I feel like all the talk out there is completely overcomplicating the matter. Is staying at home to raise children working? Of course it is. In my experience, and granted my only experience as a stay at home mom was during my 12 weeks of maternity leave, staying at home with a baby is SO MUCH HARDER than being at work. Your day is completely unpredictable and at the whim of a little person who doesn't care if there is no bread in the house or if the dog hasn't gotten a walk; he is going to eat and nap when he wants to eat and nap. At work, I get to eat lunch at the same time every day and go to the bathroom all by myself. (Moms of babies- you get why those things are awesome.)
With that being said, if I had a choice I would stay at home, even though my days would be harder. I feel like I'm missing out on a lot and I miss Harrison to pieces when I'm away from him for 9 hours a day. I realize that being home would bring about guilt in other ways as I don't know if any of us are really immune to it, but I feel guilty if anything or anyone commands any of my attention duing the limited time I have with Harrison during the week. And of course, at times, other things command my attention. There are still dishes to wash and and clothes to fold and pets to be petted. And a husband/dad to be loved too.
For my family, me going back to work was financially not a choice. End of story. I think this is where the debate really started, with women who choose to work outside the home and women who have to work outside the home. Ann Romney had a choice and she chose to stay home. She worked- much harder than I do. But she had a choice.
This is the third time I've said in the post, but staying home all day is harder than being at work- at least for those 8 hours that I am at work. The two hours between the time I wake up and the time we leave the house are, by far, the hardest two hours of my day and probably rival a stay at home mom's day in terms of chaos and stress. I just take mine in concentrated form. The hour I get home before my husband joins us is no picnic either. Stress. Chaos. I just get 3 hours a day of it rather than it being spread out over 15 or 18 hours.
Some days I do it well, other days not so much. This morning found me in the kitchen literally trying to do 5 things at once- drink coffee, make my husband's sandwich, put leftovers in a container for my lunch, make my breakfast, and make bottles. Oh, and feed the dog. So 6 things. And since I had not yet had my coffee, I couldn't get it together enough to realize that doing one thing at a time would have been better. So I scurried around the kitchen like a crazy person saying to myself over and over, "I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this." And Harrison was crying in the background this whole time.
I have fantasies of what it would be like to be a stay at home mom, because I do have one morning off per week and let me tell you, it is heaven compared to the other 4 days. Harrison and I wake up at our leisure, which is often still 5:30 a.m. But rather than throw him in his jumper seat and get in the shower, we sit on the couch together, he plays and I drink coffee and then give him a bottle. We hang out and play some more. He naps and I shower. We take our time getting ready. Heaven. But is it only heaven because it's a change in routine, not our every day?
Maybe moms are so quick to judge each other's choices and decisions because we envy the greener grass on the other side. I definitely envy my mom friends who get to stay at home. They might envy the time I get to myself every day, I'm not sure...I've never asked.
Being a mom is hard work, no matter how you do it.
But don't faces like this make it worth it?
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