Work At Home Mama

I had a typical weekday morning today: got the kids up and ready with my husband, started breakfast together, said bye to daddy with a send-off kiss to work. Fed my daughter breakfast while our son played “kitchen” and made us cupcakes and oatmeal.  Once our nanny arrived, my son had a meltdown about going to preschool—a combination of wanting to watch more Elmo on my iPhone, to play with mama at home, and still feeling under the weather.  After about 10 minutes of tears, somehow we recovered, and I hauled him in the stroller to preschool, dropped him off, rushed home to nurse my daughter and put her down for her nap, pumped the next feeding, changed into my work clothes, gave our nanny instructions for the morning, and left for a work meeting. All before 930am.

This has been roughly my routine give or take for the last six months, a combination of the day-to-day caring for our children while juggling work meetings and projects from home. I have it pretty good, the right combination for me of being present for my children while still maintaining the most stimulating parts of my career. Having our nanny really helps me to take time to work, and also gives me a break from full-time parenting. 

Once someone told me, "You are so lucky that your career allows you to be able to work part-time." Well, it isn't always easy, nor was it simply luck.  Perhaps not all careers are amenable to part-time, but neither was mine initially. I carefully chose parts of my career that could translate to part-time, and put other parts on hold for now.  My husband and I discussed our family priorities and did some prudent financial planning; I negotiated my work terms with my boss. And when I sit down to work every day, I work hard.  What I do feel is gratitude that I can make this arrangement work for our family.

I jokingly said to someone recently that I was a “Work At Home Mom” without really thinking about it. In my usual three-steps behind fashion, I later googled the term out of curiosity, and found a whole WAHM community out there.  There was even a Wikipedia entry about it, and a magazine for WAHM.

Then I started thinking more about the idea of work, and realized, doesn’t this term miss the point?  Don’t all parents, all mamas work?  Those “SAHM,” they are working in the home. And those “Work Outside The Home” moms are also working in the home too. However joyful parenting is, let’s just lay it out there: it is also work. Hard work.  So really, aren’t we all WAHM?  But more importantly, don’t these designations miss the point?  Don’t they instead aid to heighten the “mommy wars” among those who have decided to spend their time differently, either inside or outside the home? 

There is so much judgment about motherhood these days.  What is best for your kids?  For you to stay at home? To work outside the home part-time? Full-time?  I have heard an earful from all sides in my relatively short time as a mama.  Oh the pressure, and oh, the guilt.  And it irritates me to hear the pointed, back-stabbing comments women make about each other’s choices.  

Shouldn't we be instead supportive of our fellow mothers, each forging their own paths to modern motherhood?  Sure, we each have our opinions about what is best—but the key here is, what is best for ourselves, and best for our individual families.  A very close friend of mine asked me the other day if I felt I had gotten it “right” somehow.  I told her I thought that, more than the nitty-gritty details of what I do on a given day, what I had “right” in my life was the freedom to choose those details.  Plenty of parents don’t have that choice, for a myriad of reasons.  

For me, having a choice--well, that is luxury. Because I truly believe that for our family, what works is having a contented mama. That ultimately translates into a contented family.

Finding "Balance"

I've started some version of this post at least a dozen times in the past year, but I've always stopped because I have felt it was too, raw and too, exposed. So I ask that you mamas out there who may know my husband and family be kind and not judge. But after being reduced to tears standing in the middle of the gym before 6a, here we go...

In a previous blog I talked about the "bag of guilt" (see: Guilt) I feel weighted by, but recently, due to changes in my schedule and my daughter's simultaneous shift in her schedule I'm here to say that "bag" was super-sized to a tote or overnight bag.

First, let me start with this cruel, possibly imagined, but very real feeling I have lately. While at my professional work experience, I have not felt the pressure of a clock with someone watching my time in well over a decade- I have come to feel that by my husband, my mother, my in-laws and by some of my friends someone is literally holding a stop watch to the minutes and seconds I do or do not spend with my daughter.

When I accepted a new job, a better, more exciting, but equally manageable management position...almost everyone asked if, "It was fewer days...". Huh? I don't want to make this so much about work, but I hold a very senior position, running a revenue generating department- how on earth could that be expected to be a part time job? As I try to explain that, I see disappointment wash over everyone's face. Then, the question is followed by, "Is it less hours?". Again, "Huh?" It is less stressful, and more fulfilling and provides more opportunity, but that doesn't seem to be a satisfying answer for people.

Next up on my minutes watcher is and has been for some time...is my husband. I'm not going to get into a lot of preamble on him- he is very helpful, and has never directly said what I feel is implied, but here's a sample conversation:


Him, "You know if you shower at night you get a lot more time with dd."
Me, "Yes, it is nice to get a few more minutes, but sometimes it is just necessary to wash and dry my hair in the am to look put together...".
Him, "Can't you wash it the night before?".
Me, "Yes, I try."

The point of this conversation that irks me is this, from shower to dry to make up and dressed, I've nailed the routine to 30 minutes. Pretty damn good if you ask me (or if we were to do a poll on this site, right?). But that 30 minutes isn't good enough for him. To me, and how this plays out for me in my head, he "counts" those minutes.

Guilt the Bag I Carry Everywhere

Guilt, the bag I carry everywhere.

When I was a little girl my mother would inevitably say, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" At various points in time the responses and dreams varied- Rockette (never hit the height minimum), chef (was discouraged by family because they worked nights and weekends), fashion designer (my ability to color inside the lines was a challenge), architect (despite long interest and success in math, I didn't think I had what it took)...you get the picture, I wanted to be a lot of things. At some point, my decision making at a ripe old age of ...17...deemed business would be the route I go.

So off to college I went, in pursuit of a degree and gainful employment that I hoped provided me enough money to live in New York City and to one day "be the boss...."

What does this have to do with being a new mom you might be asking yourself, and frankly, I'm not entirely sure it does. But that's my problem.

My entire life, I imagine a career for myself, but also imagined being a full time mom. My own mother had been a part-time nurse, and I always thought it was a disadvantage (having grown up in a town where most mom's did stay home). I always assumed I'd be a burgeoning executive, and then without hesitation and with plenty of means, that would go to the side for 10-20 years while I raised my children.

But as you know, life doesn't always go as imagined. I did become the executive I'd always hoped, but had never imagined, but it wasn't so easy to just turn away.