I have a secret. I desperately want to be a stay-at-home mom. But I can’t afford to be one. I live in an expensive region of New England. My entire salary covers our mortgage, property taxes, home insurance, and groceries. My husband’s covers everything else. Even if we sold our house and moved hours away from our family and friends, we still couldn’t afford to survive on one income. My husband has college loans, we both have car payments, and we have the home repair bills every homeowner deals with. I’ve watched many YouTube videos today and read even more blogs over the last few weeks trying to figure out a way that I could stay home with my daughter, but the hard truth is I can’t. I’m lucky, my husband and I are both teachers. We get more time off than most people. I get to spend time with my daughter in the mornings and in the late afternoons. I ended up working from home for 5 months after my maternity leave was scheduled to end, so the longest I was away from my daughter in the first 9 months of her life was a few hours. Far too many moms have to go back when their babies are less than 3 months old. I spoke to one woman who returned to work full-time 6 weeks after her baby was born. My heart is with these moms. I know you love your babies as much as I love mine, and it’s not fair that we can’t spend as much time with them as we want to.
I know I’m not the only woman who is feeling this way. And leaving your baby to go back to work is hard enough by itself, but the pandemic adds a layer of anxiety to this transition that no parent needs. But that’s where we are.
When I first went back to work, the simultaneous novelty and familiarity distracted me quite a bit. I enjoyed setting up my classroom, I plastered the bulletin board behind my desk with photos of Emily, I made a collage of 81 photos from her first 8 months for the front of my planner, I stocked my desk with my favorite survival snacks (Black Forest gummy bears for the win!), and I threw myself into redesigning my lessons to be hybrid-model friendly. That distraction, as well as the excitement of seeing my friends and students again, kept me in a good place for the first 2 weeks of in-person work. But now, in week 4, reality is setting in. I’ve started to resent the job I used to love, I’m finding myself more easily frustrated (not that I would ever let the students see that), and I just want to be home with my little girl. Every minute I’m in the building with someone else’s children, I’m missing critical moments with my own.
Right now, I’m not in a positive place about being a working mom. My special ed teacher training makes it impossible to make a statement like that without adding the all-powerful yet. Because I do think it will get better someday. The added layer of pandemic stress will end, the hours won’t feel quite as long, and the days will become my normal. But I’m not there yet. Right now, I’m so shattered to only spend 3-4 waking hours with my little girl every day. However, in order to enjoy the few hours I have with my sweet little nugget, I do need to stay in a healthy frame of mind. I don’t want to waste the time I have being upset about the time I missed.
For all you moms who feel the same way I do, I don’t want to be another source telling you that you can stay home if you just rework your budget or cut back on luxuries. I trust that you know your own life and finances well enough that you are already doing everything you can to spend as much time with your child as possible. Instead, I want to stay in our reality of being working moms and offer support and advice.
So here are some things that are helping me keep perspective:
1. The reason I don’t want to work is the reason I need to work.
This is my mantra. Whenever I’m frustrated or depressed about being back at work, I try to stop and remind myself why I’m working. Quitting my job would mean moving out of state, or at the very least hours away from our family and friends. Working enables me to give my daughter a nice home in a safe neighborhood close to her whole family. It is the reason we can pay for her food, diapers, wipes, clothes, and toys. It will eventually be what allows us to let her pursue her passions, whether it’s sports, dance, art, music, or something we haven’t thought of yet. It will help us build her college/trade school fund. Knowing I’m working to give her the life and the opportunities she deserves makes me feel a bit less depressed because it helps me to focus on all of the wonderful things we will be able to give her in the future.
2. The serenity prayer is true and helpful. I’m not religious, but since my early days in special ed (days filled with physical aggression, unexpected nudity, and verbal outbursts), I have often turned to the wise words of the serenity prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to tell the difference.” I can’t change the fact that we need 2 incomes. And to be honest, expecting Andrew to work double the hours he already does to let me stay home while we struggle to afford groceries is not a smart change for us to make. So if an opportunity arises to work from home or change our situation, I’ll take it. But for now, I’m accepting this season and doing what I can to change my mindset.
3. Learn when to say no. This was a particularly hard one for me because I am an overachiever and feel like saying no to an opportunity is the same thing as admitting failure. Of course, this isn’t true, but it’s a hard thought pattern to break. Before I had Emily, I signed up for every class I could, joined tons of committees, made plans with friends every day of the week, and basically just never stopped moving. Now, things are different. I’m up 3-5 times a night with Emily, so I’m pretty exhausted most days. I don’t have the energy I did before I got pregnant. And so, some things had to go. I dropped two committees, stopped volunteering for every opportunity in my emails, and instead focused the limited time I had on the commitments that really mattered to me, specifically a few committees at work and social distant outdoor get-togethers with friends at our house. It’s nice to be able to devote adequate time to the activities I really care about rather than spreading myself across dozens of commitments I am only slightly interested in. I have also turned down a few private tutoring jobs because I know I don’t have the time needed to help the students be successful. Turning down a second source of income wasn’t easy, but between prep, commuting, and tutoring, I would have missed hours of my already limited time with Emily each week. The time I have with Emily is priceless, and an hour’s pay for what ends up being 3 hours of work is not worth it.
4. Block in time with your baby. The past few weeks, my husband has been working on building us a shed. Because he wants to finish it before the winter, he’s kept one day each weekend completely open to work on the project. These have become my favorite days of the week because, without plans, I have a full day of uninterrupted baby time. We snuggle, play, and go for walks, and I let her nap on me instead of in her crib. And then, in the late afternoon, we do special family activities like walks and ice cream in our favorite spots or trips to the beach. I know we won’t always be able to dedicate an entire day to family time, but we are going to try our best to keep these days a tradition.
5. Ignore your phone during baby time. Once I get Emily home each weekday, I have about 3 hours before she goes to bed. This is precious time, and I want to focus my attention on her rather than Instagram, the news, or my texts. I haven’t quite mastered the ability to ignore my phone completely for the 3 hours, but I’m working on it! She loves having my undivided attention while she plays, and at this point, she develops a new skill every day, so I love not missing any more than I absolutely have to.
6. Find a way to incorporate baby into your favorite self-care activities. When I was on maternity leave and then working from home, I took Emily for 2 3-mile walks every day. These walks were my time. I listened to my podcasts (I love Office Ladies and Michael Scott Podcast Company!) or audiobooks and burned off my baby weight pushing the stroller up every hill I could find, and Emily happily napped. Now, I can’t bring myself to go for walks every day because I don’t want to spend the time I have with Emily pushing her around while she sleeps. I want to have fun with her! But I also really love food, so I need to stay active. Mom and me workouts on YouTube have been a game changer. Emily giggles and squeals the entire time, and I get to do something for myself. It’s a perfect balance. Plus working out is way more fun with my little nugget!
I hope these strategies are as helpful for you as they have been for me. And I hope being a working parent gets a little easier and more manageable for all of us. But until then, please know that you’re not alone in your feelings.
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