It’s only my second week as an SAHM and I’ve already been bitten by a pang of jealousy.  An uneasy feeling hit me as I watched my husband get picked up by a cab this morning and head to work leaving my son and I looking at him out the window. As he shut the door behind him, my worst fears hit me: what if this is it? What if my days from now on only contain unkempt hair, dirty pajamas and a toddler writhing on my lap?
I know I’ll be hit with these moments now and 10 months from now, but I must remember why I made this choice and that it’s not the end of my career as I know it. That there will be good days and bad days and fun days and sad days, but at the end of the day it’ll all be worth it. Yesterday, on my first Monday off, there was nothing inside me that would have rather been sitting in my fancy office looking out at Lake Michigan instead of entertaining my son (ok, maybe a quiet lunch at my computer).
As the saying goes, the grass is always greener (and skinnier, and prettier), so thanks to Kim for helping me see that. This post she sent helped me see through my jealous fog. I have to remind myself that nothing is permanent. If I want to work again, it will be there for me one day. And I know that if he had a choice, my husband would much rather be sitting on the couch with us rather than in that cab all alone.
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It’s all still new, I imagine you’ll have a routine before you know it, and, you’re right there will be days that whatever you’re not doing looks better than what you are doing.
Oh, tis true. Just hang in there. Change in never easy, but as much as you might miss working outside the home some days, there will be others when you have a super fun day playing with your son or just times when he comes over and gives you hugs and kisses (opportunities you would have missed at work). It isn’t always easy being at home from day to day (I sure do miss the adult conversation and hate being stuck at home when she is sick), but then again, overall it is SO much easeir than having to haul myself off to work and take the kid to a sitter. Plus I get to watch her grow up every day and instill in her our morals and beliefs in the way we want them taught. There are wonderful caregivers out there that do fabulous things with the childen they watch, but no one is the same as good ol’ mom or dad.
I felt that same pang this morning as I drove by an office where I used to work. My desk overlooked a canal (not as spiffy as Lake Michigan, I’m afraid) and it was my first job out of college. Remembering the way I felt going into to work everyday, I was hit with a sudden sadness… I think it’s just expected.
Ok, so my day began at the crack of dawn with an intense “coverage” negotiation with my husband who finally agreed to take care of our sick daughter while I went off to work for half a day. After scrambling to make myself look presentable/professional, I doled out medication, juice, ensured the little one had her “share” in her backpack and explained to her for the twentieth time why she had to go to preschool today while her older sister got to stay home (with 102 fever). Then I went to work for five hours during which people didn’t listen to me and royally pissed me off. I then literally interrupted a co-worker mid-sentence to tear out of the office so I could pick up the preschooler in time for her mid-day carpool. Now I’m home pretending to work while my kids sit hypnotized by the TV (ok, we do have a very sick kid who can’t do anything else). THIS is why you quit. Feel better?
By the way, thanks for that Penelope Trunk article. Very interesting and very helpful.
Just so you know, when I read your previous post about having time to have breakfast with your son I felt a pang of jealousy (the very best kind:) Enjoy this, it’s so awesome that you can make this choice.
Yes, the grass is always greener. I admit I often have to talk myself into why work is so much better, wh
and while I love hanging with the kids, I tell myself I wouldn’t to do it all day. That may be BS,
but it gets me through the day sometimes.
I think it is only natural to have those pangs of jealousy.
My good friend is a stay at home mother and she used to watch my boys during the day. She no longer watched them because she moved out of state but just recently we had a really good conversation where it came to light that at one point or another both of us had been jealous of the other. She had wished she could leave and go to work and I had envied her for being able to have all that time with not only her children, but mine as well.
I could not relate with you more. I live all the way on the other side of the globe from you, but the issues are the same. I quit work too, and this may be a bit scary, and now I sit in my pajamas doing this and that the whole day.
It’s an effort to stay organized and get something done, something that does not involve my toddler that is.
You know what’s the scariest thing? That, though I am ok with this now, what if I wake up one day (one day far into the future) and have a aahhh-my-life-has-gone moment?
And it’s not that I hate being mommy, it’s just that I feel that the mother takes the brunt of it and it’s not fair – few companies understand that you could’ve been out of the workforce for some years and now you are back but you could still be good at your job. That’s the unfortunate part.
You should consider freelancing. You get enough of the business world to remember why you quit, but you also get to stay at home with your family. It’s not always the best of both worlds. So far though, it has helped me balance both desires.
I had the opposite result from Shari: when I telecommuted, it didn’t balance my desire to be at home with my desire to work. What it did was make me crazy stressed ALL the time, because if I wasn’t doing the work, I’d think there wouldn’t ever be a next contract. And if I WAS doing the work, I was constantly having to shoo my kids away. (Unless I worked in the middle of the night, which was also bad because I like sleep.)
Anyway, in the past three weeks 1) we’ve all been sick, with husband and girls home for several days; and 2) we had sort of a forced remodel, so I’ve had contractors crawling around a big hole in my house. If I had had a work-type project to deal with during this time, I would be a dishrag at best and in the emergency room at worst.
It is really hard to leave work and stay home full time. I think it took me a year to adjust, but the mommy guilt is lifted (to some extent). I still miss work but I try and remind myself, they are only little once (cliche I know) and I can work for the next 30 years…
I also loved the Penelope Trunk article. I hope she’s right!
It took me a while to adjust too. I’m not the type of person who gets excited over new cleaning products or recipes and my husband has told me that if he ever finds cooked diced chicken in the freezer (that’s the rage with the SAHM moms I know so that they can easily add it to complicated meals) that it’s time for me to go back to work. I figure on the day that I wake up and would rather be at vet school than at home, I’ll know to start applying.