By CHRISTINE JALLEH
I’d tasted working from home for a few months when doctor’s orders had me house-bound in the last few months of my pregnancy. After my work contract ended, I said goodbye to the working world and settled down to become a stay-at-home mother.
During the second month of motherhood, I was bonding and breastfeeding my baby when I received a phone call from my former boss.
He asked if I’d be interested to follow up with the uncompleted tasks of that project and take on some new ones. I wasn’t prepared for this at all and told him so. He was understanding and informed me that my work-from-home performance convinced him that I’d be able to carry out the work effectively. I could work from home for another year!
As I was required to start work in one-and-a-half months’ time and abide by the earlier arrangements - clock into the office once a week and attend the staff meetings, I had to re-organise my schedule and babycare since I would no longer be a stay-at-home mother. I would be a work-at-home mother.
At that time, I was squatting at my parents’ home and they were on hand as backup babysitters besides providing me with home-cooked meals. I engaged a daily helper to support my mother with the cooking and housework to allow her to concentrate on the baby.
I set up a workstation in the hall and planned to take three-hourly breaks to breastfeed the baby. My organisation provided a one-hour lunch break and two 20-minute breaks. Since my baby loved a regular routine and he was also a quick and easy baby to breastfeed, I had my workday schedule all planned out:
7am Breastfeed and breakfast
8am Start work
10am Breastfeeding break
10.20am Work
12.30pm Lunch
1pm Breastfeed
1.30pm Work
3pm Breastfeeding break
3.20pm Work
6pm Breastfeeding session and end of workday
In theory, the schedule was foolproof but in practice, it did not go as planned .…
Firstly, my mother who was probably delighted to end the “empty nest syndrome” found it convenient to swing by my “office” to tell me about the baby’s progress or the latest gossip around the neighbourhood.
Secondly, the baby wanted his Mummy more than he wanted Mummy’s mummy thus, he would howl and howl until my mother brought him out to see me.
Thirdly, I’d started expressing breast milk to store up enough for the days when I’d have to go into the office but the baby refused to drink from the bottle, which led to repeat episodes of problem No. 2.
I dug into my collection of pregnancy and childcare books and found out that babies’ sense of smell is strong even from the womb and they are drawn to the smell of breast milk from birth and will prefer their mother’s scent over anyone else’s during the first two months.
To simulate a “Mummy is away” environment, I retreated to the spare bedroom and closed the door.
Interestingly, that killed off any Mummy scent and the baby was more receptive of Grandma although it took him nearly two weeks to accept the milk bottle. He’d actually starve himself during the day and drank enough to satisfy his hunger until the 7 o’clock feed.
However, the bedroom isn’t an ideal office and I admit that I have taken quite a few catnaps while I was working there!
In the end, I resorted to driving off to work at my own home nearby. Although the baby wasn’t with me, I could work in peace knowing that he was safely under my family’s care. When my second child came along, I re-adjusted my schedule to accommodate the time taken to drop off my older child at the kindergarten and my younger child to the primary caregiver.
Working from home with a baby is possible if:
a)You have either family support or a reliable domestic helper to take care of the baby and help with the cooking;
b)You have a good babysitter around your neighbourhood to mind your baby. Many work-at-home mothers who do not like the idea of hiring a live-in helper opt for this arrangement. Since they have a flexible schedule, they drop the baby off slightly later in the morning, drop by to breastfeed the baby during lunch and pick the baby up slightly earlier in the evening than the average working mother;
c) You are prepared to put in extra hours at night after the baby falls asleep and even work on public holidays and weekends to make up for any time lost from caring for a baby on the days he is well and the days when he is sick.
When the demands of the three-hourly intervals for breastfeeding tapered off after the baby settled down to a mixed diet of solids and milk at six-and-a-half months, I found my daily schedule more manageable. I also found that my children were less likely to fall sick during the time when they were breastfeeding.
Working from home also made it possible for me to cherish the pleasures (and the pains) of my babies’ first-year milestones i.e. when the baby rolls over, waves bye-bye, sits up, sprouts the first teeth, crawls, cruises and takes the first steps.
As my baby charges ahead towards her first year and I’m moving on to my fourth year of working from home, I wonder what it’ll be like working from home with a toddler and a preschooler. For now, I’ll chug on positively like Watty Piper’s The Little Engine That Could: “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can …”
* Christine Jalleh is a communications consultant and writer. Also an English teacher, she loves, loves, LOVES books and blogs about books at http://abookathon.blogspot.com.