I’m So Glad I am a Stay-at-Home Mother

Three times in the last five weeks…  Three times!  And that’s a lot really — I’m exhausted.  Am I talking about sex? No.  Dates with my husband? No.  Attempts to start weight lifting again? Nope.  Trips to the Emergency Room, that’s what I’m talking about.  And those were just the (dubious) highlights — in between all that fun and excitement were days and days and days of dragging everyone from doctor appointment to doctor appointment, seeing the pharmacist so often that he now greets us like old friends, and spending hours on end stuck on the couch comforting one miserable, clingy child or the other.  Absolutely everything else has had to fall by the wayside — the house is an utter tip and we’re probably overdrawn.  I’ve been so snowed under, I never even got the chance to write about the second trip to ER…  I started, but never got finished.  For now, I’ll just tell you that it involved a really frightening amount of blood.  E2′s blood — who else?

And there we are, the source of all the commotion — always the source of all the commotion.  I really don’t want to be this way, but I am now completely glass-half-empty about my younger daughter — she’s been training me in it since the day that was born.  If there’s something she can catch, some food that can set her off, some way something can go terribly wrong, it will happen for her.  Even the allergist said, she was just destined for this, all this medical hassle…  Some kids are.

But if that’s true, then I am so glad I could be her mother.  Because that kid — the kid with all the allergies, the horribly restricted diet, the terrifying undernourishment, the (now almost confirmed) asthma, the utterly out-of-control immune system — that kid needs a really support system; that kid needs someone always watching over her; that kid needs an advocate.  And I am lucky enough to be able to be just that for my daughter.

Sometimes I really regret becoming a stay-at-home mum.  I’ve been out of the workforce for nearly five years now, and I know my career prospects are pretty much shot.  When M starts on about me bringing in some money, I think of applying to Starbucks or something… and then I get nervous that they wouldn’t have me.  And other mothers I know are starting to go back to their careers — or, indeed, have never really left — and they have kept continuity and are going back to jobs they are excited about and feel empowered by.  I look at them and can’t help but feel a pang of jealousy…  and a bit of guilt for having thrown so much a way.

But the other day, I looked at my daughter’s smiling face — she now finally truly well for the first time in nearly two months — and I realised that all this time, I’ve been free to be fully there for her.  Day after day, I’d been able to wake up (or indeed, not sleep all night) and just be able to do whatever was needed of me that day.  I never once had to make a choice between my daughter’s needs and some other obligation, never once felt that conflict that so many other parents have to deal with.   I had some very hard judgment calls to make in those two months – is she breathing well? do I risk waking her to check? do we go to hospital now or wait…? — but I never had to look down at her and choose between risking my job to stay home again or sending her to childcare while she was still sick.

If I have sacrificed all — and I believe I have — then it has been worth it, because she has needed that level of dedication…  not just to thrive, but simply to survive.  It took love to get through those first fourteen months — nothing less than real love would have sustained someone through the days of nonstop screaming and the endless nights of no sleep until dawn.  If she’d been in daycare, I honestly believe there would have come a point where the hired help would have lost patience, or lost faith, and just put her in a corner to cry through her pain alone.  Because I nearly did.  I did leave her to cry, for a while, now and again, and I love her.  If I couldn’t handle it, how could anyone else have?

So, when I hear about my contemporaries going back to work, or talk to my friends who have flourishing careers, I can’t help the jealousy that immediately flares up, or stop the self-doubt that creeps along afterward.  And when M asks about the money, I can’t help but feel guilty that we are always so skint.  But, when I look at my daughter, I realise that being a stay-at-home mother — for all that sometimes feels so wrong about it — is absolutely right for us, for her.  And I know how very privileged I am that I’ve been able to do it, and I am deeply, deeply grateful.

