The Fight That Gets Us Fired Up, Part Two

This is the second part in a three part series about working moms vs. stay-at-home moms.  To be clear, I do not think that one is better than the other, I think that it is a personal choice that every mom must make, taking into account every aspect of their family life.  This is just my thoughts on the positive and negatives that I experienced into my foray into both sides of motherhood.  To get caught up, go back one post and read part one, because you'll be really lost and won't understand a thing if you don't.  No, I'm kidding.  But, here we are now in 2008, and after a year of being home with my firstborn son, I was about to enter the world of the working mom.

As I said, before, I was not happy, but I was doing what I knew I needed to do for our family.  I went into a new district with a nontraditional, high stress classroom setting, and that did not help matters.  The first few weeks, I would cry every time I would think about my son, Brennon, being away from me for so long, but once school actually started, I didn't have time for that.  What I know is this:  I.  Was.  Tired.  Sure, I was pregnant and had a 14 month old, but really I felt stretched thin.  Maybe all working moms don't feel that, but I did.  Thankfully, I had a job that I liked to go to, but I would often think of all those moms that didn't enjoy their jobs.  Moms who were working one and sometimes two jobs out of necessity.  Moms who would spend their time away from their children unhappy.  Moms who (like most working moms) end up spending a lot of their paycheck on childcare.  I realized how precious my time when I was not at work was, and I felt bad.  My poor one friend that I talked about in the last post.  She had been working full-time the whole time and never once complained when I asked her to take time on one of her sacred days off to take care of my child so that I could have a break.  Staying at home, most mothers feel like they need a break like an occasional night out with friends, but as a working mom, my only break was work.  I made a few more friends now that I was outside of the house more, and sometimes they would ask me to go do something with them on a weekend, and I would think, "I already spend so much time away from my kid, why would I want to take even more time away from him?"  It was a completely different dynamic.

New curriculum = More boxes = More forts!  Score one for the working mom!

I worked for four years before taking another year off.  The first year was an adjustment, the second year was my first year working while having two kids.  That year, I was in a dark place.  It wasn't just because I was working.  I struggled with a major bout of postpartum depression.  I had the hardest class of my career.  I wanted to move back home to Springfield.  My husband's career took unexpected turns.  It was a tough year.  This is a time that I feel deserves its own blog post, but frankly, I'm not ready to be as honest about it as I feel I need to be.  The time will come, but not now.  The deal was, I think that it was working at that time that saved me.  I would cry and cry about how much I wanted to be at home with my kids, but sometimes God has you somewhere because he knows what's best for you better than you do.  The routine of having to get up and look decent, going to work, teaching a class, seeing other adults, and trying to make the most of my time with my kids was ultimately a large part of me getting through that time.  I won't ever try to make a working mom feel like I judge her for being away from her kids, because sometimes that's the thing that saves her.

After the darkness was gone, I worked for two more years in a wonderful setting.  It was pretty ideal as far as teaching goes...good school, wonderful team, kids were in good childcare, and we didn't have a lot of unnecessary after-school activities that kept me from going home to my children.  I was good at my job and I loved the children I taught, but because of who I am (not anybody else, just me), my heart still ached to be at home with my kids.  I wouldn't stay after school late to get work done and I wouldn't do any work at home until my kids were in bed asleep.  Because of this, I had a hard time finding balance.  I'm sure that there are working women who rock at this, but it wasn't me.  If you need to grade papers from the time the kids go to sleep until 10:30, you aren't paying much attention to your husband either.  When you have to spend one of your precious weekend days cleaning your house, because the laundry can't do itself during the day, it can be frustrating.  If you come home from work and want to play on the kitchen floor, but have to go make dinner, it can be frustrating, but as a working mom, you make it work.  As a mom who worked, I was always a better manager of my time, because it was such a precious commodity. 

To me, balance was the struggle of the working mother more than anything else.  For this reason, I try my best as a stay at home to honor those women who are trying to do it all, because in my world, it made me weary.  Maybe it's because I live in a real world, where working to me wasn't about trying to show my boys that women can work and be mom, working for me was about trying to contribute to our family financially, and I am thankful that I could do it with a job that I was good at and that I enjoyed.    Thankfully, I feel like I'm a little bit of a natural teacher, because if my job was something that I wasn't too great at on my own, I probably would've cried some more.  My experience as a working mom taught me that your circle of people are there for a reason.  So, if all of your friends are stay at home moms or all of your friends are working moms, why not cross the fence and realize that we all bring something amazing to the table.  We are all moms, and that is magical.

Come back for part three tomorrow....what I've learned now that I've been both.