Work at Home Parents - Human or Robot Human Hybrid?
Posted by Mom at 12:06pm in Work At HomeDana at Virtual Insanity or Virtual Reality? posed the question:
Are Work at Home Moms (and Dads) Human?
On nights when the sleep is sparse and the work is challenging, and I miraculously meet my deadlines, I wonder if I am human. Then my right ulnar nerve starts to tingle, and my ever-present symptoms of Cubital Tunnel syndrome remind me that YES…I am human.
I learned to make adjustments along the way to juggle my home and work life better. With each subsequent child, I’ve tweaked my routines and when something doesn’t work I don’t get hung up on it, I change.
For instance, the house was immaculate prior to Baby A’s arrival. The combination of nesting and trying to keep busy (instead of obsessing about going overdue) proved beneficial in the housekeeping department.
Fast forward a few weeks, and the combo of working and round-the-clock breastfeeding left little time to scrub anything. I tried to jump back into to my old routines and it left me exhausted. So I decided to adapt a little Flylady into my day…15 minutes of “power cleaning” spread out over the day and evening, and my house was back in order.
The same adjustments happen for work as well. During the early days, Baby A would sleep and eat while snuggled in the sling. I could do conference calls all day long, and no one would have guessed that I was carrying around an infant. Now, I have an active 6 month old who delights in terrorizing my laptop and shrieking joyfully throughout the day. As you can imagine, this is so not conducive to productive calls. Thankfully, Dad is here to take care of her during most of the day.
I also posess fluidity. I move from one task to another without stressing about it…I just do it! This morning I went from feeding the kids, to doing my morning network check, to power cleaning the bathroom, to taking a phone call. This was all before 7:30am!
Finally, I posted about avoiding work at home burnout the other day. Since I am not a robot and I am prone to burnout, I need to recognize when I’m approaching meltdown and take a break.
