My wife and I do not know anyone else who was or is a parent while working remotely. As is the case when you have not had an example to copy or someone to turn to for advice, we are learning by stumbling on almost every single rock that lies in our path. Working remotely has advantages and disadvantages. To me, the balance at the end of the day is positive. Below you will find some of the lessons we have learned with the hope that you have a reference of what it is like, especially if no one close to you is going through the same process.

The first thing I recommend you keep in mind is that you will most likely have to choose between a fixed and secluded or nomadic workspace. You have a fixed workspace if you have a standing desk, two monitors, an ergonomic chair, and whatever else people fancy to work with or work in. If, on the other hand, you only need your laptop and a charger to work and you are happy working sitting on a sofa as you are working on a desk, you have a nomadic work space. 

If you have the latter, then there is nothing more to it than moving around until you find the place where you can work and get things done. The good thing about being able to work in this way is that you will be able to move around your house to work as your baby grows, which will prove very useful. For example, in our case, right until our daughter was around seven months old, it was enough to not be within her eyesight for her to be at ease in her playmat or her stroller. After that seven-month mark, though, she started recognizing our voices, so if you spoke in, for example, a meeting, she would hear us and either cry because she wanted to be held or scream in excitement.

If, on the other hand, you are a fixed workspace kind of person, my recommendation is that it also be secluded. Here secluded means that you and your baby cannot see or hear each other. Ideally, there should even be some sort of barrier, say a door, that your baby will not be able to go through when they start becoming more mobile by learning to crawl and later walk. A way to illustrate it is to act as though you were going to an office outside your home. This is because, after a certain point, you simply will not be able to work in the same room as your baby.

Another thing to keep in mind when working remotely is any possible mismatches between holidays and vacations of the place you are living in and the place where your work or your clients are located. In both my case and my wife’s, our work comes primarily from a different country where we are in, so these mismatches are considerable. We have in-home childcare and have had to bridge these mismatches by agreeing with our nanny that she will work on what would be her normal holidays and be off the days we are off.

Routine is also important when parenting while remote working. Since you are working where you are living and since remote companies and businesses most likely also mean different time zones, the only limits to how much you work necessarily come from you. In this sense, a routine is a way to clearly define the hours of the day during which you will not be working. It is tough making sure your work life does not overflow and take over everything, but when you delimit in time each activity or need the baby has by assigning an hour of the day to it, it sets the boundary to what time is reserved for your baby. In my experience, it is easier to manage work and adapt to what you have to do there than to manage my daughter by making her adapt to ever-changing circumstances at work.

The routine is also important to clearly define which activities and needs of the baby you are taking care of and which of them the nanny will be responsible for. When working remotely, you have your baby very close to you, so it might be hard to let go and let somebody else take care of her. It does get easier with time, but my recommendation is to stick to that routine you put together, which will first allow you to work as much as you need to, but it will also leave space for whoever is helping you by taking care of the baby to do their work in peace.

My last recommendation is never to forget that you need to get out of your house regularly. Especially since having a baby usually also entails a considerable decrease in impromptu, simple plans like going out for coffee with a friend, you need to plan for leaving the house once in a while. In a sense, it becomes your entire world, and it can sometimes feel like the air is heavy. Ideally you would account for these moments out of your home in your routine, which ideally means you can have them regularly, but it can also be more or less improvised. For example, if a meeting is canceled last minute, you could use that time to go to your favorite bakery and get something you like or to walk the dog for a few minutes and get some fresh air. The important thing is that you clear your mind and that the uneasiness of not leaving your house for too long does not add pressure to your work or when you take care of your baby.

Once we have indirectly addressed the disadvantages through the recommendations above, I think it is worthwhile mentioning the two most important advantages of working remotely when parenting. The first and the one I am most thankful for is that you do not invest a single minute in commuting. This means that you can divide your time between working and taking care of the baby, without time in between during which you spend precious minutes or hours getting to where you can do one or the other. This is particularly evident at the end of the day when you can finish work at 6:00 p.m. and at 6:01 p.m., you are already holding your baby. It is priceless. 

The second advantage is that you are always close to her. As seen above, it is a double-edged sword because it might be hard initially to enter into a full-on work mentality during the hours you have to do so. But in the end, my theory is that it is very positive because it reduces stress considerably. You are always there for whatever might happen. Of course, most likely, nothing will happen, but the stress and anxiety of separation are completely avoided. It makes working a little less burdensome since it does not mean that you are separated from your baby. In the long run, I also think it positively impacts the baby because of the avoided stress and anxiety they would have suffered if you were leaving every single day.

The advantages outweigh the disadvantages of being a parent who works remotely from home. Hopefully, the above gave you a clearer picture of what you will need to keep in mind to ensure that it is a great experience.