Today, I'm feeling pretty darn maxed out. Not just maxed out, but Lucyed out, Freded out, peopled out. I am so FREAKING sick of the flack that stay at home mom's get whether it's on the television, from another woman, from a man you don't even know, to your husband's boss or even from your husband himself and if I hear one more person bash a stay at home mother I am liable to go off. I am sick of watching TV shows that make stay-at-home moms seem like they're just lazy women who sit around all day stuffing their faces and watching soap operas making their children do chores and let themselves go. I'm tired of anytime someone asks my husband what his wife does for a living, him replying, "Oh, she's a stay at home mom" to which I get laughed at and he's asked why doesn't she just get an actual job. I'm tired of my husband coming home and telling me these stories of my own life's ridicule and making me feel berated and meaningless even if he's not meaning to. I'm tired of no one standing up for the stay at home mothers.
Well, let me tell all you people who look down on stay at home mom's something or misunderstand them or whatever it is that makes you think it's okay to mock us and belittle us. We don't get a break from our job. We don't get a lunch break to eat without a toddler fighting to sit on your lap and eat half of your meal, even though he just ate his own. We don't get to go home at the end of the night to rest and regroup before another long day at the office/factory/lab/school/wherever it is you work. Heck, most of us don't even get to enjoy a nice full night of sleep before having to face our new day. Our days just blend in to the next. We don't get to have weekends off. Instead, we get to continue the same thing we did the whole other 24 hours a day for the last 5 days, but instead of just taking care of our kids, we get a whole other kid who looks like he ate four kids and behaves worse than the others and makes more of a mess whether it's shoes, dishes, laundry, blankets, facial hair in the sink, poop stains in the toilet... well, the list just goes on and on.
We do the same thing day in and day out! We get up in the morning after taking care of a crying/sick/teething/fussy baby all night. We get the kids up and ready in the morning listening to them whine and cry the whole time because they just can't run around in their dirty diaper all day. And we change diapers ALL day. We make breakfast. We clean (what feels like non-stop, in circles.) We do laundry. We organize. We entertain the kids. We make lunch. We put kids down for naps (and every once in a while take one for ourselves.) We use that nap time to try and clean some more even though once the kids get up from their naps they'll be right back at it. We plan dinner. We make dinner. We listen to the kids scream while we make dinner because they just don't understand that in order to eat and be fed, Mommy has to make the food. Try explaining that to an 18 month old. At the half point of our day, Daddy gets home from work and complains how tired he is, how hard he worked, how much his back hurts, how stressed he is and on and on while you keep running circles trying to make everyone else happy and cared for even though all you can think of is,"When's baby bedtime?" We get dinner on the table. Shoveour own food quickly into our mouth while holding/nursing a baby and stopping your toddler from throwing his food on the ceiling and listening to your husband rattle on about who knows what. Then you get up, clean up from dinner, wipe the food from your toddlers face and grubby little hands, wash the dishes all while your husband whose day was oh so hard sits down to watch the news. When you finally finish all that you whisk the kids upstairs for bath time with a sudden rush of hopeful energy and tell yourself, "We're almost there. I can see the finish line!" While you wash your sweet dirty babies who love their baths until you have rinse the shampoo from their barely there hair and then bawl their eyes out when you tell them bath times over and wrap them up in their towels with tears and snot on their freshly clean faces. You put on clean, dry diapers and pajamas and lay down with their cuddly, chubby little bodies as they claw you trying to get closer to Mommy and you sing them soft lullabies and watch the sweet dreamy faces of these little beings that you helped create as they drift off to sleep. <--- That's my favorite part. And then, it just continues until it fades in to the next day and you get to do it all over again.
Does it sound like I love my job? Because I really do. I love these babies. They are my life and my reason for getting up in the morning (literally, because who else is going to give them breakfast?)
Like all jobs, I get burned out. But unlike other jobs, I don't get paid (other than in hugs, smiles, and kisses from my sweet babies) and I don't get a break. Not at night, on the weekends, especially not on holidays. My job never stops. I never escape from it. I can't even pee in peace. And the worst thing is, after you've busted you butt all day, all night, all week, all month and so on, you get zero appreciation and told your job is so easy. I can't help but laugh at that easy part. I collapse in to bed most nights from pure exhaustion, only to be woken again two hours later by a screaming baby while my husband sleeps peacefully for the night, so don't try to tell me it's easy, but I will tell you, I live for those moments that Max and Lucy smile at me with pure joy on their faces, those moments that a baby belly laugh echoes through the house, and those moments that they cry and come to me and find comfort in my arms. Those are my other favorite parts of the day.
I love this life and it's the life I've chosen. I want to be the one my children learn from. I want the primary role and active part in their lives, not some stranger. I don't want to leave them in the care of someone who- when it really comes down to it- doesn't care about them. I love them and I want them raised in that love. They are my life... why shouldn't it be devoted completely to them?
So, next time you belittle a stay at home wife/mom, you best not say it to me, because I'm at the end of my rope listening to people look down on me and others who have chosen this path. Children are the joy of the Lord, and my babies are the joy of my heart.
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