Stay at Home Moms
meg&jeff
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Any WAHMs in here? What is your secret?
meg&jeff
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Are there any SAHMs of little ones in here that run a business from home too? I own a run a home business as a Virtual Assistant and have been doing it for 5 1/2 years now. It has been quite successful and seems to get busier all the time.
I have a 14 month old son and of course, he needs a lot of time and attention. Before he came, I had the business part down, but I had now idea how hard it was going to be to take care of my child and do everything else. Now the stress of caring for my family, my house and my business is really starting to get to me.
So are there any other WAHMs here that have the secret to balancing it all out? How do you do it?
My Boys
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Re: Any WAHMs in here? What is your secret?
if your work needs to be done during the day hours that he is up- it is only fair to all involved that you get help. a mother's helper, a nanny for a couple hrs, an after school kid, whatever.
I work at home 30 hours a week. I'm an independent contractor for a marketing company. My daughter is 7 months old and she's now becoming mobile, which is making things really difficult. I have to remind my husband that I'm not a SAHM, but that I also have a responsibility to make money too. He's pretty good with helping around the house and understands that if he comes home and has to do dishes, it's only fair.
I'm also lucky in that I have my mother-in-law to help. If I need time to work, I drop her off at my MILs. The days that I don't have help, I end up working at night. I make way less than I did when I worked outside of the home and sometimes I struggle with whether I should go back to work for a company full-time. I just have to remember how much I hated going to work every day and missing the time I get to spend with my daughter. I also have to remember when to say when with my work and remember that's it's okay to let some things go. It's not the end of the world if laundry has to wait for a couple of days.
Can you hire a mother's helper? I've been thinking about doing this a couple hours a week. We can't afford to hire someone expensive, but maybe a teenager to stop by a couple days a week for a few hours to play with my daughter while I get some stuff done. I'd also like to try to start my own business and hope if I make more money, I can still have the flexibility to spend quality time with my daughter, but can also afford some more help.
I did hire a mother's helper to come two days a week, and that was as much as we could afford. I think it's starting to help a little, but the cost of the help vs. the income seems to be breaking even at the moment.
Sometimes I wish naptimes were just a little bit longer, and there were just a few more hours in the day.
it only gets harder and harder. I have a 2 year old that gets into everything and I can't leave her out of my sight for a second. That being said- I do 99% of my work at night (I am an international tax lawyer and need to accomodate international business hrs)
So if you really want to make WAH work for you I would definitely start searching out other avenues of child care assistance because there are no 'secrets' in making it work. You only have two eyes and two hands- there is only so much you can do with both- because something is going to lack in your arrangement. (I have been WAH for 2 years now).
Have you thought of trying to find another SAHM to 'swap' childcare with?
I agree with the others about seeing if you can get a mother's helper or babysitter even if it's just for a few hours.
I work 20 hours a week at home and DD goes to nursery school 2 days a week and that's when I do 75% of my work. The other 25% I do during nap time, in the evening or on the weekend. This is mostly admin and answering emails, which amounts to about 5 hours per week.
I started out trying to do everything in the evening and during my "free time" while taking care of DD. It's full on all day with DD and there's just no way I can work around her schedule and thinking that I could was a huge mistake that was taking me on the fast track to burnout. Fortunately, this only lasted for about a week before I called my babysitter and started researching nursery schools.