How can I work full time from home and take care of a baby?

I'll be the voice of (slight) dissent, I guess? It's not impossible. When I had my daughter, I was a single parent attending college full time (online) and doing a decent amount of freelance work. I had her in the middle of the semester, and was working from my hospital room while she was in the NICU. We kept that up for the better part of two and a half years. For this to work, you need to have the following things in place, in my opinion: Easy baby. As mentioned above, if baby is colicky or fussy or whatever, you're screwed.Flexible work hours and environment. If you're doing data entry or research or whatever, and you can do it at any time, you're in a much better place than you are if you're taking customer support calls from home and have to be presenting As A Professional between eight a.m. and five p.m. (Really, anything client-facing is, in my opinion, out.)The ability to sleep in three hour chunks and feel relatively rested. The willingness and ability to ignore your child, to some extent. My theory is sort of that children, for most of human history, have been strap and go--you put them in a sling, and you go back to foraging for berries or whatever. And that's what I did--I popped her in a sling, and she stayed in it. She walked on the late side of normal, but outside of making my mother a crazy person, there weren't any negative effects. The understanding that this will buy you a year. Once your child is mobile, all bets are off--you'll be able to get something (pick one: a shower, eating, making a phone call, working) while they nap, but that's about it. Other work will get done while they watch Dora the Explorer, or at night, or while your partner is feeding your child supper. The downsides are, I assume, obvious: it's harder to concentrate on work; you feel guilty for not giving your child your full attention; you worry you're not stimulating the baby enough (even if you spend all your non-work energy doing this, you still worry); you have zero personal time, ever; you worry that you're not working enough; you worry that you are failing as both a parent and an employee/service provider. Further downsides can include not being taken as seriously at work, people assuming that your work is subpar because you're doing it with a child around, and people assuming that your parenting is subpar because you're doing it while you're working. The upsides are money saved, the ability to breastfeed on demand, and the knowledge that your child is being cared for in a way that you're comfortable with (assuming, obviously, that you can get comfortable with this). I won't lie--I wouldn't trade those first few years with my daughter for anything. But this sort of arrangement isn't something that you should rely on. Take as much maternity leave as you can, and, after the first bit, try to spend a few hours a day doing something mentally taxing while you have the baby. Go read Dostoyevsky, or bug check some code, or something in your field(ish). You'll figure out pretty quickly if baby + work is a thing you can do. Even if it is, I strongly suggest having a backup babysitter in the wings--someone, anyone, who can step in if Easy Baby is suddenly Teething And Miserable Baby, or Colic Baby, or any number of other things that can turn easy babies into screaming terrors and difficult-but-doable situations into major disasters.

What was hard for me to understand before having a baby is that it isn't just time, though time is the main thing. It's also a shift in energy and a different kind of focus that happens when you're on baby duty. So it is very, very hard to quickly just click into efficient professional-type work during a baby's hour-long nap (which you know might end any second) -- it takes time to reboot yourself, in a way, especially when you have milk on your shirt and you're worried about the next time you have to suction the the baby's stuffed up nose...A nanny is necessary for the actual time you need with no distractions. But also necessary because it is hard to work well when you are on mom duty, listening with half an ear, not really in your professional-self-mind unless you know someone else is being responsible for your baby.

No. You are asking if it is possible to work two full time jobs *simultaneously* and the answer is no. Not even badly.

I don't see why daycare is the lesser option in this situation. A child deserves a caregiver whose attention is not divided. For that matter, so does your work.

No offence but this question is comically naive. This isn't posible; this isn't even close to possible -and that's assuming you have an "easy" baby.If you have a kid that is colic-y and cries a lot, or doesn't sleep much (like ours) you will be feeling very accomplished to get a shower in a day. I'm not joking. It can be so so hard. My wife was on maternity leave, I was working full time, and we both struggled. A lot. Not everyone is like this but no one would say you can do full time work. Spend some time with a newborn and stay at home parent if you don't believe me. Be sure to stay the night.

When I took two months of paternity leave, I bought a thick book about a topic that greatly interests me, thinking I'd read it during naps and so on. Two months later I was literally 12 pages in. When I went back to work I started reading it on the train and finished it in like a week. Even allowing for the fact that you're actually used to working from home, I can't imagine a baby that would grant you eight hours of concentration time a day.

Also want to add that yes, in most societies through most of human history, moms strap babies to their backs or fronts and go about their day. That is ESSENTIAL to remember when your baby or toddler is demanding entertainment. The little one really can watch and learn instead of you always dancing around with puppets on your fingers. HOWEVER, also remember in those societies where moms integrate babies into their lives and work, THE MOTHERS ARE NOT ALONE IN A HOUSE WITH THE BABY ALL DAY. THe new mothers have sisters, mothers, aunts, and friends who take the kid off their hands, or take over the work for a bit while they nurse. It is really different being alone in a house with a baby and a computer and having to meet a deadline while your baby cries, your milk is leaking and no one is there to help you.

I have a two-year-old and in my experience, it gets harder and harder to be productive at home as the baby gets older. If you are serious about working full time at home, with a working partner, you are going to need some kind of substantial childcare. Either that, or magic pills that allow you to survive without sleep.

When I went back to work part time after being home for mat leave (at 9mos, before Canada had 1 year policy), work was the easy time of my day. I only wished I could spend it sleeping. I did not really sleep through the night for 14 months after my son was born. It is hard to express how difficult that is to cope with. You just kind of get slower and slower and start feeling spaced out and stupid. And I had worlds best husband who did all the cooking and cleaning because I was exhausted with breastfeeding, and a happy healthy kid who was really amiable and pretty easy to handle, not every kid has an easy time, some are colicky, and never sleep. My sister in law was able to take her work to the lounge space of her childcare a few days a week, which worked pretty well for her. She did tech support through her laptop, and when she was at the office, the childcare was there. Requires childcare with enough space and staff who can cope with this. She eventually switched to a nanny. It is also not just for you that this is an idea you might want to avoid. A baby needs stimulation and attention in order to develop. Face time, tummy time, holding, walking about and singing. If at all possible taking the time to be home with the baby is very worthwhile. I do know one family where the guy works construction by day, and the mom works at a restaurant at night, but this is because childcare is not affordable on their salaries. If she were working at home I imagine it would be hard for her to have the ability to do the job with the child around.