Day 3 (music: The Clash)

Day 3: Something I have to forgive myself for.

I could be real glib with this and say "every mistake I've ever made," but I think that that would be a cop-out. This requires some thought, and I've been putting it off for a half hour now - chatted a little on Facebook, changed the way this blog looks. Time to bear down.

Secretly, I've felt extremely guilty about not being more into the idea of the whole stay-home mom thing. I've given it several shots - two maternity leaves, three layoffs...honestly, I suck at it.

When Matthew was still small and I was still getting used to this sea change in my life, I was enamored with the idea of being a stay-home mom. How wonderful to be there every single moment of my son's day! I could watch every single new development!

I like to say I was a stereotypical "new mom," but here's the thing. I was an extremely paranoid new mom. I called poison control once because I was scared I'd overdosed Matthew on Mylicon by giving him his second dose 2 minutes early. I felt panicky and tight-throated every time someone else held him. The nightmares I had were ridiculous, and ones I can still picture clearly today. The first time I left him with a non family sitter to go to work, I sobbed all the way to Charlevoix and actually had to pull over a couple times. So I would say that that goes a little beyond "stereotypical."

I got pregnant with Jonah when Matthew was 6 1/2 months old. Yes, the boys are 16 months apart. (I went 17 days overdue with Jonah.) I worked right up until nine days before I had him. Because of the c-section and some complications while I was healing, I had to take two months off rather than six weeks. By the time Jonah came along, I was much more relaxed with the whole parenting a newborn/infant thing, and during the last week of leave, I realized something:

I wanted to go back to work.

I did not want to be home every minute of every day.

I love my boys, fiercely, intensely, deeply. I would kill anyone who hurt them maliciously. I'm their mother, I carried them in my body, I nursed them, I labored and delivered them. Why didn't I want to be around them 24/7?

I took a good, long, hard look at the situation. I was getting stir-crazy. I craved adult companionship, responsibilities limited to my job alone, talk that wasn't "oh good job, yay!" and constant positivism. I knew I was a better mom when I worked - I brought money into the household, I had the emotional kick of knowing I was helping provide for our family, and I got a break every once in a while.

Still, that instinctive gut part of me hated me for that. It hated the fact that I could even look at the facts distanced from all emotion. That I could crunch numbers and not automatically be swayed by my kids' faces. That I could be selfish enough to admit that yes, I needed to be out of the house for so many hours every week or I was going to go insane.

It made me feel...defective. Like less of a mom, somehow.

This is something I've never talked about before - the feeling like I was less of  a mom for working. And for a while I tried assuaging the gut-reaction guilt by buying the kids toys or clothes or books with every single paycheck. It's something I'm still working through.

I need to forgive myself for needing a break from my children four or five days a week. Because I'm a better mom for it, and isn't that the important thing?