Being away from your baby just so you can work is not an easy thing. It compounds as one of the hardest things that moms dread doing but have no choice. You can easily become so emotional, and heartbroken just thinking about it.
The only way to compensate for this drawback is by finding enough time and energy off work to spend together and bond with your kids. However achieving a work-life balance in this era of high childcare costs, inflexible work hours, and general expectations placed on women is proving difficult.
Without finding such a balance, most moms are torn with the little time and attention they can give their babies. There are just so many challenges along the way.
However, there are things you can change around to improve the situation and at least raise the quality of time you spend with your kids off work such as changing your mindset, time management, help, flexible work hours and a healthy routine.
Proven Time Wasting Habits Working Moms Should Stop
1. Stop Mom Guilt- It Prevents you having Quality Time with your Babies
Not everyone understands or appreciates that women also need to work both for money as well as to achieve an overall identity that they can identify with. Unless you quit work and become a stay-at-home mom, at one point you will need to leave your child under the care of someone else and go to work.
It is hard leaving that adorable bundle of joy every morning, especially when they are so little. If you do daycare, drop-offs may be very emotional for both of you too.
It quite feels very guilty and selfish especially when the people around you disapprove of your choice. The feeling may prevent you from having adequate quality time with your baby. It is for this reason why going back to work from maternity leave is always the hardest time for a working mom.
In one way or another, mom guilt affects both your performance at work and your role as a mother. You need to stop feeling guit as a mom because of working and it is wasting your time.
You become so restless and untrusting that you can barely feel safe while away from the baby. It prevents you from spending any quality time with them when you are actually with them as you are overanxious and unsettled as you treat everything as a threat.
Read: How to Deal with Working Mom Guilt
2. Avoid Working Full time- It Steals Time for Baby
Moms who work remotely from home or part-time at least have some flexibility in how much time they get to spend with their babies. They can at least squeeze in half of the day to spend with the baby. It is however more difficult for full-time working moms who can only see the baby in the morning (if they are lucky) and during the evenings.
Morning hours become impractical for most moms especially as they have to leave early for early shifts or take a long drive to the office. Mornings would be perfect to spend with the baby when everyone is refreshed, happy, and in good moods; something that working moms miss.
The most practical time that most moms have are evenings after work. So think of all errands and chores there are for the same slot of time? So much! Granted, there is not enough time can spend with the baby.
As a result the caregivers are practically spending more time with the babies than the moms can afford to get. It’s hence easy to feel selfish when the baby seems to bond with them more. It’s not nice at all that most moms just get enough time to eat together and run the bedtime routine.
The only meaningful time most moms get is during the weekends when they are not working. It feels like you are letting someone else (caregiver) get all the meaningful interaction as you slave away—- to pay what caregiver to do it.
Therefore if you can avoid it, stop working full and get a remote or part time job instead so that you can get quality time with your baby.
Read: How to Set and Enforce Work Boundaries
3. Stop Overworking- Leads to Burnout and Prevents Quality Time with your Child
Work leaves the body and mind exhausted and strained. By the end of the day, you barely have enough energy to make it back home. Therefore you find that you are guiltily in no state whatsoever to meaningfully engage with the baby in the way you would want to.
Most moms go through the evening like a zombie before falling dead asleep. In addition, everybody seems to be demanding attention from you while you can barely stand. It is hard coming from a day job just to go back home where everyone is hungry, grumpy, and starts being demanding things from you the minute you walk in the door.
It’s sad that most working moms at this point just look forward to bedtime just so they can sleep off the tiredness. This becomes a routine and your quality time with the baby dissipates significantly. As such stop overworking and create a routine to manage your fatigue. Doing so will improve the quality of the time you spend with your child.
Read: How to Recover/Avoid Burnout
4. Stop House Chores After Work-Get Help Instead
Not everyone has the luxury of having someone help with the house chores. Most moms have to handle the house chores after work in addition to their job. House chores are as exhausting as the day job and the combination takes away the precious time the mom could spend with the baby.
You hence find that after work, the evening is spent multitasking on dinner preparation, washing dishes, bath time, cleaning among other chores. With such a routine, the mom can barely spend any time with the baby, leave alone have time to themselves.
They even miss sharing key moments about how the day was. A mom even can’t have time for the baby to show the cool stuff that they did at school. As a working mom you find that you have no memories whatsoever as your time at home is consumed with house chores.
Stop the house chores as they are wasting time for you. Instead hire help from outside or get your partner to help. By avoiding this habit, you will find that you have alot of time to spend in a quality way with your baby.
Read: Top Services Working Moms Should Outsource
Guaranteed Tips to Successfully Get Enough & Quality Time for Baby
1. Change your Mindset about Work and Motherhood
Changing your mindset and attitude about work and motherhood will significantly help, especially with the mom’s guilt. It does not mean that you hate your baby or that you would rather have someone else care for your baby than do it.
No, it is just the nature of the demands of being a working mom. We would all love not to have to work and stay at home to bring up our kids ourselves. But we need the money, the identity and fulfillment we get from working.
Be soft on yourself as you are doing nothing wrong. Changing your mindset will help enjoy the time you get to spend with your baby and make it quality.
2.Time Management and Planning Gives you Adequate Time to Spend with Baby
Time management and planning are key to ensuring you get the most out of your day. The key is planning; therefore layout the tasks for the day and carry them out as scheduled to avoid them stealing into the time you have planned for your baby.
Also, avoid time wasters that reduce the amount of time you can get for your baby while away from work. If you are using too much time in daycare drop off and pickups, find a daycare nearby or get a nanny to come to your house. You can save an hour here that you can spend with your baby instead.
Read: Best time Saving Hacks for Working Moms
3. Get Help with House Chores to Find Time for Spending Time with Baby
Look for ways on how you can reduce the energy and amount of time you spend on house chores so that you have enough left for the baby. Ask your partner to help or get someone to help with the house chores so that they don’t take up all your time.
If you can afford to hire someone for the house chores daily do so and if possible also have a home care arrangement for your baby. Doing so will avoid any inconveniences that may eat into your time. As a result you will adequate and quality time for your children.
You can also invest in machines such as dishwasher, washing machine, fabric folder among others to automate some tasks and reduce the time it takes you to do them. Further, you can schedule some tasks only for certain days. This leaves you with at least an hour or two to spend with your baby in a quality way.
Read: How to Get Husband to Help with House Chores
4. Negotiate For Flexible Work Hours to Find Time with Baby
Negotiate with your employer for shift work so that you can work on some days of the week and get off days on others. It will greatly help restore and balance the time you work and the time you spend with the baby.
Alternatively, ask if you could work remotely either full time or on some days of the week. With this option, you can get some flexibility to allow you to sneak in some more hours during the day for the baby.
Read: How to go from Full Time to Part-time
5. Create An Energizing Evening Routine
Effectively shifting from work to motherhood is not easy. Establish an evening routine focused on boasting your energy. You may find that taking a walk or an hour at the gym helps you shift from work to home mode pretty well with renewed energy. Maybe it is a deeply soothing bath or shower that does it for you.
Find out what manages to make you feel replenished and re energized again and incorporate it into your evening routine. This will help you relax enough to engage and have quality with your baby in the evening.
Remember that the challenges get easier as the babies grow older. Also the easier you can incorporate the above tips the easier it will be in managing the challenges.
Find pride in what you and what your baby are gaining. You become a better person when you work and interact with other people and provide for your baby.
Your baby also relates well and develops better when also under the care of other people. Also, it will help cultivate the right work ethic in your children by seeing your work. So push on and keep doing what you are doing.
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