A note of encouragement for the working mama.
It’s 10 o’clock at night and you place your dinner plate into a sink full of sippy cups and colorful plastic bowls. The oldest of your two toddlers has finally quieted down after multiple tantrums during (and after) your bedtime routine, the youngest little angel has been sound asleep for 2 hours, and the sweet baby in your womb reassures you that he’s hard at work growing for you as you feel him swimming around ever-so gently. For the 1st time today, (now that there are only 2 hours left) you feel like you can exhale. Then, you look to your right and see towels, toddler jammies, and dozens of leggings piling up on the dryer. You look to your left and there’s a well-broken in Macbook with an unread message from your manager. There can’t be much more than 30 minutes left before you crash, so do you get a head start on tomorrow’s workday, catch up on household chores, or, per usual, say “screw em both” and just go to bed?
Before I could dig into the next paragraph of my thoughts, my body chose for me. I sat my laptop down for a brief second before crashing on the couch and waking up to my husband bringing me to bed at 12:30am.
Hi, I am a working mother and this is my life right now. 😂
Sound familiar? I am blessed to know many other working mamas and while we’re all different, we are all alike in that we often feel EXHAUSTED. At times, we also feel guilty, cheated, and hopeless. “I barely get any time with my kids during the week”, “I wasn’t ready to go back to work after having the baby”, and “How can I possibly keep going?” are all thoughts I’ve pondered on many nights during those few moments before I pass out. Some days we’re able to keep a smile on our face, other days we don’t feel like hiding what we are – just tired.
As working mamas we are pulled into multiple directions and while both of our jobs are important it sometimes feels like there’s not room or enough of ourselves for both to exist at once. We wake up before everyone else to get ourselves ready for the day, sometimes after being up all night with a sick and/or nursing baby, or wrestling with the insomnia and physical discomfort that can come with pregnancy. Nevertheless, we roll out of bed and get one or more babies up and ready to conquer the day. Maybe it’s easy. Then again, maybe we have to fight with our daughter about which color shoes or which hairstyle she’ll wear today, finally giving in after 8 minutes of arguments and tantrums just isn’t worth it anymore. Or maybe we forget that all of the school uniforms are in that wrinkled pile of clothing we ignored last night, so we have to spend several minutes ironing to make it look like our minis didn’t sleep in their outfit. We somehow manage to get them to school looking presentable (or just looking decent enough) and then to the office or back home to our desk to start the workday. By now it’s 8am (or we’re running late and it’s 9am) and after the night and morning we’ve had we sometimes already feel like we’ve put in half a work day.
How will we survive the next 8 hours? Despite the sleep deprivation or emotionally draining and seemingly constant toddler drama, we’re expected to be forever-positive in our relationships with co-workers and clients. Sharing how “great” we’re doing today and being “happy to do so” when taking on that extra project that was thrown our way, when maybe we’re really not having such a great day and maybe we’d appreciate a little extra time in our day to just breathe instead of feeling like we have to take on extra work to be considered productive, contributing members of the team. Near the end or after work we either miss out on activities and events that are important to our families, or ditch work early to catch that game or recital in time (feeling guilty for asking permission to do so) and make up for the lost work time later by logging in after everyone else goes to sleep…as opposed to the hundreds of things we’d like to do for ourselves during that time instead.
We feel guilty for working long hours to help provide for our families, while not having much more than a couple of hours between the end of the work day and bed time to actually spend with our families. But for those who have been stay at home parents or considered it, there is guilt about being there for our families but not contributing to them financially. It has to be one or the other, but there’s guilt either way.
Not to mention, our bodies experience an awe-inspiring transformation before, during, and long after we bring life into the world, but after just a few short months (or for some, short weeks) to bond with these sweet babies we’ve created we are back to work, perhaps still struggling with postpartum depression, body-image issues, the constant need to nurse or pump, separation anxiety from being away from our precious newborns, feelings of inadequacy after such a long absence from our jobs, or feelings of regret about even going back to work at all. When our coworkers or managers don’t have children or they work in different time zones, we work a full-day in our own time zone, and become insulted, sometimes infuriated by a message that comes in at 6:30pm our time (or just 3:30pm their time), thinking “Why would they message me at this hour?! Don’t they know this is dinner time with my kids before I put them to bed?!! HAVE THEY NO CONSIDERATION FOR MY ROLE AS A MOTHER?! Or do they just not care?” More than likely, they probably just don’t realize what the typical schedule of a mother looks like, as we ourselves had no clue about just how much our lives would change with motherhood. They mean no harm, they just don’t know.
