Like most people, I sometimes have “those days” at work – days where the phone rings off the hook, people walk in needing immediate assistance, a report needs to get done yesterday, and 20 urgent emails are piled up in the inbox. Unlike most people, “those days” for me occasionally include the added stressor of frantic howling that demands my attention.
I don’t work at an asylum or a kennel; the howling doesn’t come from a lunatic or a hound. It comes from my baby, Anders, who has been accompanying me to work since he was seven weeks old.
I work for the Springfield Art Association, which has a policy of addressing the question of a baby at work on a case-by-case basis, subject to the discretion of the executive director, Betsy Dollar. This policy is largely in place thanks to Betsy, who kept her baby with her for the first year as she ran her own business out of her home.
For a baby-at-work situation to work at the Art Association, all the staff has to be in agreement, the mother must maintain her productivity and the baby must be reasonably mellow and not yet mobile. Fortunately, the stars aligned in my case, and Anders has been a fixture in the office since early March.
It seems that no matter what a family’s individual solution of staying at home and/or child care, there is always room for a mom to feel like she could be doing more, and bringing a baby to work is no different. This situation presents its own set of challenges to me, both as a professional and as a parent. Before Anders, I was 100 percent curator at work. Now, I am trying to be 100 percent curator and 100 percent mother – at the same time. In a job where my own schedule and duties vary widely from day to day, it is difficult to establish a regular nap schedule for the baby. There are challenging days like the ones described above, where Anders fusses or cries or refuses to nap as my work piles higher and my stress level climbs.
I rely on a variety of people, products and strategies to juggle having a baby at work.
My co-workers are my most valuable resource, as they are endlessly patient, affectionate and willing to watch Anders for a minute or an hour, as the case may be.
I have also yet to meet a baby contraption I don’t like. I never meant to be that mom; my vision was for a streamlined, minimalist approach to parenthood. But now it looks like Babies “R” Us exploded in my office, with its pack n play, rock n play, Bumbo, exersaucer and baby carrier, all in the name of keeping Anders content so I can get my work done.
Efficiency and time management are key requirements of bringing a baby to work. Fortunately, these very same skills seem to be born or enhanced in a woman with the arrival of her child. What starts out as cooking and doing laundry while the baby naps during maternity leave evolves into greatly increased productivity at work while the baby naps. Indeed, the Parenting in the Workplace Institute cites increased productivity as one of the benefits of babies in the workplace: “Parents work extremely hard to complete their work tasks by learning more efficient ways to do their jobs, by staying late as needed…or by just working very hard during the blocks of time when their babies are sleeping.”
I am eternally grateful to my boss for her open-mindedness and flexibility in facilitating a baby-at-work program. Anders is a social and happy baby, my co-workers love having him around, and visitors to the Art Association know immediately that this is a warm, family-friendly place when they walk in the door and see him.
For my part, the benefits of having Anders at work with me are impossible to quantify. Sure, I could total up all the money I am saving in daycare costs, but how do you measure the peace of mind of having your precious infant right at hand all day long? Or seeing his face light up in a big toothless grin as he gets passed from one pair of loving co-worker’s arms to the next? Or the benefits that we both reap by continuing to breastfeed on our own schedule? The days when I feel I am hanging on by my fingertips as a parent and a professional (and I definitely have them) are balanced by the warmth of walking in each morning with my baby on my hip and settling in to do what I love best: be a curator, and be a mom. I only wish that more workplaces would consider this low-cost, high-reward benefit for their employees.
Erika Holst is curator of collections for the Springfield Art Association.
This article appears in Capital City Parent July 2012.
