Working from home with a toddler. Is it doable?

Question

I basically am entitled to a year maternity leave (I live in Ontario, Canada) and right now my spouse and I are struggling for money. We live on a pay check by pay check basis and I'm losing my sanity over it. My EI isn't enough and I ran out of my savings to pay for food, rent, and baby needs. My partner is the worse at money management despite him being the only income provider. He does pay for food, rent and utilities. But he's so bad I've had to use all of my money to keep us at bay. Hes bad because he maxed out his credit card and he just pays a huge sum to even it out to only max it out again. I use all of my EI to pay for my half of rent and used up my last $600 for food. He had nothing.
So now we're back at needing food and he doesn't have anything, AGAIN. I can't live like this anymore! My son is 9 months old and he eats solids now. I need this fridge full! 😩 
So I'm looking at the idea of starting work full time at home while taking care of our son. He says he will help  but let's be honest, he won't. So now I'm stressing over working full time at home  while being a full time mom at home and maintaining a home. 
In short is working from home doable with a baby? How have you done? 
Please consider that I cannot afford daycare at the moment and I have no family to support me throughout the day.

Answer

Honestly it could be doable if your job is very asynchronous and you don’t have a lot to do in general, but it’ll be super stressful and your kid will suffer from it (unless you don’t really pay attention to them now)
I have two or three meetings a day and the rest of my work is generally done at my leisure. I put in maybe 20h of real work on average. But there are times shit hits the fan and it’s over 40.
That being said I still wouldn’t try to do it and be the primary caretaker of a 9 month old. My spouse doesn’t work and didn’t for our last kid and it’s still hard sometimes.
Additionally this is valuable time with your kid you’ll never get back and regret missing out on.
Tell your man to get his shit together or  start driving DoorDash. Get whatever food you can from a food pantry.

Answer

I think it depends on what you are doing for work. You are going to need to teach your baby to get really great at independent play activities. It’s doable but very hard.

Answer

It depends on the job, honestly. Monotonous work can be done. But anything that needs close attention is pretty much off the table. I was hired as a Business Manager for a media company and have had to offload many of my responsibilities and hours. My 13 month old is CRAZY busy and truly takes up most of my day. I literally can only work when she’s asleep. Naptime and bedtime.

Answer

I would be working out a budget with your partner. Setting up a system where he gets spending money each month to buy stuff but not anything more than that. He may need to get rid of his credit cards. Otherwise this will be a long term issue that will stop you from doing so many things in your lives- buying a house, taking your son on a trip, buying birthday presents, retirement, etc. your son’s expenses will only get bigger as he gets older and needs more food, school supplies, etc.
As for the working at home, I think it would definitely depend on the job. A slower paced, flexible job where you don’t have to be attending a lot of online meetings at very specific times will be easier. Part time is also easier as you can move your work around naps, bedtime, etc. if need be. If your son is good at independent play it will also be easier.

Answer

It was so hard the days I had my toddler home when I was working from home. It’s not enjoyable and makes things very stressful.   Have you applied for subsidy for daycare?  You could qualify which would help your situation for sure.   Don’t be afraid to utilize food banks if you need to.  You can also looking into applying for one time emergency assistance through Ontario Works if you are facing disconnection on a utility or if you have an eviction notice if things get bad.  Look up the Low-income Energy Assistance Program as well. It can help with up to 500 dollars for utility arrears.  These are just bandaids of course but may help if things are tight.   Setting up a budget with your spouse sounds like the first step.  Hope things get easier for you.

Answer

It really would depend on the job to be honest. I'm a teacher and when we had to do virtual learning it was impossible to have my son at home without support. I am on the computer doing synchronous sessions with the kids most of the day and when it's not synchronous I still had to plan ahead and create slides and documents to aid in my teaching. 
With that being said, my husband was able to watch our son alone a couple times when he was able to work from home depending on how many client meetings or cases he had. So it's possible depending on the nature of your job. 
I am also in Ontario so feel free to send me a message if you need to chat. I completely understand how covid has affected the cost of living here and everything is extra stressful especially for families right now.

Answer

I am currently working from home with a 3 year old and a 14 month old and pregnant with our 3rd. It’s hard BUT I find it doable. There are a lot of frustrating times especially when my youngest wants to just be held. The difficult part comes when they want to play outside but I can’t leave the desk.

Answer

So I’ve been working from home full-time for the last year, with a toddler. Mostly while pregnant. It. Is. Rough. Even with an amazing, supportive partner, it’s been rough.
That your son is still so young might work in your favour though. My son was 17 months when I started working from home, and I found we could hit a pretty good rhythm of me interacting with him for a while, then helping find something he could do on his own while I worked - I’d get on average 30-45 minute chunks of time before he really needed mama again. I could eat when he ate, and I scheduled meetings around nap time. Exhausting, but not impossible, especially if you have an understanding employer. 
It did get harder as he got older - he dropped his last nap by the time he was 2 and starting needing much more interactive play. By then his grandparents were able to take him 3 days a week, and that’s the only way I managed. But you’ve got a while before that stage, and I’m sure you’ll be in a better place by then. 
Getting up before baby to have quiet time and breakfast really helps, and you can get a few things done after he’s asleep (work or house chores), but be sure to give yourself an hour on your own before bed. Even half an hour. It’s vital.

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depends what you do from home. you wouldn’t be able to take phone calls but you’d be able to do something like data entry. as for the slacking partner, tell him it’s time to grow up.

Answer

For a customer service position your time would be too used up with work and you could lose your job. However, chat agent might be a good fit. (This is my suggestion for people in the states, hopefully it works for you in Canada) You can go to indeed and search for "remote chat" in your state (make it as broad as the state for work at home, sorry that idk if Canada has states, I think they're provinces) ..read the descriptions very well, make sure it's a w2 position and not 1099. That's the only thing you need to watch out for on indeed, they are very good at keeping MLM and various scams out of the picture. Best of luck to you!!!! You got this Momma. It doesn't look like it to you now, but you guys will be just fine. Us parents always figure things out.

Working from home with a toddler. Is it doable?

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