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All Good Things Come to an End

As much as I don’t want to think about this — and I don’t, I don’t, I don’t — it is time to look for a job.  Costs are rising, M’s hours are fluctuating, and the bills…  oh, the bills, they positively sneer at me.  I have done everything I know how to do to reduce outgoings, and yet…

I have cut down on water usage as much as I think I can — well, no, I do still take a shower every day and bathe my daughters…  perhaps that ought to be rethought.  I have taken to recording on the calendar every time we use the washer, dryer, dishwasher, and shower, just so I can can be more conscious of it.  And still, we have managed to use 100 gallons more than last month, and our bill is again five times the size of my parents’.  And I have ruthlessly slashed the weekly grocery budget …and then slashed it again.  It now sits in the mid double-digits — not so much to feed a family of four on, and harder still when allergies prevent us from buying most of the cheaper food options, and harder again when that figure covers all the non-food supplies as well.  We keep the thermostat set religiously to 65F and sit wrapped in blankets all the time — and I know the furnace needs replacing but…  but…  how could we have had a gas bill like our last one?  How? It was colossal, breathtaking, utterly devastating.  It was three-and-a-half times what my parents’ bill is — and they in a bigger house — and more on its own than I had budgeted for all our utilities for the month put together.  When it arrived, I sat in shock at the dining room table, holding it limply in my hand and waiting to cry but feeling too numb.

And so it is time to look for me to look for a job to fill this gap.  It will have to be an afternoon job, so that the girls are mostly napping at the time and less hassle for my mother to sit — and I am very, very grateful that she will take care of them for me.  It doesn’t have to pull in much, just a few hundred a month would ease the pain a bit.  The mark is set sufficiently low.  It should be no big deal.

And yet, I feel so sick at the thought.  Paralysed.  And I think no one will understand why.  Anyone in this position would know what to do — to pull up their bootstraps and get out there.  Anyone who’d balk at that is…  just plain lazy, maybe self-pitying to boot.

So I am simultaneously trying to put this into words and kicking myself in the backside.  The plain truth is that I don’t want to go out and find a job because I do believe I have a job — a critically important job — and I don’t want to give up on that (or perhaps…  I don’t want that to end).  The second plain truth is that we moved here partly so that I could continue to stay home and do that job, and that’s a hell of  a lot of effort to have all come to nothing in the end.  And the third truth is that…  I am afraid.

And that’s it — I am just afraid.  After four years out of the work force, I don’t know what work to do.  There is no logical or obvious next step.  I never ended up working in the area I got my degree in and it’s been so long since I graduated, I’d not be qualified anymore.  And though I forged a career of sorts, it was never a good fit for me nor I for it — we are neither of us clamoring to come back together again.  But most of all — most of all — my confidence is shot.  I ran screaming from my last job, overjoyed to rid of it, hiring a solicitor to fight for my right to redundancy when the project (and my role) ended while I was maternity leave and HR tried to force me into a job two levels lower.  That last role had made all my insufficiencies shine and my abilities fade to black, and I worked for a micro-managing director who ruled by intimidation and humiliation, and then threw in a good dose of sexism just for fun.  Every morning, I dreaded the day ahead and every evening I dreamed of the day I would drive away for good.  By the time I did, my professional confidence was ripped to shreds, and I’ve never sat down since and stitched it back up.  I have buried my head (and my heart) into motherhood and ignored the fact that this safe world would, inevitably, come to an end.

And so, here it is — the time has come for it to end.  And here I am, needing to find a job, but hating it — and so, so afraid.  I don’t want to look for a ‘career’ job because I don’t want this to be permanent — career jobs call for enthusiasm and commitment, and I don’t know where I’d pull that from.   And I don’t want to just go out and get a job a Starbucks because…  well, I ought to be thinking about my career, shouldn’t I?  I’ve got a degree!  I’ve got all this bloody potential!

And all I want to do is crawl into bed.  No…  under the bed.  I feel paralysed.  But those bills… still they sneer.  And they don’t relent.  This world that I wanted for my girls while they were small (or was it for me?) has come to an end.  As much as I hate the thought — and I do hate it — it’s time to bite the bullet.

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In In In, Out Out Out

Just sat down to pay bills and balance the books and have scared myself to death.  Money is so tight that I am gasping for breathe just a wee bit at the moment.

We always knew it would be tight, we always knew it would be tight, we always knew.  I just have to keep reminding myself that.  I mean, the economy has taken everyone by surprise but, even beyond that, we did know it was going to tight being a family of four on one income.  Still, gotta be thankful that the numbers are black instead of red — even when they drop down to the very low double-digits, they are black.

I’ll just focus on breathing.  And soothe myself with a cup of tea.  …maybe minus the teabag.

