Life of a WAHM

((in case you don't know...WAHM means Work At Home Mom.))

I work from home, 40-odd hours every week. And lots of time on Monday mornings it seems impossible that I will get 40 hours done, every week on time without having a mental breakdown.

I'm really lucky though. My work from home job is non-schedule-specific, which means I can work any hours of the day or night, whenever I get the chance. I only communicate with my employer via email, and sometimes occasional phone calls or rare meetings can take place but really not very often.

This makes it somewhat easy to work around Kate's schedule. Since I'm at home most of the time, I can stop to feed her, change her diaper, play with her, or distract her as necessary. Of course that doesn't mean it's always easy easy. She has a great tendency to blowout a diaper or get into a realllly good fit of teething pain when I'm trying to make a deadline or send off an important email.

I've had to learn to make wiggle room when I can. When David works late, I tend to work later hours into the evening, taking breaks and playing with Kate during the day more. When he gets home at a reasonable hour (sometime before the sunset is reasonable on our account), I have him take her for an hour or two to finish up a project or do a bunch of emailing in a row.

Luckily, Kate's still in the immobile and mostly happy stage of babyhood. She stays put wherever I put her (has only rolled over once...big deal but still only once) and can entertain herself for most of the time an hour at a time in her bouncer seat, looking at her mobile play thingy, sitting in her swing with a toy in front of her, or in her Bumbo on my desk next to me.

sometimes lap-sitting is the only way to go
and Kate wears this "must-have-pen" expression quite often

Also, I've gotten really good at working during her naps. Right now she takes about an hour nap between waking up and her "lunchtime" feeding, somewhere between a 1.5-3 hour (sometimes 4 hour!) nap during the afternoon, and another one or two cat naps during the evening, usually around half an hour each.

Someday I'd love to be a SAHM instead of a WAHM. Working 40 hours a week means chores, cleaning, and laundry are almost always weekend activities. It means meal planning is pretty much non-existent and we're often scrambling to make something for dinner at 7 p.m. It means I don't get to watch and interact with Kate as much as I like to. It means that I'm at home all the time, and don't really get to leave the house much during the week unless David gets home early. It means I don't have a lot of time for daily prayer, or daily Mass attendance, or mom groups, or anything like that. It means sometimes I'm overwhelmed and don't feel like I'm being the best mom or wife I can be.

But right now, this is where we are as a family. We need the money, plain and simple, and it works for us. We obviously save on child care, and I love being able to still work while being a mom. But someday, maybe, we'll be able to change that.
HG