Stay-at-home motherhood is easily one of the best decisions I have made in my life so far. Before becoming a SAHM, I worked in several different news environments and while I loved the atmosphere, I couldn’t wait until 5:00 p.m. when I could jump into my car and drive home to my little girl.
I always knew I wanted to be a SAHM, but it certainly has its trials and tribulations. Spending 95% of your day runing after a tiny human being that never runs out of energy really takes its toll. The constant game of tag and the neverending research for playgroups and storytime events has left me with a pretty gnarly patch of grey hairs on my head.
There are some days when I think about how different things would be if I stayed at my part-time job rather than leaving. I’m sure my sanity would have been easier to maintain. While things may get tough pretty frequently, I couldn’t ask for a more fulfilling day job than that of a stay-at-home mommy.
There is so much pressure put on moms. Whether you’re a stay-at-home, work-at-home, working moms or however you classify yourself, we are constantly put uner a microscope and people (sadly, other moms as well) are constantly nit-picking at our every decision as a parent. We work part or full-time so we must not love our child and she stays at home full time with her little ones so she’s a total weirdo and hovers over her kids too much.
It seems like every decision we make involving our kids is the absolute worst possible choice. Of all the dirty diapers and neverending screaming, the one thing that I struggle with the most as a stay-at-home mom doesn’t actually involve my daughter at all.
The thing I struggle with the most is the constant judging and “advice” from other people about how I should raise my daughter and everything that I’m doing “wrong.” As often as I tell new moms not to listen to the onslaught of advice thrown at them, I’m completely hopeless at following my own advice.
While I have gotten a lot better at standing up for myself, I still fall victim to the unsolicited advice train pretty frequently.
Now this is the part where I reiterate the fact that you should never take other people’s advice to heart, ESPECIALLY if they aren’t parents themselves, Of course, I’m probably going to turn into a giant hypocrite and not take any of this advice for myself, but being your own person and standing behind your parenting decisions as a mama is important, not only for yourself but for your kids as well.