My taste of life as a stay-at-home "working" mum

The last few weeks have been a bit busy, hence my lack of blog updating. I've been having a taster of what it would be like to work at home (albeit part-time), with a two-year old in tow.

And I've really enjoyed the experience of working again and getting my teeth into something, but it has involved a fair amount of juggling!

My short working stint is for an online volunteering project through the UN Online Volunteering Service. I'd been lurking on their projects database for a while thinking that I'd really quite like to do some of them, but I didn't have the confidence to apply; - not working for a couple of years seems to do that to you! But then in a moment of inspiration (or perhaps sheer madness), I decided to apply for an interesting sounding internet research project, which was vaguely in my area of work.

The job brief said that it was for 6-10 hours per week, which I thought would be easily doable as B. still naps for two hours a day, and goes to bed before 9pm. However, the volume of work has turned out to be a lot more than this. This is perhaps because my project involves compiling research contacts for a UK region, and I chose London because it's the region that I know best. However, I didn't really think this through, considering the fact that London is the busiest region for research!

So I have been scouring research centre websites at all hours of the day and night in an effort to meet my deadline. And I've been finding it a bit exhausting really. But it's boosted my self-esteem to be doing some (non-mum) work, I've really enjoyed working as part of a team, and it's also been quite an inspiring experience which has (unexpectedly) led me to consider doing another degree! (Anthropology and Sociology at SOAS is my current department of choice!)

But, you're probably asking yourself, what have I been doing with B. while working these long hours? Well, that's the question I'd definitely be asking by this point!

Well, our days are panning out like this:

Our Working Day!

We get up and have breakfast. I do some work while eating breakfast, and B. watches CBeebies (as is her normal morning custom!)

Then until nap time she watches some more television, which I know isn't ideal, but she also plays with her toys, jumps on her bed, sticks stickers on things (walls, tables, clothes, me), draws, paints, converses with her stuffed toys, and invents new activities to keep herself busy! I obviously want to be pretty flexible when she's awake. Although I need to get the work done, she is my priority, so I stop working for all sorts of things; nappy changes and meals, short walks, the occasional friend visit, Friday toddler group, and, of course, cuddles!. But I've been leaving her to amuse herself quite a bit. And she's adapted to it remarkably well!

When nap time comes I work like crazy, and then by the time she's woken up I need a break. So we eat lunch together, then go in the garden or out for a walk. I try to get a bit more work done in the afternoon so long as she's happy amusing herself, and then before long it's supper time, bed for B. - and more work for me!

Well, despite being knackering it's kind of working out ok, and it's giving me a taste of what it would be like to live this slightly different stay-at-home lifestyle. What I don't like about it is not being able to give B. as much attention as I usually do, and that I've found myself snapping at her when I'm trying to do too many things at once. We're also not going out as much as we usually do, which is sometimes making us both a bit stir-crazy.


So I would need to ensure that any future working-from-home job didn't require such crazy hours, otherwise I would end up permanently frazzled (and probably wired up to a caffeine drip), and B. would probably become totally self-sufficient before she was three, and completely detached from the outside world...

I do want to do some more online volunteering; I love being able to do something useful (besides being a full-time mum of course!) But for the sake of both of our sanities, I'm going to wait until B.'s settled in pre-school before I attempt another project. And who knows, maybe it will lead to a new career, (...or even that PhD from SOAS!)