From Stay at Home Mom to Working Mom

This past week has been one of the toughest of my life. Last Thursday I made the transition from stay at home mom to working mom. From the beginning of my maternity leave I was dreading this day and to be honest, I have spent the past few weeks wallowing in self pity over it. No one can prepare you for how difficult it is to leave your child everyday. I think it may have been easier if I went back sooner, but when you spend everyday of 18 weeks with your baby, you get very used to it. Now, I have to count myself VERY lucky because I have a saint of a mother who watches Reese. Everyday I know Reese is in extremely capable hands, but it is still so hard to be away all day. This has given me such a respect for working moms. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that being a stay at home mom is easy. It is absolutely NOT! It is very difficult to juggle a house and baby. It leaves you completely exhausted by the end of the day. However, now being someone who has done both the stay at home thing and the working thing, let me tell you, the working thing is SO much more difficult. Lets run through my day....

1. go to sleep around 10pm
2. wake up between 1:00am and 2:00am to feed Reese
3. wake up at 5:00am to feed Reese
4. shower and get ready
5. Get to work by 7:00am
8. 8:00am pump
9. 11:00am pump
10. eat lunch while I work 11:30 am
11. use my 1 hour lunch break to work out at 12:30pm
12. 2:00pm pump
13. leave work at 4:00pm to fight through traffic
14. pick Reese up at 5:00pm (probably feed her at my mom's)
15. Run home and help Chris put dinner together while entertaining Reese at the same time
16. play with Reese non-stop until she is sleepy (I've been gone all day after all!)
17. Give Reese a bath, read her a story and off to bed
18. get all my stuff ready for the next day and have about an hour of alone time before off to bed again!

Reading this makes me tired! All I an think about all day is being able to see Reese. Then when I get home all I want to do is play with her and be with her. Half the time I feel so exhausted that I don't feel like I get to enjoy it as much as I would like because I am about to fall asleep! Being a working mom is the hardest thing I have ever done. But right now, I know it is the right thing for us and I try and keep a very positive attitude about it (I am sure Chris is rolling his eyes if he is reading this!). So once again I get to deal with something new. I am sure it will get easier as time goes on, but for now it's still fresh. I know I even have it easy compared to many out there. I can't imagine being a single mom, or a mom working 2 jobs. I work for a great company, make good money and get to be with my family every night. So believe me, I am not all negative, but it still doesn't make it easy. I just have to learn to maximize all the time I do get to spend with my family and not to take it for granted! So here is to all the working moms out there!