Can SAHMs Quit?

I ran into a friend at the playground who mentioned that her neighbor had recently quit her job as a lawyer to stay home with her 2 small kids. I found this interesting. You always hear people say, “Oh, I wish I could stay home with my kids.” But what about the other way around? How often do you hear a stay-at-home mom say, “I wish I could go back to work”?

Obviously, I know moms who stayed home for a while and then went back to their old jobs. To me, that’s more like extended maternity leave. I’m talking about people who have every intention of being a SAHM but change their minds and go look for a job. People who say, “You know what? I was wrong. This isn’t for me. My kids are far better off in daycare, and I’d rather go to an office everyday than play one more game of Candyland.”

‘Cause the thing is, I’m kind of leaning that way. Yup. I admit it. As I’ve said many times here, I never had the intention of being either a full-time work-outside-the-home mom or a 100% SAHM. I hate labels. And I sort of thought I could straddle the fence, have the best of both worlds as a work-at-home writer.

And for awhile, I did. Between preschool, a sitter, and my son’s 2-hr. naps, I had a decent chunk of time to devote to my freelance work -- until my second son was born last winter. Then, the balance tipped. This baby’s fussier. My husband changed jobs. The economy tanked. My toddler stopped napping. The sitter didn’t have room for an infant. All of a sudden, I’ve found myself to be less and less a WAHM and more and more a SAHM. (There are those labels again…)

And I gotta say, I’m not loving it. Partly, we’re in a hard stage because the baby’s still napping 2-3x/day and my 3 y.o. wants to get up and go every day. (I tell him all the time, “We’re not going anywhere this morning. No playdates, no parks, no Target, sorry. Sometimes we just STAY HOME.” BTW, how ironic is it that SAHMs rarely stay home?) So the 2 ages are tough.

And partly, I’m worried about money and germs. Huh? What I mean is, we really don’t need to be going to Chick-fil-A or Target or the mall every day, just to get out of the house. I’m not that into recreational spending. Not when that money could be used for a sitter! But the free places – the library, the gym, storytimes – are germ fests. What do YOU think people do with their kids all day when they’re too sick for school? Not all of them stay home, I’ll tell you that!

A lot of my friends are similarly germophobic right now, so that also means fewer playdates. (Coupled with the fact that some preschools are Mon.-Wed.-Fri. and others are Tue.-Thurs., plus factor in siblings’ naptimes and schedules, good luck EVER finding a time that works for both of you!)

So that means I’m stuck in the house a LOT with 2 kids with very different needs who both need a LOT from me, and very LITTLE time to devote to work or writing or seeing my friends or any of my other interests. (If you think I could be doing that stuff at night, you’ve obviously never spent a day with 2 energetic kids who wake up at 5:30 a.m. and keep going full throttle till 8 p.m.)

Plus, my husband and I are totally in that “ships passing in the night” phase. (“You take Miles to gym class and I’ll stay home with Riley. Then we’ll switch so I can run to the grocery store and you can put the baby down for his nap. But first, let’s synchronize our watches!”)

It all adds up to a not very balanced life. Which is why I’ve been daydreaming about daycare lately.

There is this, though: I had Miles’ parent-teacher conference the other day. He got a glowing report. And I left with a glowing feeling. After all, I’ve been home with him for 3.5 years, so I deserve SOME credit, right?

LINK O’ THE WEEK: Hybrid Mom, the print magazine, and HybridMom.com have the right approach for label-shunners like me. Recognition that moms are a lot of different things. Plus, I love their tagline: “Mother your ambitions.”

RECALL O’ THE WEEK: Maclaren is recalling 1M strollers, due to a possible finger-amputation risk. Super.

New-Mom Amnesia

What’s that? Did somebody say something? I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you. There’s a baby screaming in my ear. I also can’t smell anything, since I have a sinus infection and no use of my nostrils. At this point, I’m lucky I can still see through my puffy, half-shut eyes. Who needs all 5 senses, anyway?

As if that’s not enough, here’s another thing to make a new mom crazy: conflicting advice. I ran into my neighbor at the park yesterday, and she mentioned she had a 6-week-old niece. So we started comparing notes, and here’s what I found out:

• While my pediatrician insists the optimal indoor temperature for a newborn is between 70 and 72 degrees, her sister’s doctor claims that babies need to be kept in a cool room.
  

• While my baby wakes up every couple of hours demanding to be fed and won’t sleep longer than 2 hours at a time, her niece sleeps so long she has to be woken up to eat.
  

• While her niece rarely cries, my baby cries intermittently around the clock for no apparent reason. Is he cold? Hot? Hungry? Gassy? Damned if I know.
  

Besides the general cluelessness that goes along with having a new baby, here are some other Things I’d Forgotten:

• That newborns nurse 8-10 times a day, 2-4 hours apart, and that each feeding can take an entire hour by the time you do both boobs, burp and change the baby. So THAT’S what I do all day, in case you’re wondering.
  
  
• The wide variety of bodily fluids that are part of a new mom’s day.
  