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A Long Day in the Life…

Today I:

1. Started it off by not getting to bed until 2.30am, because M was on call and didn’t get home until 1.30am…  and I couldn’t sleep until he was home and safe, off the frozen and slippery roads… and then we talked while he got something to eat and got ready for bed
2. Got up at 3.30am when E2 began crying and fed her
3. Got up and fed her again when she began crying at 8.30am and, by the time she was done, E1 had woken up and would not go back to bed.  I was knackered and slightly pissed off because of it, but up for the day.
4. Stopped E1 from descending into hysterical wailing when she discovered M had forgotten to put a sippee cup of milk in the fridge for her, and quickly poured her a cup.
5. Showered in a rush while she drank her milk
6. Got E2 up — she’d had a messy poo that had come through to her bedsheets.  When I took her nappy off in the bathroom, it tipped up and spilled all over the bathmat
7. Bathed both girls, got them dried, dressed, and combed hair
8. Stripped E2′s soiled bed — and E1′s bed and ours while I was at it — and got a load of washing going
9. Cooked their breakfasts and served them, and then helped them eat it when it all started to go wrong
10. Cleaned the mess of breakfast off the table
11. Got on my hands and knees and cleaned the mess of breakfast off the floor
12. Got a loaf of bread started in the bread machine
13. Took a deep breath and swept up the dirt from the plant the girls knocked over
14. Switched the washing into the dryer and got a second load of washing going
15. Folded a basket of laundry and put it away
16. Took a deep breath and re-hung half the contents of E1′s closet which the girls had gleefully pulled down and spread all over the room
17. Made lunch for the girls
18. Wiped the mess from lunch off the table
19. Got on my hands and knees and clean the mess from lunch off the floor
20. Realised I hadn’t yet eaten anything and quickly stuffed a bowl of Weetabix down my neck
21. Discovered where the girls had crayoned all over the hardwood floor and scrubbed it all off
22. Took a deep breath
23. Discovered where E1 had crayoned all over her bedroom walls and then discovered it would not come off
24. Started to lose my temper with her, but reined it in when she was so clearly sorry and began to cry.  Gave her a big cuddle instead
25. Removed yellow crayon bits from E2′s mouth, digging it out from between her teeth with a tissue
26. Made the girls’ beds and went to start ours but…
27. Helped a panicking E1 rush to the toilet — too late!
28. Removed her wet knickers, wiped her tears and gave her a reassuring and forgiving cuddle, and found clean knickers for her
29. Changed E2′s nappy
30. Got E1 down for her nap
31. Fed E2 down for her nap
32. Went to start making our bed but…
33. Rushed to E1′s room to stop her screaming before she woke her sister, and discovered the cause of the trauma was a toy stuck under the bed.  Rescued the toy.
34. Went downstairs and made a sandwich and finally sat down and ate in peace
35. Sent two emails
36. Laid down for a nap
37. Woke up twenty minutes later when E2 started crying and could not get herself back to sleep
38. Gave up on the nap and instead stuck my head under the tap, and did my hair and make up for the first time today
39. Brushed my teeth for the first time today as well
40. Started the girls’ dinner
41. Got both girls up from their naps, calmed E1 down (as she wasn’t ready to wake and began crying that she couldn’t stay in bed), while M took his post-work shower
42. Cleaned E1′s bedroom floor of toys so that it can be hoovered tomorrow
43. Went downstairs and sliced myself a piece of hot bread for my dinner
44. Rushed out of the house to go to the theatre with my mum, who wondered (as ever) why I looked so harried and wound up, and worried (as ever) that it was some problem between her and me
45. Thoroughly enjoyed the show, reassured my mother
46. Came home at 11pm to find M half-asleep on the couch and complaining of headache, E2 still up and dressed for bed but wearing a boot on one foot and a pair of training pants on her head, the dining table and floor covered in dried-on mess from dinner, the dirty dishes spread where they had been left all over the kitchen countertop, the family room strewn with every toy that should have been in the toy-box, and half the clothes I had hung up earlier in the day pulled down again and spread all over the upstairs hallway
47. Restrained the urge to scream in anger
48. Stepped over the clothes and went into E1′s room to check on her, and found her wide awake because her closet door had been left fully open (instead of only cracked open) with the bright light shining in her face, her bed strewn with more of the same clothes as in the hallway, every book off her shelf spread across the floor, and she wearing a skirt and t-shirt that she had had put on over her PJs, and sleeping on a tennis racket
49. Barely restrained myself from flying into a complete rage
50. Put away all the clothes from the hallway and E1′s bed
51. Put all her books away
52. Chucked the racket down the stairs in anger
53. Stopped, pulled myself together, and sat down on her bed to give her a big cuddle and her goodnight kisses
54. Discovered our bed was still unmade, took a deep breath and counted to ten, and then made it
55. Took E2 off of M so he could go to bed, and told him that the state of the house was really taking the piss
56. Fed E2 down to sleep
57. Scrubbed the dried-on remains of dinner off the dining room floor and dining table
58. Washed all the dishes
59. Swept the kitchen floor
60. Put the toys away
61. Spotted the huge gas bill that arrived yesterday and began immediately to panic about it again, and then forceably looked away and pushed it from my mind
62. Made some toast
63. Thought about the fact that one day, when I go back to work, someone will look at this gap on my CV and think I’ve ‘done nothing’ these past four years
64. Wrote this blog post

