Becoming A Stay At Home Mom Has Been the Greatest Blessing
Becoming a stay at home mom was never something I dreamt of being..
Being a stay at home mom was never something that I saw myself doing or becoming. I had a job before I turned 16 and worked through my senior year of high school and right after. I didn’t go to college; I went straight to a factory job working 5 days a week.
Being a SAHM wasn’t my plan in life, it wasn’t something that I dreamt of doing.
I’ve never even heard the term stay at home mom.
When I met my now fiancé at my job, we moved in together after about 4 months of dating and decided to have a baby 2 months after moving in together. I went back to work 8 weeks postpartum, and everything went on as it was.
We were fortunate enough to never have to pay for a babysitter or send our baby to daycare. Between my parents, his mom and other family members, childcare was taken care of, and we knew our babies would be okay.
But we knew we wanted more…
We knew there was more..
But what was a stay at home mom?
I’ve never really heard of moms staying home to raise their babies. I grew up going to a babysitter when my parents worked. I had no idea staying home with your kids and not working was even a thing.
After having our first baby we knew there were going to be times where one of us wouldn’t be able to go to work.
We knew there was going to be times where one of us would have to leave work or call off because our family couldn’t watch the baby a day.
There would be times where he would be sick, and we would have to stay home.
We didn’t want our kids to grow up and hit milestones with other people watching them. Why should someone else help raise our babies even though we were thankful for every single person who was there for us.
Leaving earlier for work to take him where he was going for the day and getting home later then we wanted.
Was going to work 5/6 days a week for 8-10 hours a day worth not seeing your baby grow up?
Once our kids started school, we thought about who would get them on and off the bus. Who would be the one to leave work if we got a call saying they were sick or needed picked up early? What about those days off during the year and summer break.
Did we really want to see our family catching those first steps, or saying his first word? We didn’t want someone else teaching him his colors, numbers and singing songs to him all day or handle potty training.
Eventually going to work every morning was hard. I would cry mornings before work, and I was calling off more than normal.
I eventually went part time at my job.
And then we got pregnant with our second baby.
Being pregnant made going to work 10x harder.
Talk of me becoming a stay at home mom was more frequent, and it really didn’t seem possible at the time. We struggled with me only working PT, how would we make it if I didn’t work at all?
It seemed like all it would be, was a dream. All the talk about raising my kids at home, not having to worry about who’s going to watch my kids each day or having to call off because one of them is sick.
After talking about me staying home and raising our babies, an opportunity came to us and my fiancé got hired at an oil company. Making it possible for me to quit my job completely and become a stay-at-home mom.
August of 2011 is when I became a stay-at-home mom. That year I became the one thing that both of us wanted for our little family. I became as stay at home mom.
It was no longer just a dream and a thought.
It became our reality.
I was now the thing that I’ve never heard of and didn’t even know there was a name for when we first started talking about it.
While there were struggles at first and a lot of things I had to learn and do on my own because he worked basically for the both of us, I am so glad we were fortunate enough for this time.
Becoming a stay at home mom has been hard, frustrating, lonely, depressing, and the absolute most difficult thing I have ever done….
But almost 14 years later, I would do it 100 times over again!
