Stay at Home Momming

I could say we had little supervision as kids (David and I), but the more accurate statement is that we frequently had no supervision.

So when Steve and I discussed kids, I said that it was important to me to not work full time. Steve hadn't really thought about it, but it sounded fine to him. It was so theoretical at the time.

Once I was pregnant with Samuel, that morphed into us deciding that I should take a year off work (with the idea that I would probably return to work fulltime after that). It didn't hurt that I hated my job, and so taking a year off sounded like an extra good idea.

The first year of parenthood was a rough one, in which I alternately desperately wished that I was working so that I could leave the care of my child to someone else (who I figured would probably do a better job parenting than I was), and felt terribly guilty each time I left Samuel and wasn't the sole person responsible for all of his needs. I enrolled at San Jose State fulltime to go about obtaining a Master's degree in Educational Counseling. That's right, I had an infant with "colic" and decided that the best thing to do would be to take 5 graduate school (night) courses a semester.

Things got easier after we hit the 12 month mark, and most days were downright enjoyable by 18 months. I went back to work one day a week that school year, but mostly hated it. Finding the appropriate daycare was stressful. Paying for daycare was stressful (me and my money issues). Leaving Samuel was stressful. Only being at a school site one day a week felt useless. I didn't return to that position the next school year. Plus, Shira was born.

I still had a bunch of intern hours left, so when Samuel was two, and Shira was a few months old, I returned to a school site, for a couple of hours two days a week. Daycare was a little less stressful, I decided we could afford the couple of hours a week, and being on site two days was not as useless as just one.

Throughout these first three years of parenthood, I continued to look for jobs, sometimes toying with the idea of returning full time, sometimes part time, but I was always looking. I was a stay at home mom because that is what I thought I should do for my kids, and because I was afraid to do anything else, for a variety of reasons, but there was always a significant part of me that was looking for a way out of my stay at home momness.

I worried that I wasn't holding up my end of the family money train. I worried that others thought I wasn't contributing to society. I worried that I would never be able to get another job. I frequently felt like I wasn't a real person because I didn't go to work on a daily basis. I missed feeling like I was doing something important to other people. I was afraid of losing the identity of being a teacher; an identity that was important to me and I felt gave me value as a person. Probably my biggest stress of all was worrying about how I would fill each day. How would I keep from being bored silly, and how would I keep my kid(s) occupied without them depending on me for amusement/entertainment every millisecond of the day? And how would I keep from being lonely? The lonely fear was especially intense toward the end of the first six months of parenthood, when a lot of "stay at home moms" suddenly became "moms whose maternity leave was ending" and again when friends would move away for various reasons, and especially when one particular stay at home mom moved across the country (damn those Phd husbands).

But here it is the beginning of August, Samuel is three, Shira is one, I have entered my fourth year of "stay at home momming" and for the first time, I find that I have no interest in looking for teaching or counseling positions. I have been reading Facebook posts from former colleagues about how they will be returning to school, and for the first time since I became a teacher, I am not returning to school in any capacity. And for the first time, I have no desire to.

I like being home with my kids. No, I love spending each day with Samuel and Shira. We're certainly not at home much, so that description doesn't really fit, and I don't just like it, there is nothing else I would rather be doing. I used to feel like I was holding my breath until I could send Samuel and Shira to preschool full time and I could return to work without guilt. Now I am trying to figure out how I can rationalize NOT going back to work way past kindergarten. Even crazier? I don't give a crap about what anyone thinks about it. (Well, you know, except my awesome husband).