And now, I am going to bed.

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Cubicle-Hell as Far as the Mind Can See

M is mad at the world tonight.  He’s been in a foul mood all night and managed to break out of it only with great effort and only a couple of times, before sinking back into a scowl and a quick temper.  Everyone has their off-days, I know, but it bothered me particularly tonight because I had tried so hard.  I should have gone to my first meeting of that new mothers’ group I joined and so had everything set and ready for him when he got home in anticipation of making a quick exit, but he didn’t make it home in time, and I missed my meeting.  It wasn’t his fault and I didn’t complain.  The girls were fed and nearly ready for bed, there was a sausage-and-veg casserole finishing off in the oven and fresh bread cooling on the countertop, the dishes were done and the kitchen wiped clean.  I thought he’d be pleased to find the homestead so organised and welcoming, but all he did was scowl.

He wants me to go back to work — I can feel it.  He likes the company he works for, but he doesn’t really like his work and, now more than ever, he feels the pressure of being the sole breadwinner.  His job exhausts him daily and he’s afraid his body will wear out.  He wants the relief of knowing there is money coming in from another source.

But here’s something really honest: if I went back to work, I don’t know what work I could do.  The obvious answer is what I did last, but I honestly wasn’t that good at it, because the job (and the industry) just wasn’t a good fit for me.  Actually, I hated that job — really hated it — so trying to get back into that same line of work after being away for nearly three and a half years doesn’t make much sense.  There were other jobs before that which were much better, but that’s reaching back in time nearly eight years…  I just don’t know if anyone would be interested in hiring someone for a role they haven’t done in so long.

But I am presentable and have a head on my shoulders — I know I could get a job of some sort.  Some office somewhere would have me, to sort out billing or organise databases or build spreadsheets, and that brings me to the real thing that’s freaking me out tonight: I don’t want to go back to work for a job like that.  There it is, in all its selfish glory: I don’t want a job like that.

In all my career, I have never had a job I actually liked or was interested in.  When I was in high school and then at university, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew I didn’t want an awful job in a dreary beige office where I pushed paper around all day (or pixels, as the case may be) and made phone calls and was bored out of my mind.  But by never deciding what I really wanted to do, that’s exactly what I got, beige cubicle and all.  And every job afterward followed suit.  Don’t get me wrong — I’ve worked with some great people and for some good companies — but the jobs themselves never meant a thing to me.  They were beige, in every possible sense.

And now that I’ve spent three years in the dayglo-coloured world of stay-at-home mothering — and enjoyed this role like I have enjoyed nothing else in my life — the thought of going back to some meaningless job in cubicle-hell just fills me with a dread I find absolutely paralysing.  I was hoping that during this time at home, I could fashion some new career direction filled with meaning so that I could burst back onto the work-scene in a blaze of enthusiasm.  …But, just like in high school and college, nothing has come to me.  I have a ton of interests and — I say this as a self-observation, not as bragging — I am talented at quite a lot of what I try, but I do not seem to have a talent for turning any of that into a career option.  Like my husband, I am not a natural entrepreneur — on my own, I don’t really know how to convert this collection of skills into something that will bring in money.  Fear builds the task up into something insurmountable and talks me out of taking such a risk.  Perhaps it would be easier with a business partner — someone to share goals and ideas, fears and frustrations with — but, like finding new friends, making contact with potential business partners in a brand-new area takes time.  And in the meantime, just like M, I retreat to the safety of normal employment, a familiar job…  another beige cubicle like all the ones before.

