What It's Like To Be A Working Mom
I'm so excited to be continuing on our series My Motherhood Style. Up this week, we have a piece from Samantha of Praying for 2 Lines . Samantha brings a very different perspective from our previous post from a SAHM. What is the same is regardless how we spend our days, the overwhelming love we have for our children is the same. Enjoy!
~ Desirae
What It’s Like to Be a Working Mom
When the girls were almost six weeks old, I donned my business casual, packed up my briefcase and my pumping bag, and went back to work.
As is common in the United States, I had no paid maternity leave (my company actually offers two paid weeks but I didn’t meet the length of employment requirements). While I could have taken 12 weeks of unpaid leave, my income is > 50% of our family income and we hadn’t stowed that kind of cash away to support me staying at home unpaid. I was lucky to have the girls born at the very end of a calendar year and during the holidays. Piecing together two years of vacation time, holiday time and sick time, I came to exactly 28 paid days off. So at 5 weeks and 6 days old, I left my girls and went back to work.
I didn’t cry the day I went back to work. I didn’t even think about the girls the whole day while I was gone (gasp!). I’m just not an emotional person. I started my day off with some meetings, got assigned some new projects and spent most of the day immersed in the creation of excel spreadsheets. I love what I do. Before I knew it, the whole day had passed. I went home, spent my evening with the girls (and night since they were still too young to be sleeping through the night) and got up the next day to do it again.
On the Friday of that first week, the head of the company called me into his office and apologized that I had not received the two weeks paid leave. It hadn’t really occurred to him that I wouldn’t get it, and even though I was just shy of meeting the employment length requirements, he wanted to make an exception and give it to me anyways. He said I could use it right then or use it like the vacation time I had substituted and take off later in the year. Well I had already done a whole week back at work and adjusted to that routine. It didn’t feel like delaying the inevitable for two more weeks was going to be that beneficial. So, I told him I was very appreciative and that I would use it later in the year (yay for two beach vacations in 2017!) So just like that, I became a full-time working mom.
I will say I have it a lot easier than most full-time working moms. For one, I get to work from home one day a week. In the beginning, this extra nursing day was critical to my continued success at breastfeeding the girls.
Pumping at work and giving bottles was always a barely break-even struggle, whereas nursing followed by pumping on days I was home was my way to get back ahead a little.
As the girls have grown, balancing the working from home day has become a little trickier (I like to say I am teaching them independence on these days as I try and leave them to their own amusement), but I enjoy the extra moments with them for sure. My husband also gets occasional Fridays off for what we dub “Daddy-Daughter Days”. My mother watches the girls the other days we work. I cannot even express how invaluable this is to us. Of course there are financial benefits (I’ve done the math before on two in a decent daycare and the numbers aren’t pretty), but more than that, we like having them stay at our home with someone we know and trust and it allows us to maintain habits (like cloth diapering and baby led weaning) and a schedule that fit our lifestyle.
Our schedule is unconventional, but I think it's key to making the working mom life work for me.
We have our girls on a 10-10 sleeping schedule. So, when I go to work in the morning, the girls aren’t even close to waking up. This is one reason we value having my mom watch the girls in our home. So far, I haven’t had to experience the hectic morning hustle of getting everybody ready and out the door on time. As I work those first couple of hours, I take solace in the fact that my girls aren’t even awake yet, so I am not missing anything. At 10 am the girls’ day starts without me. They eat breakfast, play, eat lunch and go down for their nap (used to be multiple naps) without me. All-in-all they’ll only spend about 4-5 waking hours a day without me. Miraculously, I haven’t missed a single milestone.
When the girls get up from their nap at around 6 pm is about the time that I get home from work. I like getting home just before they get up so I can start dinner and then be the one to greet them at their bedroom door. I think with most toddler schedules, 6 pm is about the time dinner and bedtime preparation activities begin occurring. This would leave me with no time to spend with them during the week. But due to our 10-10 schedule, the second half of their day is just beginning when I get home. We get to spend 4 hours together every evening, which I really enjoy (more so in the summer when it’s not pitch dark out all of those 4 hours).
I love all the extra time with the girls, but it also means that I don't get me-time until after 10 pm. That can be challenging.
All chores such as laundry and cleaning wait until after 10 pm (or during weekend naps). All personal projects or quite moments such as blogging, photo editing, reading or scrolling Instagram wait until after 10 pm (or during my lunch break at work). That's a lot to fit in before I want to crash in bed myself and often leaves me up until midnight or later. Surprisingly I do okay on little sleep. I just pray this doesn't catch up with me anytime soon.
But even our unconventional schedule and Grandma watching the girls can’t help some of the shortcomings of being a working mom.
Actually as I typed this post, I was passed up for a twin group play date because “it seems that late on Friday doesn’t work with dinner and bed time with everyone [else].” Almost every opportunity I come across is during working hours. It’s deflating.
I want to offer opportunities for enrichment and socialization, but offerings on nights and weekends are limited. There’s a local hiking and nature play group that I’ve been enviously following for over a year. They meet at least once a week, but only three events in the last year have been at a time I could have made it and unfortunately on holidays that I wasn’t able to attend due to family plans.
Sometimes I question whether I should be home more. There are things I wish I could be doing with the girls that I can’t. But then I think if I was home all the time, I would go stir crazy. I think going to work is a good mental break for me. I feel like I am more focused and dedicated to mothering when I am with the girls than I would be if I was home all of the time (more power to you ladies who are with your kiddos 24/7). That being said, I'm always looking for ways to tip the scales of work/home a little more towards home. I'm always pushing for more time with the girls, more opportunities to share experiences with them. Hubby and I even tried attending a toddler gym class with the girls on our lunch break for a couple of months. That entailed waking up earlier to work extra to make up for a long lunch and driving upwards of 1 1/2 hours to go get them, bring them to the forty minute gym class, take them home and then go back to eat lunch at your desk. We couldn't stick with the schedule long term, but it just illustrates the lengths we are willing to go to get a little extra time with our girls.
Working full time and advancing my career was a no brainer before I had kids. My parents always pushed me to "excel" getting my bachelor's and master's degrees and starting in a male-dominated career field. I used to feel pride in being the breadwinner for our family. To be honest, now I feel like it has me stuck. It’s something I wish I had given more thought to long before I had kids. Like I said, I really do love my work and feel like it provides me a level of sanity, but if I had the ability, I would build even more flexibility into my work life than I am already pushing the boundaries on.
It’s a balance I am still trying to figure out.