Work

In the past year, I've lived three separate and distinct lives.  Until February 19th, I lived the happy life of a young wife, working full time, ready to start a family, and living independently in a house with her husband.  From February 19th to October 6th, I lived the life of a pregnant widow, living back at home with her parents, still working full time, trying everything to have a healthy pregnancy while also dealing with the extreme grief and emotional stress of losing a spouse.  Since October 6th, I've been living the life of a new single mother, very much dependent on her family, still living at home with her parents, learning to be the provider and caretaker for her daughter all hours of the day while on maternity leave.  At the end of this month, yet another new life will start for me- one in which I return to work.  I have been dreading this day for many months now, but the closer the day gets the more I begin to panic.

I think most new mothers struggle with this time - after weeks of being at home with a beautiful new baby, the thought of being away from that child for forty plus hours a week is tough.  Most women who plan to be mothers venture into motherhood with a plan - either they choose to become working mothers or stay at home mothers, and there are passionate feelings connected with that decision.  I always expected that I would be a working mom, for many reasons.  As a young woman, the idea of staying at home with kids all week never appealed to me.  I always expected I would be too career-minded to be a full time mother, and that I'd have a job that I loved and wouldn't want to leave behind.  By the time having children became a reality for me though, my opinion had changed a bit.  I like my job, but I can't say I love it enough to be desperate to go back.  When Ryan and I started planning to have children, I started to see the drawbacks of working in my current situation.  I work 8:30-5:00 every day, some Saturdays, some evenings, depending on workload.  Ryan definitely would have been home with the kids more than me, and I worried about him having the chance to get closer to them than I would.  I've often wished that my job had more flexibility, or the opportunity to work from home, but it just doesn't work like that.

With all of that in mind, Ryan and I discussed our options frequently.  My own mother was a working mom, so that was my model.  Ryan's, however, was a stay at home mom, and he thought that was the best thing for a family.  His preference was that we not put our kids in day care, that I stay home, and that he provide for us.  But, he recognized that financially that might not have been possible.  For my part, the more I thought about it, the more staying home sounded like a good idea - I could use the time to reassess my own career and future, and maybe take some online classes.  We never really made a firm decision about what we were going to do.  I remember us having a conversation about it around a year ago, before I was pregnant, and Ryan said that once I got pregnant we'd have nine months to figure it out.  Not having a more specific plan gave me all kinds of anxiety.  When I did get pregnant, in the little bit of time we had to talk about it, we thought that I would take all of the time off I was allowed, and then see how I felt about returning.  I could have even gone back to work for a month, then decided it wasn't for me and changed course.  It was all very fluid, and I felt that I had options and support in my decisions.  Ryan told me over and over again how he would support whatever choice I made, and that whatever I did, we would make it work.

Now though, I feel as though I have no choices, no options, and I feel trapped by my circumstances.  I felt this for months before Sophie came, as the reality of my situation sank in.  Any option that I had to be a stay at home mom has evaporated.  If I want to regain my independence, and for Sophie and I to one day have a place of our own, I absolutely need to work full time.  Even if I wanted to stay living with my parents, I probably would still need to work full time for healthcare alone.  In one way, I know am very lucky- many single mothers would need to be concerned about the cost of childcare, and the difficulty of leaving their child with a stranger.  I have the best childcare that money can't buy- two loving grandmothers who probably wouldn't allow me to use daycare even if money wasn't a concern.  I have the fortune to be able to leave Sophie with people who know her, love her, and will give her what is probably better care than I could provide if I were at home, since they both have many years of experience.  But, I do have to leave her.  I have to commute many miles, work all day five days a week, lose valuable bonding time, and miss milestones.  Though I very likely would have done this even if Ryan were here,  the difference is that I would have been making a conscious decision to do so.  Now I am doing so out of necessity.  My lack of options is disheartening, and it's very difficult for me to see a bright spot on the horizon.  All I can see right now is how bright the horizon would have been in my old life.

How on earth am I going to manage being a single working mother?  When Sophie keeps me up late at night, I pace the floor and struggle to imagine how I would manage if I had to be at work the next day.  In the first few weeks of Sophie's life, the "how am I going to do this" was only a distant worry; I had twelve weeks to work it out.  Now though, I'm down to three weeks.  I don't know how I'll be able to work an eight hour day, with a twenty mile commute each way, on three hours of sleep.  I already can see how stressed out I'll get in the middle of the night when she's not sleeping, and I know my chance to sleep is ticking away.  I'll do this middle of the night stuff alone.  I don't have a husband to hand her off to so that I can sleep a couple of hours.  I do have my mother, who has been my savior, but I can't help feeling bad waking her.  I also don't have Ryan to offer support when I'm losing my mind that I'm feeding Sophie for the third time in two hours, or to commiserate with when we are both dead tired in the morning and both have to face a day of work.  It's not that I have no support; it's that I don't have the support I need.

I'm worried about plenty of other things too.  When I leave her, will she start to become closer to her grandparents than she is to me?  Everyone tells me no, but I can't help thinking about it.  Will I miss the first time she rolls over, or crawls, or walks?  I'm bound to miss something, but then, I suppose most mothers do, even  stay at home moms.  How will I manage everything I have to do in the few hours I'll have to do it?  I already have a tough time getting things done in a day, things like laundry, paying my bills, running errands, everything seems to take forever to get done right now.  On top of that, I'm trying to clean out my house, sell it, and find a home for Ryan's possessions.  I have a hard time imagining, once I add in a forty hour work week, how I will get done everything I have to do, plus spend quality time with Sophie.  That's all not to mention finding time for other pleasures: hobbies, a social life, exercise, relaxation.  It's daunting on my best days, insurmountable on my worst.

I'm admittedly a worrier, and I always have been.  Hopefully things won't be as bad as I'm afraid they will be.  It's undeniable though that I face a lot of challenges, challenges that I wouldn't face or that would be easier to face if I had a partner.  And knowing that, what I've lost, what I'm missing, sometimes it's so oppressive that I feel like I can't even lift my head up, I just want to lie in bed and cry.  That, of course, is not an option (not a viable one at least), so I have to talk myself into believing that there is a light, if not on the horizon, then over it somewhere, that will eventually come into view.