite carriers and what I loved most about them!

Ring Sling – I used this carrier for all three of my first children. It served me well because it was easy to pack up when I needed it, quick to put on, comfortable up until my children got to be really heavy, and was just an all-around no-fuss carrier. That being said, as my babies got heavier, it got harder to use a ring sling because it felt like it was always twerking my back into weird contortions.

MobyWrap – I finally invested in one of these after Lisa Bass with Farmhouse on Boone suggested hers and couldn’t recommend it enough. If a mom of 8 children recommends something – you listen! I finally got this baby carrier, again, because I had owned one with my first child and thought it was ridiculous and complicated to wear. BUT, I take back anything I ever said about that carrier! If you are just going to be running around your home or your office, you can leave this carrier on all day long, and just put it back in and take them out as they need it. You don’t have to re-tie the silly thing every time you take the baby out. If you want a better work-life balance, I suggest starting with this carrier!

Tula Baby Carrier – I invested in this baby carrier as my fourth child got heavy, too heavy for the MobyWrap. I love that I could put him on my back and tote him around easily, without it interrupting my ability to type or wash dishes. It also provided amazing support for my back and helped spread out the gigantic weight of my children’s evening across my back and onto my hips!

#5. Take Advantage of the Nap

I’m not going to do it, mama, I’m not going to say “sleep when the baby sleeps” because it’s ludicrous! It works for a few weeks while you’re resting and recuperating. But at some point, mama wants to join the land of the living, and part of the way you’ll do this is by using naptime to catch a shower, crank out some emails, make lunch or clean up lunch, or do a few minutes of work on your business. Every day is new, so allow that day to tell you what you’ll get to do, and realize that some days are just going to be for a more casual day, working from the couch, and just doing what you can. Because babies are wild cards!

If your baby isn’t napping well, don’t lose heart! With some loving consistency, they will eventually start taking better naps. I don’t even start to think about getting them to take solo naps until they are at least 3-4 months old. And even then, I don’t expect my children to start doing a better job at naps and bedtime until they are around 18 months old. Remember tip #2? Set realistic expectations? Yeah, you’ll want to. use that here! If you need some help and some ideas for how to incorporate naps into your life – I’ve created a free tool list with all of my favorite sleeping tools. And then I’ve also created a short guide to show you how you can encourage good sleeping behaviors in your children.

#6. Practice Time Blocking

The benefit to time blocking as an adult and a parent is that you will already keep that healthy rhythm and it will suit you well as your children get older. You may only get 25 minutes to sit down and hyper-focus on a task, but as you start learning how to do that now, you’ll find it’s incredibly helpful as they get older! After 25 minutes of focus and taking advantage of your morning or afternoon, you can then give yourself a five-minute break, or maybe even a little more – just don’t forget to come back and finish your jobs because you got busy staring into the eyes of your beautiful baby!

#7. Be Kind to Yourself

Try to pretend that you are your best friend … if your best friend came to you frustrated with the way things are going as a new mom balancing a day of work while also maintaining your child’s needs, you would be compassionate to her. You would empathize with her. You may even give her a great idea for how to make improvements and skill-up. But you would NOT pick at her, tell her she’s doing a bad job, and help her focus on the overwhelm. You would help her and love her, and give her the tools she needed to do something, while also being kind to her. Treat yourself with patience and kindness. You won’t be in this season forever, and it may be a hard time and a lot of work – but being a stay-at-home parent while also keeping up a job is as rewarding as it is hard.

The Truth Is: YES! You Can Work from Home with a Baby!

You may have to change your strategy, you may have to give yourself more grace and invest in a really good baby bouncer. But if one of your main goals with this new baby is to be able to still take care of your family’s needs while also managing one of the many work-from-home jobs, I want you to know that it’s possible! You don’t need to be afraid of the hard moments and the hard times, you are strong and brave and hard-working, and at the end of the day, you’ll be so proud of yourself for these moments! Give yourself a short break, keep an eye on sleep deprivation, and realize that being a new mother is a beautiful gift that you get to enjoy, whereas so many women do not.

I hope that these tips and strategies help to provide you with the information that you need to know you can be a work-at-home mom. No matter the type of work, you are equipped to be able to take care of your child while being a work-at-home mom. You’ve got this mama!