A Week in the Life of a Work-from-Home Mom

When I was preparing to come back to work from maternity, I looked high and low for what to expect. What was a typical mom schedule I could expect to hit? The truth of the matter is – there is no set schedule for parents. Every day, every week is different! Babies and toddlers are just small people, who are prone to emotions and changes. Sometimes they sleep great, sometimes they don’t. Especially in these COVID times, things change quickly: daycare can close, an exposure or positive test can happen, quarantines come into play. It’s hectic!

That being said, I tracked a week of work and being a mom to share. Some Important Notes: Not every day looks the same, and certainly not every week looks like this! Here’s some of the basics of how our household runs:

• Rick works outside the home, and I work from a home office. Ana goes to daycare, usually all week, but as you’ll see that wasn’t the case this week and we had to adjust. We both have a typical Mon-Fri, 9-5 (ish) work week.
• I handle a lot of Ana in the evening, Rick handles dinner and evening “chores” (garbage, bringing laundry upstairs to be put away, shoveling or lawn mowing, dishwasher, etc). For us, it works. On weekends we share everything that needs to be done and both spend plenty of 1:1 and family time with our daughter.
• We try to have everything done by 6:30/7:00 so we can spend time together in the evenings. It’s so important to prioritize your marriage, ESPECIALLY when you have kids! This doesn’t happen every night, but we try to make it happen as much as we can.
• We try to get in some sort of physical activity most days, I personally enjoy using Peloton whenever I can fit it in. Rick either runs or uses the bike in the early mornings. I prefer to sleep in a bit!
• Ana does sleep through the night, she is 15 months old. TRUST ME – it was not always this way and the first year was filled with a LOT of late nights/early mornings/middle of the nights being up for hours on end. I can’t even imagine what our life will look like once the twins are here and trying to balance this schedule. Her normal sleep schedule is 6:45p-6:45a. If she doesn’t go to daycare we let her sleep in until she wakes up, but no later than 8am. She puts herself asleep independently. I used Taking Cara Babies for newborn sleep help, and then did a gentle cry it out method when she was 8 months old or so. I could (and probably will!) do an entire blog on sleep training, but this worked for her and for us… but don’t ever forget, every baby is different!

The most important thing to keep in mind is that this schedule is what works FOR US. No other household will run the way ours does – and that’s fine! Do what works for you and your household. The most important advice I can give you is to go with the flow each day and try to enjoy the ride!

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Monday

This day is definitely an outlier in my week. I knew on Sunday that daycare would be unexpectedly closed and had to plan ahead to make sure I got a full work day in. On Sunday, I put in 2 hours in the afternoon to get ahead on the day and take care of many “paperwork” parts of the job: updating spreadsheets, sending contracts, etc. So, my plan from the day while working from home with my 15 Month old was to get the rest of my hours in however I could throughout the day. Luckily, I was able to with some help!

6:30 – Wake Up and get ready for the day

7:30 – We got a bit of a lay-in from Ana, at 7:30 I get her up and get HER ready for the day – dressed, breakfast, toys ready, etc.

8:15 – Rick’s Aunt arrives to help watch her for a few hours to help out. A lifesaver! 🙂 I head to my home office when she arrives to get an hour of work in

9:15-10:30 – Head out to an OBGYN appointment.

10:30-12:00 – Get home and relieve our aunt. Spend this next 1.5 hours keeping on top of email, but mostly chasing a toddler around, taking the dog out, and getting lunch ready.

12:15 – Ana goes down for her long nap. I make a quick lunch for myself.

12:30-3:00 – Hard work focus in my home office.

3:00 – 4:00 – Ana gets up. Give her a snack and she does some quiet play while I work from the living room phone/laptop.

4:00-4:30 – Independent play has lost it’s appeal and we’re back to running around the house, playing hard, giggles, etc. I can’t complain!!

4:30 – 5:30 – Rick arrives home and I go back to work for an hour to finish up my day.

5:30 – 6:45- Dinner and playtime. Rick’s mom dropped off hats and broccoli for dinner, so it freed up our evening a bit – thankful on this busy day!

6:45 – Bedtime routine and Ana is out for the night. I hop on the Peloton and do 3 classes; a 30 minute ride (very light- I’m pregnant with twins!), 10 minute stretch, and 10 minute meditation.

8:00 – Wind down with a shower, television, phone, and my husband. We made it!

Tuesday

6:30 – Wake up and do a minimal get ready (ie: put in contacts and brush teeth)

6:45 – 7:15 – Get Ana up and dressed. Give her breakfast while I make her lunch/snacks to bring to daycare. Quick diaper change and bundle (it’s COLD!) and she leaves at 7:15 with dad to go to daycare.

7:15 – 7:45 – The only quiet time I get to enjoy during the day. Soak it in while reading a book and having some coffee!

7:45-8:00 – Get ready for the day and head to the home office.