And so M goes off to work, each day a bit wearier, and I bury my head in the toybox and pretend he doesn’t really need me to start working again.  But his exhaustion is plain to see, and his resentment grows, and the tension hangs heavy in the air.  It might be that my time at home with my daughters –  in this wonderful bubble we’ve created — is begining to draw to a close…  And I will have to come up with something sooner rather than later.

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We Three

The girls are both streaming with cold at the moment — miserable, weepy, and clingy — so today we went nowhere and did nothing.  It’s impossible to even get basic chores done with one child balanced on one hip, head tucked into my chest as she breaths raspily, and the other child clinging to my leg and crying for no particular reason at all.  We did a lot of cuddling today, some reading , drank tea, and took it very very easy.  And though I hate it when the girls are sick like this, I also reveled in our gentle day, because I know how lucky I am to be able to stay home with them and just do nothing when they need it.  As much as we’ve struggled to come to terms with this move to the US, I know I wouldn’t have been in this position if we’d stayed in the UK, and I am very grateful for it.

I have been a stay-at-home mum for nearly three and a half years now, and it feels as right and as natural to me as anything I have known in my life.  Work, by contrast, was always such a struggle — I felt incompetent and a fraud in every position I ever held, bumbling along and waiting to be “found out”.  Being a mother is the first job I’ve had that truly feels like it fits.  I do honestly believe I am good at it, and I am doing as good a job I would hope to be.

And so, enjoying my job for the first time in my life, I have really settled into the role.  I love the unit that we three create all day.  I love that we do everything together — from the moment we wake up, until we go to bed, and beyond into the night.  Every meal is us together, every trip out, every time I need to pop to the shop — we do it all as a unit.  In my daughters’ world, they are always with each other, and always with me, and I am always with them.

I thought I might hate that, but I don’t.  I worried, before I stopped working, that I might find it claustrophobic, I might miss my “me time”, but I don’t.  What I found is that, in many respects, this is my “me time”.  This is me, and who I was meant to be.  Find a job you love and you will never work a day in your life… I have, and I do truly love it, even more than I hoped.

So, it hit me with a shock when someone said to me the other day, very casually, that it’s less than 2 years before E1 will start Kindergarten.  I felt myself take in a sharp breath.  She said it as if it were a good thing, an exciting thing!  And then pressed on — was I putting her into preschool next year?  My heart recoiled.  Kindergarten in only two years?  Preschool next year?  No! No to both of them!  My mind raced ahead another year to a vision of E1, so little and innocent and vulnerable, climbing into a big yellow school bus… that big bus…  on her own…  to spend all day in school and away from me and from E2!  I could see the two of us, sitting at the window, pining for her to come home and back to our little unit of three.

Maybe, as this year and next move on, I will get used to the idea of being apart from her.  Maybe mothers somehow reach a point — a level of toddler chaos or exhaustion or… something — where they become glad of the idea of their children disappearing off to school all day.  Maybe…  but I can’t imagine it.  I don’t want this to end.  I love being home with my girls.  I love my job.  I love…  we three.  And I can’t imagine anything else.

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Oh! Was I Meant to be the Designated Driver?

M got an emergency call-out yesterday and had to spend 5 hours of his Sunday dragging unwieldy supplies and heavy equipment up the three flights of stairs to the customer’s front door. He had a dolly to take it all from the truck to the bottom the stairs but, from that point on, it was all him, going up each tread backwards and hoisting his gear up one step at a time. He came home absolutely drenched in sweat, completely knackered, and in an unsettled mood.

