I love my children more than I could ever express in words, pictures, smiles, tears.\u00a0 But, being a stay at home mom is by far the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never done the full-time-working-mom thing and I can only imagine the stress, heartache and guilt that comes with that.\u00a0 I did do the running-around-like-a-crazy-working-mom thing and while stressful in its own way too, it was bearable.\u00a0 However, the overwhelming and constant stress of being home day in and day out with your children can make even the most level headed mommy go crazy and no one who hasn\u2019t done it can understand what it\u2019s really like.<\/p>\n
What really pushed me over the edge was when I realized I was spending a vast amount of time as a single-stay-at-home-mom.\u00a0 While living in Dublin, hubby traveled a lot which left me home with the two girls, by myself, 24 hours a day.\u00a0 After hubby was gone for 13 days straight, I realized how overwhelming parenting by yourself really is.\u00a0 I don\u2019t discount the struggles of single working mothers by any means, but I can\u2019t imagine it even compares to being a stay-at-home mom for one reason:\u00a0being a stay at home mom is lonely.<\/p>\n
Most other jobs provide adult interaction which can be severely lacking when you\u2019re a stay-at-home mom.\u00a0 I get in disagreements often with hubby over what I really need to be able to better tolerate my children day in and day out.\u00a0 He is very supportive of letting me get away when he\u2019s available to watch the girls and even suggests I get a babysitter and get out of the house when he\u2019s not.\u00a0 The thing is I don\u2019t necessarily want to be away from my girls.\u00a0 What I do need is that adult interaction I\u2019m missing from being a full-time stay-at-home mom.<\/p>\n
In any other job if you also get the luxury of breaks. \u00a0If you get overwhelmed you can walk away, you can leave for a few minutes, you can take a break.\u00a0 Motherhood doesn\u2019t give you that luxury.\u00a0 Sure, you can put the baby\/child somewhere safe and take a minute but chances are you will not get far enough away to completely lose the sounds of crying and\/or screaming (which will still echo in your head even if you can get away from the actual noise).<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>The most logical way to get much needed adult interaction is through play dates which benefit both mom and child but really, for me, just having another adult around makes my mommying job bearable.\u00a0 Even if I still have to change ever diaper, make every meal and do all the mommy work, having another adult to talk to, complain to and share my frustration with keeps me from feeling overwhelmed and taking those feelings out on my children.\u00a0 I also find having other adults around, even those without children, changes my children\u2019s behavior too.\u00a0 They get excited to see someone new and even if they\u2019re still at home with the same toys and the same routine, having a new face makes the day different from all the others.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love my children more than I could ever express in words, pictures, smiles, tears.\u00a0 But, being a stay at home mom is by far the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never done the full-time-working-mom thing and I can only imagine the stress, heartache and guilt that comes with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-mommys-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":299,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions\/299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}