The everyWoman Blog: Working From Home: Not Always The Holy Grail For Moms

Taken from here.

Ask any working mother what she needs to be happier as a professional and a mom, you’ll normally hear, “More job flexibility.” What’s more flexible than working from home, right? Every where I turn, family, friends, and co-workers all rave about the wonderful opportunities available to moms who work at home. It sounds like the best of both worlds, personal and professional. But as one of our readers, Lori, found out, things that sound too good to be true often are.

I asked Lori to share her experience of trying to work from home after the birth of her first child. And while everyone has a different experience, I think it’s really interesting to hear the opinion of someone who tried this system and knows some of its flaws. Working from home presents a nice opportunity for some women, but it is not the ultimate solution to the struggles that working moms face.

Lindsay: So how did you decide to work from home?

Lori: I always knew that I would continue to work full time in my career after I had children. When my husband and I decided to start our family, my employer allowed me to work from home two days per week. My co-workers, my husband, and even I thought I was lucky to have this option.

Lindsay: Was this a fairly common practice with your employer?

Lori: One of my co-workers, a single mother of a ten year-old, set the precedent for working from home. She always produced high quality results and met deadlines with apparent ease. Our boss always pointed to her as the epitome of a productive employee. When she was given the opportunity to work from home for 2 days per week, I admit, I was jealous. The up side was that I knew it would be a ‘benefit’ offered to me at some point. After all, she never complained about her arrangement and often commented about how much she valued having the ability to pick her daughter up from school on those days.

Lindsay: How did the set-up work for you?

Lori: I returned to work after 8 weeks of maternity leave. For the first few weeks back to work, things were easy. The company had somehow figured out how to get along without me (go figure!) and there was a transition period that slowly allowed me to re-assume my responsibilities. During that time, on the days I worked from home, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I would answer a few emails, create a document here and there, but most of my time was spent nursing my daughter, changing her diaper, and just plain staring at her. I felt a little bit guilty.

Lindsay: And things got worse from there?

Lori: The heavy guilt started to set in when that transition period ended and my days spent working at home became hectic. A typical day would start out with an hour long conference call at 6:00 AM with staff in Europe and Asia, that would inevitably go on longer because we could never understand each other’s accents. By the end of the call, my colleagues could hear my cooing daughter in the background, which I found completely embarrassing. For some reason, I had it in my mind that there should be no difference working from home as opposed to the office and that meant my 4 month old daughter should be silenced. Then I would nurse her and play with her until I ‘officially’ started my day at 9:00 AM. Sometimes, this coincided with her morning nap, and those were the good days. On most days I felt so much pressure to get her to go to sleep that it was completely counter-productive. So, I would sit at my laptop, with my Boppy wrapped around my waist, my child lovingly feeding from my boob and attempt to do work one-handed. This is usually when my boss or someone else would call. Imagine how uncomfortable it is to talk to your boss while another human being is sucking on your breast. I couldn’t pay attention to anything he was saying let alone try to take notes while cradling the slippery phone between my ear and my shoulder and making sure that my baby had a proper latch! I would usually take my lunch ‘break’ and somehow manage to eat lunch, feed my daughter, and keep a close eye on the emails coming in. For the rest of the afternoon, she napped and that was the only solid block of time I could rely on for work. The day ended and I would promptly start cooking dinner because I was home and felt I needed to give my husband a break from dinner, because he usually cooked on the days I was in the office. On the days I spent in the office I stayed longer to make up for lost time, which placed a tremendous strain on my relationship with my husband. He never really understood what I felt when working from home. My husband thought that because I was in my pajamas when he came home from work, it must be easy. But the fact that I was in my pajamas meant I did not even have a second to get dressed!

Lindsay: So trying to do both at once made each task, working and taking care of your daughter, more difficult?

Lori: I regularly forgot to do things and did not return phone calls on the days when I was at home for fear that my more-vocal-by-the-minute daughter would be discovered. I was a recruiter at the time, so making and returning phone calls to job applicants were important parts of my job that I simply refused to do on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. There was a constant struggle between sitting at my desk and paying attention to my daughter. As she became older, it became even more difficult because she was moving, interacting, making cute little noises, and overall requiring more attention. Every second I spent changing her diaper or talking to her I was thinking about which emails I am missing or hoping the phone ringing wasn’t my boss or another VP. Even though I was paying attention to her, I was not 100% present, which made me feel incredibly guilty. When she was occupied on her mat playing with a toy and I could sit at my desk, I would constantly look at her. I would tell myself I did it to ensure that she was safe but truthfully, I could not take my eyes off of her. My job performance struggled, and in fact when my daughter was 6 months old my boss and I had a conversation about my declining performance and both agreed that it would be best if I only spent one day per week working form home instead of two. This was the first and only time I cried at work about work. I felt like I failed. I failed at being an employee and I failed at being Supermom. The schedule change did improve my performance and my stress level overall, but that one day working from home was still the most stressful and unproductive day of the week for me.

Lindsay: It’s a hard realization that we can’t all be everything, all the time. How did you handle it?

Lori: I beat myself up over it. Working from home was not the benefit that I thought it would be. It left me and everyone around me stressed out!

Lindsay: Have things gotten better?

Lori: I have since switched to a job where I work in the office five days per week, but am able to be home by 5:30 each day. Now, the time I spend with my daughter is valuable and I can actually sit with her to put a puzzle together without thinking about that boss I am disappointing!

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