8:00 – 12:30 – Off to work I go! Looking forward to a consistent day of work. Today I have a full calendar of new candidate calls, job pitches, and follow ups. Around 11am I heat up some leftovers from Monday to eat between emails before our Sales Meeting at 11:30 to round out the morning. Phew! This morning was a whirlwind.

12:30 – 1:30 – 3 Peloton Classes: 35 minute ride, 5 minute stretch, 10 minute meditation. After a crazy busy morning the meditation is MUCH needed. Take a quick shower and make a snack before heading back to work.

1:30 – 4:15 – Back to work for the afternoon.

4:15 – 4:45 – Pickup Ana from daycare and head home/get her settled in.

4:45 – 5:15 – Finish up last minute emails/work before turning off.

5:15 – 6:45 – Rick makes dinner, cleaning, playtime, ending the day!

6:45 – Bedtime routine and Ana is asleep. Time to relax and catch up on some shows!

Wednesday

5:45 – Ana has a nightmare and wakes up crying. She’s able to self-soothe herself back to sleep within a 2-3 minutes and doesn’t need us to come in, but we are now up for the day! Time to get ready and prepare for another busy day.

6:45 – 7:15 – Get Ana up and dressed, breakfast while I prepare her daycare items and food. She’s off with dad to go to daycare.

7:15 – 7:45 – Jump into my office to get a head start on the day

7:45 – 8:15 – Coffee run and drop our dog, Mia, at the groomers for the morning. Get home and quickly throw in a load of laundry before kicking off the day.

8:15 – 12:30 – Worktime! I have a jam packed schedule today with job pitching and follow ups.

12:30 – 1:30 – Errand running–I make a quick run through the grocery store to stock up necessities and then grab Mia from the groomer on my way home. Eat a quick lunch then head back.

1:30 – 4:15 – Afternoon work.

4:15 – 4:45 – Pickup Ana from daycare and head home/get her settled in.

4:45 – 5:15 – Finish up last minute emails/work before turning off.

5:15 – 6:30- Rick makes steak for dinner, clean up the kitchen, playtime with Ana!

6:30 – Rick handles bath and bedtime tonight while I do some wind down stretches and prenatal yoga on the Peloton app.

7:00 – Relax for the evening and settle in. I get awoken by an emergency candidate phone call around 10:30 that I have to handle – a VERY RARE outlier to the job. I think this is the second time in over 5 years I’ve had a middle of the night call! After that I’m wound up for awhile and watch TV until falling back asleep around 11:30/12:00.

Thursday

6:30 – Wake up and a quick get ready

6:45 – 7:15 – Get Ana up and dressed, breakfast while I prepare her daycare items and food. She’s off with dad to go to daycare.

7:15 – 8:30 – I am NOT feeling well this morning. For the most part my morning sickness has subsided, but I still get the occasional rough morning and this is one of them. I take it easy, get ready for the morning, rest in the living room, and put away some laundry before heading to work. It’s going to be a long morning, I can tell!

8:30 – 12:30 – My schedule today is not as full from the get go, which is probably a good thing. Dig into mostly onboarding, submissions, and follow ups with candidates and clients both.

12:30 – 1:30 – Lunch Break – I just relax and also do a 10 minute meditation to reset mentally since I have been very off today.

1:30 – 4:15 – Work and finish up the day

4:15 – 4:45 – Pickup Ana from daycare, we find out she totally blew off her nap today. She is a CRANKY girl!

4:45 – 6:15 – Ana has her own dinner while Rick makes turkey burgers for us – she continues to snack/whine basically the whole time 😉 We put her down a little early.

6:15 – Relax for the evening, watch an episode of The Sopranos, and early to bed over here.

Friday

6:30 – Wake up and a quick get ready.

6:45 – 7:10 – Get Ana up and dressed, breakfast while I prepare her daycare items and food. She’s off with dad to go to daycare, they leave a little early to run into a coffee shop before!

7:10 – 7:30 – Catch up on emails/texts from work overnight. For some reason Friday’s always seem to come with a whole host of issues.

7:30 – 8:00 – Do some personal computer work : pay bills, balance our January budget, and finish getting a blog ready for Monday that I’ve been working on.

8:00 – 8:30 – Finish getting ready for the day, have breakfast, put laundry away (it never ends…), and get ready for the workday.

8:30 – 12:30 – Time to dig into work. I have a lot of references and client business to attend to this morning. I also have four new starts for Monday that I’ll make sure are set and ready to go.

12:30-1:30 – Lunch and a “mom break” to catch up on a show.

1:30-5:00 – Finish up the day. Rick gets Ana from daycare today and then heads off to hang out with some friends.

5:00-6:45 – I spend time with Ana doing dinner and toys, before doing her bedtime routine and laying her down at 6:45 for the night.

I hope you guys enjoyed this recap! Be sure to drop any thoughts for me, and if you enjoyed this post and other June Diaries blogs, make sure you fill out the form below to follow along with my blog list! You’ll get notified of important new posts and updates. I don’t send them out super often, so you definitely won’t get spammed 🙂

xx Becky