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I am SAHM but I know that I would not be able to work from home with a LO. Naps and schedules can be unpredictable and I'm so exhausted after he goes to bed that I could probably manage to do just like a half hour or hour of work. I'm sure if that's your only option you can make it work, but I know that I would never be able to do it.
Maybe rather than daycare you could get a mother's helper for a few hours a day? Like a high school student that comes after school?

There's no way I would be able to work from home with my LO unless there was someone there that could watch him while I worked. Good luck to you. I hope you can work something out with your work.

When will you sleep?!

I can't focus on anything if I work from home. I hate it

Maybe you can manage part time over 5 days, though, if you work a lot of evenings. But then it sucks because you won't see your husband much

Oh man, good luck-- I think you will def need some form of childcare during the week-- hopefully a family member or even care.com 2-3 days?

I'm a WAHM and I work normal hours, M-F, 8a-5p. My mom comes over every day to watch LO while I work. I put her down for naps. give her kisses, help a bit if she's fussy, and do meals... but otherwise, it's all my mom. It's really hard to get anything done when she's not here (when she has dr's appts or is sick, etc.). I tip my hat to the moms who can pull it off!

ETA: I work for a "traditional" company, and I'm an events manager and a people manager, so I have to be available all the time and hop on video conference calls. I also have normal deadlines, so that makes it hard.

I WAHed FT for several months before going back to WOH, and if you need to put in any sort of real hours - I don't think its really possible to do and create a decent work product, or be available to a boss/co-workers (which is why my LO was in daycare 3 days a week and worked those days and at night 2 days a week). Babies don't sleep all day; so even if you say "part time" around naps, what does that mean compared to a real part time position?

My old employer allowed working from home, but if you had very young children they required proof of daycare enrollment outside the home; because most people can't get much work done with an infant or toddler at home. Good luck!

Yeah, I think the general consensus is that it isn't possible. I'm a SAHM, and I know that I could not get anything done in the very limited time that she naps.

I feel for you, I'm in a similar situation! I currently WAH full time and had no clue what to do post-baby. What I ended up agreeing to with my employer is that I will do daycare three days per week so that those days I can be totally focused on work, attend meetings/conference calls, etc. Then the other two days I will WAH with the baby. I don't work on an hourly basis but more of a tasks-completed basis-- so I hope to be uber productive on my 3 daycare days (less internet surfing and taking an hour for lunch), and then just doing stuff as-needed on the other two days. I'm not positive it will work yet, but I do feel like with my current work load I could probably fit it all into three solid days + the odd nap/evening otherwise. And my boss is willing to give it a go for a while and see if I can pull it off without losing much productivity.

I think it totally depends on what you do and your work load.

I used to WAH and I wouldn't have been able to do it without childcare. There were a few times when DD was sick and I still had to work and I was miserable. I worked during her naps and then after she slept until midnight or so, but that still wasn't enough. I remember getting some work done while she held and drank her bottle, but I definitely couldn't get much accomplished while she was awake.

Not to mention the fact that there are lots of people to contact during the day, not after normal business hours at 10 pm.

I work at home part-time. For me, naps were not solidified at 16 weeks. It is only recently (at almost 6 months) that I can plan to get work done during naps. Every baby is different, of course, and for some it may take longer and others it may never happen--and maybe with others it happens much sooner!

I have a sitter eight hours a week (twice a week from 10 am - 2 pm) and my husband is also flexibly employed so if I need to do a phone call outside of those times or finish a project or something, he can come home early/leave late. Without the sitter and my husband's flexibility, it would be really hard. But probably not impossible--nothing is impossible and people make all kinds of things work that seem crazy to others. But I think you have to go into it with a pretty flexible attitude. Good luck!