  
• The laundry; my WORD, the laundry!
  
  
• The random, inconsolable fits of crying, usually around dinnertime. (By the baby.)
  
  
• The random, inconsolable fits of crying, at any time of day. (By me.) Those hormones are a bitch, I tell ya.
  
  
• That satiny, silky newborn skin. (That is, until the baby acne erupts.)
  
  
• That fuzzy, wuzzy newborn head. (Cradle cap notwithstanding.)
  
  
• How heavy that infant car seat is, no matter how small the infant you’re carrying in it is.

And yet, since this is my second child, there are also a whole new set of issues. Here’s What’s Different This Time Around:

• I don’t bolt out of bed at every noise the baby makes during the night. Just every third noise.
  
  
• Forget sleeping when the baby sleeps when there’s a 2-year-old around.
  
  
• I don’t change the baby’s diaper and outfit the minute they get dirty. What’s the rush?
  
  
• I can let the baby cry for a minute or two without feeling like my heart is being torn out with rusty grill tongs.
  
  
• I have no choice but to let the baby cry sometimes; say, when my older son yells, “Mom! I need help on the potty!” or “Is that smoke?”
  
  
• Whereas last time I had taken several hundred pictures of the baby by this point, I have gone entire days without photographing my second child.
  

Hey, do you hear that? It’s the sound of … silence. Either that or I’ve gone deaf.

LINK O’ THE WEEK: Constant product recalls. Add that to the list of what makes a new mom crazy. The latest is drop-side cribs. Read this, too.

Worst-Case Scenario

I once read somewhere that the best way to deal with irrational fears and anxieties is to walk yourself through the absolute worst-case scenario you can imagine. The theory being, I guess, that once you see how ridiculous and unlikely it is that that scenario will occur, your fears will subside. OK, let’s give it a shot!

I am afraid that I will go into labor suddenly and early. Like, say, in the middle of Target. I can’t decide if it’s worse if it happens in public or when I’m by myself, but either way I’m afraid it will happen during rush hour when my husband’s at work over an hour away. Maybe, to add to the horror, my water will break and gush all over, causing my shoes to squish when I walk, as happened to my friend L.H.

[Perhaps I should make this a choose-your-own-adventure story: “You are in a very long line at the supermarket. Your water breaks. Then...

A) Your toddler son, who is with you, takes off down the candy aisle and refuses to listen to your increasingly urgent pleas to follow you out of the store.

B) You run out into the parking lot and discover you’ve locked your keys and cell phone in the car.

C) You forget entirely about your toddler son, who is waiting alone and un-mittened outside his preschool in the snow.]

Never mind, that’s too hard. So, anyway, I’m afraid I will be caught unprepared and alone (I just decided that’s worse) in sudden labor. Even though last time I was in labor for a bazillion hours and it took me DAYS to get to 10 cm, this time I’m sure I’ll be like one of those women you hear about who give birth in the back of a taxi. I won’t have time to wait for my husband, to arrange childcare for my son, or to get an epidural.

Also, I’m afraid that if I go early, I won’t even have had a chance to pack my bag for the hospital or install the infant car seat. There I’ll be, with my poor little taxi-cab newborn, shivering and dressed in rags. Or at least in an unflattering hospital gown.

In my worst-case scenario, my husband gets stuck in traffic, or maybe with a flat tire, I can’t reach anyone on my I’m-in-labor phone tree, and I’m forced to leave Miles with our scary neighbor. He is subsequently scarred for life and forever associates the birth of his sibling with being abandoned by Mommy. No amount of therapy can cure this.

As for me -- if I do make it to the hospital, that is -- I get stuck again with the mean midwives who tell me I’m “pushing wrong” and no one to hold my hand or feed me ice chips. Worse, someone has got the radio tuned to an easy-listening station (Kenny Loggins – aahhh!!!) and I’m too parched to protest.

Then, if and when the baby is finally born, since my husband is still MIA and I’m out of commission, one of the nurses will randomly assign the baby a name and my child will be forever branded “Walter” on his birth certificate.

As you can tell, I have plenty of irrational fears and anxieties about the impending birth of my second child. And in fact, instead of putting me at ease, this little exercise has stirred up some new ones. What if a mean and/or incompetent doctor is on call that night? What if they discover at the last minute that I’m actually having twins? What if they mix up the charts at the hospital and in a case of mistaken identity I get deported to Mexico and never see my babies again??

Clearly, the person who came up with this “worst-case scenario” exercise did not have someone like me in mind.

RECALL O’ THE WEEK: Did you all know the peanut butter recall includes Clif Bars, Lara Bars, Luna Bars, Famous Amos and Keebler cookies? Check out the growing list of recalled foods here.

LINK O’ THE WEEK: Our good friends’ 11-mo.-old son badly burned himself on an artificial fireplace at a friend’s house. The doctors said tons of kids come in with 3rd-degree burns this time of year because the glass fronts of gas fireplaces can reach 400+ degrees. Here’s some more info to help you protect your kids.