Wow. One!?
–by Carla
This time last year, I was praying that I wouldn’t have a Halloween baby. I was due on November 2nd, which is the husband’s birthday and that would have been super, just not a Halloween baby. As luck would have it, baby #2 hadn’t arrived and I was able to take my (then) 20-month-old trick-or-treating on what ended up being his last night as an only child. Talk about bitter-sweet.
Dean was born less than 9 hours after this picture was taken. My baby boy turns 1 this weekend and as much as I cannot believe that, I also cannot believe that I survived the past year. Ok, that sounds maybe a little more dramatic than it needs to sound, but not by much. MAN what a year it’s been.
I mean, the little guy was literally 5 weeks old (and Big Brother was just 20 months old) when I was laid off from my Dallas radio news anchor job…and started my new life as a SAHM (Stay-At-Home-Mom), a job I had always wanted, just never quite like that. When I was laid off and baby Dean was just 5 weeks old, we all already knew about the recession. The economy had been falling apart for a few months. In fact, I remember being on maternity leave (early mat leave, at that) and thinking, “I’m going to lose my job”. Part of me knew it was coming. And when I got that phone call asking me to come into the office on the last day of my maternity leave, well I just knew.
Since I had always wanted to be a SAHM, you’re probably thinking, “Well, she got what she wanted, so what’s the big deal already?”. It’s a little more complicated. For the year and a half that I was a working mom with my first son, I woke up each and every day (at 2:30am, worked 8hrs, was back home to be “Mommy” for the next 8hrs because we didn’t do daycare) cursing everything and everyone. I hated the situation and I felt trapped and miserable and unable to get back on track. Not everyone agreed with my desire to stay home and raise a family. So for a solid year…one entire year…day in and day out…365 days…I woke up hating life and being very resentful of the situation. Now granted, I’m a big girl. I could have walked into my boss’s office and given my 2 week notice at any time but I was scared. I had no support for that. I honestly thought we would lose everything, like I was led to believe. So I sucked it up every single day, I sucked it up and tried my very best to be the very best radio news anchor I could be, trying with everything I had not to let the listener know how miserable I really was.
When we found out we were expecting our second son, I was thrilled beyond words and this time it was going to be different. I started to rewire my brain at that very instant. I didn’t want the next pregnancy and maternity leave and birth experience to be tainted by the same bitter feelings that overshadowed my previous pregnancy. So I said, “enough!”.
It took a lot of work to mentally retrain myself to become a working mom and enjoy life again. It was a process that took around 6 months. I didn’t want to waste another minute being miserable. It’s also tough to go through a process like that when you have no role models. That was another hitch in my get-along. There are no working moms in my family. I come from a long line of women who are crafty and are awesome cooks and raise babies and that’s all I’ve ever known.
As far as I knew, I’d do the career thing for a while (and what an amazing career I’ve had. I feel so blessed), then I’d step back when it came time for family. Right?
Back to the retraining process. Like I said, it was pretty quick. By the time Deano got here, I was ready to go back to work. I literally wanted to go home from the hospital the very next day (a no-drug, natural birth gave this girl a crazy amount of self confidence). I wanted to get back to work. Physically, I felt amazing. Nothing like how I felt less than 2 years ago when Donald was born…when it took me 6 months to walk without being in pain. This time around, I was up and doing chores and ready to take on the world. I wanted to get back to work because this time I had something to prove. “You want me to work? Ok, here we go….full speed ahead..let’s do this!” It’s almost hard to put into words how pumped I was about it…and at the same time, it shows the real power of the human spirit when you put your mind to something.
Then of course, the rest is history. Layoff. Change of plans. Rewire brain again! But looking back on this past year with 2 kids, I can honestly say (despite the not so great days, weeks, etc) that this has been the most amazing time of my life. Balancing a new and very trimmed down budget (We didn’t lose everything, after all. Amazing how that works), with all the new responsibilities at home, like 100% of the cooking, cleaning, child care, etc. has been challenging, but I love a challenge. Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like had I been able to stay home with son #1 and ease into this crazy SAHM life, but I also firmly believe that God has a plan for everything and this was part of His plan.
Happy 1st Birthday, Deano, my little mini-me. You light up my heart…you and your big brother. I love you both more than life itself.
And finally, this quick bit of housekeeping: To the bitter old fool who once said that SAHMoms were getting a “free ride”…I say this: try it for a week and get back to me.