I hate it when he’s in these kinds of moods — the air around him goes dark and stagnant He’s best left alone but it can be difficult to do when the love of your life — who also happens to be everyone’s only breadwinner — comes home from work looking like the sky is about to fall. I did my best but, eventually, I could stand it no longer and prodded: what was the matter? “It’s the same as it always is,” he said, then added, “I’ve told you all this this before!” He began to growl a bit. “I’m too old for this. I’m not far off fifty and these other guys [that he works with] are in their 20s. Their bodies can take it but mine can’t. Things ache and it’s just not going to last!” Yes, he has said this before, and I know it’s true. He’s an older guy doing a young man’s job. When the young men reach his age, they are supposed to have a wealth of experience that either ensures their jobs despite their increasing limitations or helps them to move onto less physical roles. But he retrained into this field when he was made redundant only 6 years ago (and discovering, sadly too late into his training, that he didn’t much care for the work), which means he doesn’t have the benefit of all that experience behind him and so has to do the work as if he were 20 years younger. He struggles with it — physically and mentally — and I know that very well.

It’s not easy being the non-breadwinner under any circumstances, but particularly not under these. When you depend on another person’s income, there’s a real feeling of helplessness that can be incredibly unnerving, in the same way that some people find being a passenger in a car unbearable because they feel out of control if they’re not driving. The non-breadwinner is a financial passenger, entirely reliant on another person’s career achievements… or failures. When M has a good day — or a string of them — and is happy in his work, I can push aside that lingering uncomfortableness that being financially dependent gives me. I bask in his contented glow and tell myself everything is fine. But when he has a bad day — or a string of them — and his mood turns dark, I feel my own panic rise. I handle problems by doing things, working towards solutions — even if I can’t actually fix the problem, the doing something will alone help assuage my fears — but in this situation, there’s nothing the non-breadwinner can do. My only choice is to watch it all unfold and hope it turns out well. And the watching is all the more painful because the way M handles these sorts of problems is the polar opposite to me: he doesn’t act — he resigns himself to the ‘inevitable’, a self-fulfilling prophesy in the making if ever I saw one. And my panic goes sky-high.

So I spent tonight trying to think how I was going to fix this. M’s work doesn’t suit him. The work he did before won’t pay enough to support us all. I will have to go back to work, and perhaps he should stay home with the girls. It makes sense — of the two of us, I have always been (by mutual agreement) the one more likely to go further, I have the better job prospects, I am the more… the more…. I don’t know, but whatever it is, I am it. I sat on the bed in E2′s darkened room, trying to feed her down to sleep, and feeling the pressure rise. I need to get M out of this job, I need to get our family out of a dead-end… But I don’t know what to do. I haven’t worked in 3 years and, despite my ‘better prospects’, this will be a formidable barrier. And, though I am not afraid of hard work by any stretch of the imagination, I dread the thought of going back to kind of work I used to do, which I found so uninspiring that I wanted to push pencils into my eyes all day.

As I went over it again and again in my mind, I realised that I hate that I feel like it is down to me to solve these problems. The truth is, I don’t want the burden of that much responsibility. For a moment, I really envied my mum, married to a man who is incredibly focused and driven, a man who solves problems the way George slayed dragons — I doubt that she has ever once felt that she had to step in and take over. But envy doesn’t solve things, action does. As much as the burden of it wearies me, it’s best to just get on with it.

When at last I got E2 down to sleep and went back into the living room, I found M with his head in one hand. I put my arms around him. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, “that you’re in a job that you struggle with like this. We chose badly.”

“It is what it is.” He sounded dejected. “I’ll just have to keep going …for as long as I can.”

“We could find you something else, something better suited. And I’ll go back to work as soon as the girls are in school. Or,…” I paused, not really wanting to say it out loud, “or maybe sooner if need be.” I spotted the paper out of the corner of my eye — last night’s lottery results would be in it. “Hey, maybe we’ve won the lottery! Wouldn’t that change everything?” I said brightly.

“People like me aren’t meant to win the lottery. It will never happen.” He buys a ticket every week, but honestly believes he’s fated never to win. And there’s a part of me that believes I will never win the lottery either, because I’ve been given a plethora of talents and opportunities in lieu of that one colossal stroke of luck.

“Nor people like me,” I replied.

“No,” he agreed. And then added, “You were supposed to make something of yourself.”

The accusation of it touched a nerve, and I pulled away from him, and looked at his face for a moment. Then I turned and walked into the kitchen, and made myself a cup of tea. I don’t need him to push the heavy burden of responsibility onto me like that. I’m there already .

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