After the rage fades we get back to our babies, who might make us wonder why we were just standing up for them as they drive us insane with the “almost” made it to the potty accidents in the middle of the floor, the “We must find that raggedy old toy I haven’t played with in months because I really need it for bed tonight” campaigns, and the “Actually I’ve decided I don’t want to go to bed” protests. It’s now 9pm, an hour past bedtime and we celebrate clocking out of our second job of the day, which was a much shorter work day but felt far more intense, and perhaps that’s because we know with our second job there are no weekends off and there are no sick-days. The second job never ends, and thus we are always working one job or another…
At the end of that second shift, for those of us who prefer to eat in peace instead of in the midst of turmoil with the wild little dinner savages we created, it’s finally our turn to enjoy a meal, and maybe a tv show (or half of one) before we crash and wake up to do it all over again the next day. Very taxing days, with very little relief.
We are so incredibly grateful for good jobs and beautiful babies, but often so incredibly torn by how to balance them both while still making time for ourselves. Sometimes it feels like our employers, clients, and children get everything they need from us, but there is little left for the other important relationships in our lives, and nothing left for ourselves…
and then there are moments like this:
Moments when your babies remind you that even on you hardest days, you are everything they need and you were chosen just for them, so no one could ever replace you. Moments when you remember why and who you work so hard for, and how one day they will grow up to admire and thank you for it. These moments are the calm that triumph over all torrential circumstances that come before or after. Hold on to these moments, and let them fuel and encourage you on the days you fall short to get back up and keep going.
To the mamas feeling overwhelmed in the wake of so many thoughts of hopelessness and exhaustion, please know that you are not alone. The mama sighing next to you in the grocery store, disheveled behind you in the pick up line, and irritated in front of you in the Zoom meeting might not know you, but are right alongside you in this journey, and there is great comfort and strength in being a part of something bigger than yourself, among a village of others who are enduring it too. You have created life ❤️, therefore the road ahead of you is far too important to be traveled easily. New mommies, mommies of young ones, mommies of multiples, mommies with babies close in age – there are so many of us in these stages that can be quite overwhelming in the beginning, but the struggle won’t last forever! Neither will feeling like there is no time for “you” (which sometimes we just have to force, because we can’t be the best version of ourselves if we’re not taken care of as well). So when you feel like you’re not enough on the job or for your family, take a step back and consider everything you do on a daily basis with little downtime, and regardless of how you’re feeling. Write it out if you need to, and as that list gets longer and longer truly take an introspective look at yourself and how incredibly strong you have become as a person and mother now that you innately carry so much on your shoulders for your family and your team. Childbirth, sleepless nights, mental and physical health fluctuations, childcare and feeding, and getting right back to work in the midst of it all, then juggling the growth of your family with the growth of your career…seriously? You truly are QUEENS among your little princes and princesses!
So cut yourself some slack if you’re not this month’s spotlight employee or you missed an embarrassing typo in today’s presentation. Don’t stress over the fact that your kids aren’t photoshoot-worthy every day or geniuses by the age of 5. If you are doing your best day in and day out to show up to your job to help your team, and to help support your family while nurturing them as well, then it’s there, not among your shortcoming or bumps in the road, where your focus should remain. That is what counts, those are the things that matter most, and you are taking them head on every day. That is the strength that grows in you with each day of this journey. Be proud! Be encouraged, and as crazy as it sounds, enjoy the best moments of this wild ride.
For there will come a day when the tantrums fade, when there are no little messes to clean up, and when nightly routines no longer include bedtime battles with feisty little ones…before we know it, these things we feel so overwhelmed by will be yesterday’s memories and just like we quickly come to miss the sweet smell of our newborns and the toothless smiles of our growing infants, as difficult as the toddler stage can be, what I’m certain we will miss about it is the fact that during these times we were always needed and always wanted. For a moment in time, we are their world, and with that comes the big responsibilities that exhaust us now, but will leave us so grateful and appreciated for years to come.
What you are doing is a beautiful, amazing sacrifice that you are so blessed to experience. Keep going mama, you have an incredible lifetime with your family ahead of you! 😘
For more of our wild, beautiful chaos follow us on Instagram @cubsandchaos and on Facebook @cubsandchaos. 🤎
**A special note to the friends and family of those starting their own families, who have felt abandoned by these mothers (this is what I would have told the pre-mommy me who didn’t understand these things about my friends who started having babies before I did):
Please know that what you’ve read here is the reality behind the scenes for so many mamas who are just trying to figure this thing out. You are not loved any less now that your sister, daughter, cousin, or friend has children…she is just WAY more tired, with a little bit more on her plate at the moment. 😅 Some of us are superwomen and have mastered the art of balancing it all. But for those of us still getting there, in those small moments when we’re on break or clocked out of both of our jobs sometimes we really just need that time for ourselves, to decompress and recuperate so we can be the best version of ourselves when it’s time to clock back in. So give that mama some time, and if you’re wondering “what happened?”, just reach out and ask. 🙂 Chances are she misses you and would love to share her journey and talk to someone who isn’t in-need of a spreadsheet or a diaper change!
Follow my family on Instagram as we navigate the chaos of raising cubs @cubsandchaos. 🤎
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