I’m a stay-at-home-freelance mom to a 1-year old, so I’d say a seesaw is more like it.
作为自由作家的兼职工作似乎是新妈妈的最终梦想工作。我可以设置自己的时间，每天早晨无需赶上托儿所，而且我不必担心在工作日寻找时间（或舒适的地方）来抽水。
Except, it’s still way harder than I ever expected.
当我怀有儿子伊莱（Eli）时，我以为我会在分娩后休息3个月，然后回到磨碎的地方。
But within a month of having him, I was already itching to start up again. I needed something to take my mind off of the crushing产后焦虑I was dealing with.
此外，编辑和客户已经带来了作业的要约，我开始感到压力。我担心继续拒绝工作对我的业务不利，这已经花费了7年的时间。
因此，而不是“正式”从产假, I started taking 1 or 2 assignments at a time and tried to get them done whenever I could.
但是，这是我在生孩子之前没有意识到的事情 - 大多数婴儿醒着时，都不只是hang out看着你打字的8个小时。
因此，如果您和一个人一起工作，那么您要么需要育儿，要么计划在他们睡觉时完成工作。
I ended up doing both. In the very early days I’d write while Eli was tucked in his Solly baby wrap, or if I was really lucky, if he fell asleep next to me in bed.
但是，我从来没有一次完成30分钟的工作，然后他醒来就想母乳喂养，或者想被摇摆，弹跳或唱歌。
By the time Eli was 2 to 3 months old and I felt more okay about leaving him for a little while, my mom came over twice a week to watch him. But it wasn’t for full days like I had envisioned during my pregnancy.
为了专注于我的工作，我需要离开我听不到埃利哭泣的房子。所以我要去一家咖啡店。但是由于我在母乳喂养，我仍然必须泵every couple of hours. Which you can’t really do at a café.
因此，只要我的胸部能够处理它，我就会直接抽出并远离 - 通常最多3或4个小时。
一旦我回家，我通常不得不马上母乳喂养，再一次离开工作的想法使我感到内gui。就是这样。
The pressure to keep taking assignments so I could keep making money and stay on editors’ radars meant that I usually had way more work than I could do in two 4-hour spurts though.
因此，我不断地偷偷偷偷摸摸地写作，而我妈妈没有过来的日子里小睡。
But at 3 or 4 months, he’d only nap while I was holding him. So I literally would sit in a dark room, cradling him in one arm and typing with my free hand.
It almost feels sweet and cozy looking back on it nearly a year later. But at the time it felt like one of the lowest points of my life.
随着年龄的增长，情况有所改善。一旦他有一个可预测的午睡时间表，并在婴儿床上快乐地睡着了，我可以指望每天有2至3个安静的小时上班。
Once he’d go in for a snooze, I’d race right over to my laptop and stay there until he woke up.
My husband and I would start trading shifts too. Since he also had a flexible schedule, he’d watch Eli for a few hours, a few days a week.
当然，还有很多天，我也很早就醒来，通过积压的电子邮件或照顾发票。在伊莱上床睡觉后，有很多夜晚，我急于在最后期限完成一个故事。
这个拼凑的习惯使我每周大约需要25个小时。
这比我在他出生之前工作的40到50个小时的时间少。但是现在我知道自己的时间是多么宝贵，我变得更加生产力，以至于我的产出几乎相同。（（几乎。）
所有这些精湛效率的缺点？我的日子基本上是一个疯狂的来回，在照顾婴儿和急于完成尽可能多的工作，几乎没有时间休息……或其他任何事情。
Unlike my other mom friends who were home, I wasn’t really free for Eli and I to meet them for park hangouts or lunch.
People often look at居家办公as a means to achieve better work-life balance. But for me, the hectic swinging between my role as a mom and a writer feels more like a work-life seesaw.
I’m either doing one thing or the other at full throttle — and the pace can get exhausting.
不过，我知道我能够控制自己的日程安排多么幸运。而且，如果您打算和婴儿一起在家工作，请不要让这劝阻您。你canget stuff done. Just maybe not as much as you might expect.
Some things that I found to be helpful:
1. Map out your time strategically
Try to save work that requires the most concentration for times when you know you’ll have child care and won’t get interrupted.
使用午睡（或者，当您的婴儿被新玩具迷住时，那些10分钟的刀片）来解决需要更少专注或脑力的任务。
2. Work as far in advance as you can
生活with a baby is unpredictable. Your little one might need more of your attention one day because they’re sick or teething, or your sitter might unexpectedly cancel.
So give yourself lots of breathing room, especially when you’re first getting into the swing of things.
3. Manage your expectations
你probably won’t be very productive in the beginning, because babies like to interrupt things. (Also, postpartum brain fog.) Expect this, and don’t let it bring you down.
4. Give yourself time to power down
On nights when you’re working after your baby goes to bed, try to wrap up 20 or 30 minutes before你去睡觉。有一点点时间放松可以帮助您避免燃尽并安静您的大脑，因此更容易打do。
我知道事情最终会变得更容易。随着Eli的年龄较大，他将能够占领自己的短口袋。当他开始上学时，我将有足够的时间上班。
He’s only 13 months old though, so I figure I have a ways to go before I can find some more of that balance everyone keeps talking about.
For now, it’s the seesaw life for me.