Bearing the title of “mom” requires a certain set of specialized skills like patience and selflessness. Many days we all tread a fine line between wanting to rip all of our hair out or take a 20 hour nap, and some days we just want to do both. If being a mom has taught me anything it’s that it’s perfectly appropriate from time to time to feel like locking yourself in a closet to get away from the chaos that is motherhood. It has also taught me about wine aka “mom juice”. There is no denying that momming is a 24/7 ‘job’. There is no paid vacation, no sick days, holidays, or lunch breaks hell you might not even get a pee break some days. I cannot count the number of times I have sat in the bathtub with a set of little beady eyes just staring me down. Its almost like going into the bathroom is their cue to suddenly have to poop, or need a snack, a new movie, or to develop a strong desire for you to snuggle them and read them a bedtime story.

Not only does being a mom mean pretty much no time to yourself but it also comes with overwhelmingly terrifying qualifications including but not limited to: loving your child more than yourself, putting your child’s needs ahead of your own, a willingness to make sacrifices for your child like giving them the last piece of your donut, a willingness to miss out on many hours of sleep at night (I have calculated that I am approximately 3 years behind in sleep), a willingness to feel and look like a character from the walking dead on a regular basis (one of the dead ones), a willingness to clean up vomit, urine and poop on the regular, an openness to consuming excessive amounts of caffeine, a willingness to feel terrified every time your child leaves the house, a willingness to be in a constant state of worry about whether or not you are raising them to be decent human beings and that you are making the right choices. One choice that I have personally found most difficult was the choice to go back to work. I continue to carry an immense sense of guilt over this choice and if you too are a working mom and that guilt also rears its ugly head at you, I want you to know you are not alone.

My first child was only one week old when I went back to school full time and my second child was 3 months old when I went back to shift work fulltime. I have often felt like I was betraying my children every time I dropped them off to their babysitter at 7 in the morning so I could go to work, or every time they had to sleep in a different bed, in a different home because mommy had to go to work over night. Being a working mom means a lot of things, for me it means missing out on school field trips, missing out on kissing a “boo-boo” all better because they fell down on the playground at daycare. It means judgment from colleagues for missing ANOTHER day of work because your kid is sick AGAIN or having to leave work early because the teacher called and your child cut his foot on a rock during the school field trip that you couldn’t attend. It means going to work absolutely exhausted because your child was up at 3am because he peed the bed or had a nightmare and couldn’t go back to sleep. It means waking up an hour earlier than you would normally have to because you have to get two other humans ready for school too and try to get out the door on time, and I assure you it’s nothing short of a miracle if you actually do get out the door on time. It means being late for work, often or if you’re like me every single day. It means never being home to get them off the bus from school. It means crying in your car every single day after you drop your child off at daycare because they were wailing for you not to leave them there. It means rushing around after to work to prepare supper, make lunches, do homework and get them ready for bed and then realizing you really didn’t get to spend any time with them at all.  It means that someone else might get to spend more time with them than you do. It means trying to fit everything you want to do with them in a two day weekend while simultaneously cleaning the house, buying groceries, and doing the laundry because that’s all the time you have. It means feeling guilty for ever wanting to do anything without them. And just to add a little salt to the wound not only am I a working mom I am also a nurse so for me and many other wonderful shift working moms there are added unique sacrifices like missing the glint in your child’s eye as they wake up on Christmas morning to see the toys that Santa left behind. It means missing birthdays, bedtimes, supper times, first steps, first days of school, thanksgiving dinners, trick or treating, and many, many weekends.

And although I’ve been doing this all of their lives, to this day I continue to feel guilt over the fact that I choose to go to work everyday over spending everyday with them. I especially feel guilty when I have to miss a cross country meet, recognition awards and school field trips. And I’m honestly not sure if it ever gets easier or if when I am older I will regret working and wish I could have stayed home more but what I do know is this. I am a role model for my children. For as long as they live they will continue to look to me for guidance and because of this I need to be someone that they can look up to. Working has instilled a sense of accomplishment in me that allows me to be a better role model and I have worked really, really hard to get to where I am at in my life. I am incredibly proud of my accomplishments. My children both watched me go through school and finish my degrees while simultaneously taking care of them and working at the same time. So when I think of this, I realize that although the sacrifices have been huge, all along I was showing them that you can accomplish any goal or dream if you work hard enough. By being a working mom I am teaching them about gender equality and showing them that women can be providers too. I am teaching them that it’s important to show up even when you don’t feel like it, in hopes of instilling in them a strong work ethic. I am teaching them to acquire a sense of independence away from me.  Not to mention going to work actually makes me a better mom because I cherish the time that I do have with them and never take it for granted. I do hope that one day they will be able to look back on these days and understand that I did it all FOR them. And in no way am I trying to minimize the role of the stay at home mom, I seriously respect you moms because I know it isn’t easy but staying home has never been an option for me and though there were many times I wished I could be a stay at home mom I knew deep down that It wouldn’t bring me any more happiness. There is a lot of isolation that comes with staying at home I found even just from being on maternity leave and I needed adult interaction for my own sanity.

All I can hope is that one day my children are proud of my accomplishments in the same way that I am and I hope that they understand that even though I had to work, at the end of the day I never stopped being their mom, and that I did the best that I could. And to the other working moms out there living with the same guilt that I carry around with me, I hope that you can find solace in the fact that you are not alone.

Alysia

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