Work-from-home mom.

The truth about how I managed and how glad I am it's over.

I did not expect to have a child in 2023. If I had to guess, I would have predicted I would have one in 2028 (at the age of 35) or never. We had just dumped our savings on a move back to New York City. I had many plans and all of them centered around my career and social life. So when I found out I was pregnant my immediate response was “fuck.”

I know that may sound harsh, but If you knew the status of my credit card balance in January 2023 you’d probably have the same reaction.

At the time, we were living in a 700 sq ft walk-up apartment on the Upper East Side. It was dark, with scaffolding over the windows and construction workers scaling the building. I really liked the location, but it was barely large enough for the two of us. The idea of taking care of a newborn there was jarring, but moving would have financially destroyed us.

Outsourcing childcare was out of the question. We knew this from the beginning and didn’t even bother doing our research on local daycare costs. As a content creator and community organizer, I knew I could work my way around a baby. When Sebastian was a newborn I would stick a headphone in my ear and listen to the audiobooks I needed to read for work. I would schedule my zoom meetings during prospective nap times. My husband, Ben, also worked from home during this time. We did a 50/50 parenting split. Somehow we managed to maintain fragments of our social lives. The beauty of living in New York.

I would take Sebastian to the Met multiple times per week. It was our chance to go on long climate controlled walks, where the lighting was bright, and the art gave us both something to look at that wasn’t each other. As he got a little older we’d go to the playroom. We went to 19 museums before his first birthday, and I can confidently say that infants don’t hate art museums (s/o Culture Pass!) In the spring, friends would come to our neighborhood and we’d get coffee and play in Central Park. For the first year, I really felt like we were thriving.

Recently we moved to a much bigger apartment— one I can see us in for a decade if necessary. It’s spacious, beautiful and located in Morningside Heights. My company became profitable last summer, after three years of scraping by. It’s been over a year since I paid off my consumer debt. I am becoming the person I want to be, the person I have worked so hard to become. I love my life so much… but I have been deeply overwhelmed for some time.

Sebastian wants to practice his skills, he wants to learn new words. He wants to be read to and challenged. He is obsessed with watching other kids. I cannot run a business and teach him new things at the same time. I went from believing that I was capable to having it all to realizing I was failing him. I woke up and he was no longer a baby, but a child.

There is only so much you can micromanage yourself. You can plan every second of the day and sometimes it’ll go really well, and other times it will not. I threw out my back twice in January. The second time I realized I had no choice but to call in for help.

Three weeks ago our part-time nanny started. She’s smart and interesting and really great at engaging Sebastian. I knew within 2 minutes of meeting her that she was the one for us. She takes him to the library and makes us soup. She is thoughtful, considerate and a really good cook.

Ben and I are fighting much less. We’ve always been over-communicators, but not big fighters. But the best way to describe our relationship over the last 6 months or so is like an endless game of tug of war. Both of us are just trying to work, workout, and maintain a mediocre social life. We’re trying to be decent versions of ourselves, but doing so while also splitting all the childcare responsibilities of a 1.5 year old. We’ve fought endlessly about time and feeling like the other person isn’t doing enough. The reality is there was just absolutely nothing left for either of us to give. No room left to budge. You’re never able to give anything more than 50% if your time is completely split. The problem wasn’t either of us, just that it had just become too much.

Now that we have childcare, I’m allowed to get lost in my work without guilt. I finally got the haircut I’d been complaining about needing for the entire winter season. Meetings aren’t slipping through the cracks. Sebastian is flourishing as someone who is now being challenged and catered to instead of supervised by two adults just trying to get by.

When I look back at the last 17 months I am met with a mixed bag of feelings. On one hand, I am impressed we are still standing, still in love, and still employed. On the other hand, I must admit that we relied way too heavily on a combination of independent play and Ms. Rachel. I feel angry, that childcare is unaccessible even for middle class parents like ourselves. I feel relief, that I can finally turn our survival mode setting off. But mostly I feel an abundance of gratitude, for now possessing the privileges I did not have access to before.