How Hard Can It Be?

My days starts like most moms in America…well those who bed share and co-sleep. I begrudgingly draw myself away from my baby, peeling her hand off of my body, and in a very un athletic CIA fashion, roll off my husband’s side of the bed. This all for the hope that I get 5 minutes to brush my teeth and brush my hair without little hands pulling at my legs to pick her up. Sometimes I get lucky and get 20 minutes, sometimes I get 30 seconds.

Before I begin let me say this…I acknowledge that I have a healthy baby girl and was able to get pregnant with very little difficulties. I acknowledge this is not always the case for other women. I also acknowledge that most women are not able to work from home with their baby with them, although not our number one choice, Fort Wainwright and Fairbanks chose for us.

With that aside, I truly was in newborn bliss coming back to work 2 weeks postpartum. I thought, “How hard can it be? Babies sleep all day, they don’t talk, I can just feed her and she will sleep! How hard can it be?”

Well now, 8 months later, all my preconceived notions have turned into severe and crippling anxiety, depression, overstimulation, and a painfully picked scalp. Everyone warns you for PPD, PPA, and the baby blues right after birth, but not 8 months down the road. Undoubtedly, working a full time position and trying to build a career and find myself in motherhood doesn’t help. I also thought that surely I could find a Reddit or Facebook page with advice from other work from home, full time moms. But just like the non existent childcare available in Fairbanks, so were these support pages. Which is hard because all I want at the end of the day is to know other people feel like this — overwhelmed, overstimulated, and a failure for being unable to maintain 100% in both roles. And, the thing is that I know I’m not alone.

I’ve done pretty tough things in my life but this “motherhood and working” may take the prize.

Two weeks ago I had a come to Jesus moment you could call it, an epiphany maybe – I was not okay and that wasn’t okay. Heck I’m still not okay, but I’m trying. That’s all we can and should ask from working mamas, really any mamas. My hope is for my posts to reach mamas who are in the same shoes as me. Maybe it’s work from home moms, military spouse moms, first time moms, stay at home moms, maybe it’s all these or none of these. But I know what we all will have in common…being in our tired mom eras. Cause this mamas tired.