I Am An Oxymoron...

A contradiction. I am Liberal. Religious. Spontaneous. Dependable. Traditional. Women’s Rights Advocate. I am a Modern Stay At Home Mom.

I never imagined I would be a stay at home mom (SAHM). I don’t know how many times I said, “I would never be able to be a SAHM. I’d go crazy!” Even when I was pregnant, I still planned on going back to work; on having some kind of career. I even remember one of my coworkers telling me that she could never imagine me staying at home with a child. And I agreed with her.

Then, my baby was born. Even though those first weeks were exhausting, it was wonderful! I loved being home with him and I cried the first day I took him to daycare. I was only back at work two weeks when they had company-wide layoffs. Guess what, I was one of them. I do believe that if I hadn’t gone on maternity leave, I would still have a job. Oh well, life goes on and I was able to be back at home with my little man. At least until I found another job. And I did – two weeks later. I was only at that job for maybe a month when my son developed a hyphema (hemorrhaging between the cornea and iris) in his eye. To this day we don’t know how it happened and probably never will, but the doctors said it was more than likely caused by some sort of trauma to his eye. We can speculate all we want, but we’ll never know the whole story. That was when my husband and I decided that the best thing for our son was for me to stay at home.

Do not take this post as a bash against working moms or that I think I am somehow better for being at home with my child. That is not the case at all. This was just what was best for OUR family and thankfully we were in a position where we could make it happen. I still have a twinge of jealousy when I see my working friends able to afford things that I now have to do without. Some days, I would almost welcome the ‘break’ that working gave me. I struggle to find an answer when people ask what I’m doing now. There’s nothing luxurious about being a SAHM. But then my son does something that completely amazes me – he rolls over, he crawls, he stands up, he says his first word, he takes his first step – and I know this is exactly where I’m supposed to be.

♡