It isn’t that time management and efficiency will make Nick’s life easy and everything will be strawberries and orgasms. It’s that without brutal time managment and efficiency, Nick is completely fucked.

You do learn better time management when you have a kid, but I have to disagree with Robert–it’s not merely a matter of learning how and everything will fall into place. People who say that have clearly forgotten the joys of being a first-time parent with an infant or toddler.

It was a lot of work, taking care of 6-8 tots all at once, but we learned a lot of useful skills, and bonded really closely with each other as families, and can rely on each other for whatever we need, to this day, eight years later. It worked really well for us. (It also gets a lot easier once the kids are in school.)

-l.

But if you do get it working right it’s wonderful. Or maybe you don’t and you go back to looking for a job with and office that has flextime.

I also tried to freelance at home while caring for my son (who was a year old when this started). Total failure. I actually started renting an office and going to it at very odd hours (very early in the morning, very late at night, on weekends) when my wife wasn’t working. I remember this as a period of struggle and stress, not least because I was learning how to be a stay at home parent. Another unexpected side effect is that my wife and I basically stopped seeing each other as a couple, pretty much pecking each other on the cheek as one left the house or collapsing late at night behind separate books or newspapers. And don’t get me started about the financial distress. Later, as I got more work and our son got more autonomous, we started hiring a baby sitter for about six hours a week. Now the little dude’s in preschool.

You’re not alone, but it’s exhausting and stressful. When I look back on the past year and a half, I wish I had spent less time worrying about the work and more time enjoying my baby. You may want to put your freelancing ambitions on hold for a well-defined period of time; it’s also perfectly legitimate to do something else with your life. But it really does keep getting easier, for everyone. Set goals and try to stick to them. Mark and celebrate your progress, however you measure it. But most importantly, enjoy your kid. She’ll never be this age again.

1. Hire a babysitter for a couple of hours as needed.
2. Schedule some work when partner or another adult is at home and have a strict no disturbance policy at that time. Partner should in that case take care of dinner, childcare, cleaning chores etc.

It can be pretty rough. I employ a number of stay at home moms. They tell me that discipline is the key; allot two hours a day to house work and three hours to paid work (or whatever) and then do that - even if it means dishes are undone or deadlines are unmet. Then learn to prioritize so that you get the immediately deadlined work done today, and let the (perhaps more enjoyable but less urgent) undeadlined work wait, or clean the toilets that got messy when the kid had diarrhea and leave the front room a little cluttered.

You’ll work it out.

Right now you are building your career, by hook or by crook. All of this craziness will pay off later. The real parental payoff of freelancing is later on, when the flexibility makes participating in your kids’ education and sports way less stressful than it is with a 9 to 5 job. My advice is baby first, work second, house last. And share your baby with her grandparents and other adults who love her. You get time to work and they all get to know each other.