Working Moms

Mom World. It is a place where the time you thought you had disappears in the blink of an eye. It is a place where a swaddled baby seems to start wearing lip gloss and sunglasses overnight. It is a place where meals are always being rushed to prepare, eat and clean-up after, and military order and precision are needed to get through the day without a mental breakdown.

As adults, we have earned the right to make our own decisions. Long gone are the days where our parents dictated a curfew, and which of our friends were good influences, and which were bad. We couldn't buy a car or a house, or a pack of cigarettes, or a drink, or...this might take a while. But once we finished our university studies and embarked on our lives as members of the working world, most of these decisions were left up to us. Which house, which car, which guy or girl we wanted to shack up with. So we have this sense of control. Life is orderly, makes a little bit of sense, and many of us have a great sense of accomplishment with this stage in our lives. We get to decide how to spend our days, and can take pride in knowing we are being a good teacher/engineer/pharmacist/police officer/banker/assistant/lawyer/doctor or any career you like.

And then something happens. It is wonder and terror all wrapped up in a silky, soft little blanket. You become a mother. And then you don't feel that good at anything. You can't get your little bundle to stop crying, stop peeing on you, stop waking up every 30 minutes during the night, or basically stop causing chaos in your formerly-tidy life.

But herein lies the problem: you love that little thing so much that you accept the chaos. They take priority over all else. You start grocery shopping in your pyjama pants. Your 19 year-old self would smack you upside the head. It takes a full year for your life to be able to see normalcy off in the distance. And then, some of us, re-enter the workforce. Now all of a sudden you feel incapable of doing anything to the best of your ability. You are not being a good mother, because you are leaving your child with someone that is not YOU all day. You're not that great at your job, because you can't wait to rush out the door and try to erase that day's guilt by picking up your child and apologizing for neglecting them all day. You're not a great wife, because you're not wearing red, silk nighties to bed. You're wearing drool stained giant t-shirts.

You went from this confident, well-put together, educated woman, to this disheveled, guilt-ridden woman who can't quite get a grip on any one aspect of her life. Life is now a new series of choices: do I go to bed at 9 because I'm exhausted, or do I fold the 4 loads of laundry in those baskets over there?

We hate to take any time for ourselves, because doing that would take even more time away from our kids, and we already have the guilt about working all day. It is so hard to regain that sense of control and of feeling that we are balancing all of the aspects of our lives. Something has to give. It might be friends, family, the cleanliness of your home, or the 'one-on-one' time with your husband.

Just this morning, between the hours of 7:15am and 8:26am, I woke-up to a 4 year-old telling me she had wet the bed, stripped her sheets and put through a load of laundry, gave Sophie a quick bath, changed Maggie twice (the second was a number 2 diaper), made breakfast, got both girls dressed,  brushed their teeth, showered, cleaned-up a full cup of apple juice that had spilled all over the table, chair and kitchen floor, packed my lunch, packed the girls bags for Donna's, drove the girls to Donna's, and got myself a cup of tea from McDonald's. I needed a nap at 8:30 this morning. And you know what I had to let go of this morning? My make-up and my breakfast. No time. Something had to give, and it wasn't going to be at the expense of my girls.

So the real question is, why are we so hard on ourselves? If we know this why not come to terms with it and accept it? I think it is because we are afraid to admit to people that sometimes we feel overwhelmed. That would be admitting defeat and failure.

I have started to make some changes. Sometimes, when I am really tired at night, I will say out loud to my kitchen, "Kitchen, no one will die if you do not get cleaned tonight. I will see you in the morning". I hate doing it, but sometimes I need that hour to read, or watch Jersey Shore ("Cabs are here!"), or talk to Brent more than I need a clean kitchen.

And on the weekends, I have realized that I have a choice. I can spend all weekend cleaning my house, or I can pick a few chores to do while the girls are napping. The rest of my weekend, I want to spend  together, doing fun things to make up for the fact that I work.

Being a mom is hard, whether we work full-time outside of the house, or inside of the house, our shift never seems to end. It is worth it, every second of it, and I wouldn't change a thing. But I do think that we should acknowledge the earth-shattering change in our priorities, and give ourselves a little break. And maybe try to put a little make-up on when going out to dinner with our husbands :)