On Homemaking and Mary Poppins

Being a "Stay At Home Mom" is a crazy job. I have done this before, many times, but I am always shocked by how stressed out I get.

When Gabe was born I was working part time as an intern in a friend's Chiropractic office. I had to complete a certain number of hours of work before I graduated a few months later, so I brought Gabe to work with me and he slept while I worked. After I graduated and that job finished, I was home with Gabe until he was about nine months old. I wish I could remember what life with just one child was like, but I can't. It seemed very stressful at the time, with entire days where I didn't manage dinner and could barely manage to clean myself, much less do laundry and such. I also remember (very vaguely) that there were naps. Naps not just for Gabe, but for Mama too!

When Quin was born I think I took like two days off work, but the patients were clamoring for me (and to see the baby) so I went back to work (part time only) right away. By that time I had met a wonderful woman named Jean who came to my house three days a week and watched Gabe and cleaned while I took Quin to work with me. Bliss.

When Quin was about 9 months old, we moved back to Iowa. I couldn't begin practicing in Iowa right away because I needed to take this Insanely Expensive National Exam that I had already taken the Insanely Expensive Wisconsin version of, but the Iowa people wanted me to take the national one. So I had to take an Insanely Expensive Review to prepare for the Insanely Expensive Exam since I hadn't used any of the subject matter for four years since almost NONE of the subject matter is actually relevant to the practice of chiropractic.

The test and review are only administered twice a year, so that gave me time to enlist my mother (Nonny) to come down for the three weeks I was in class all night taking the review. Hubby worked in the afternoon and evening and our schedule was peculiar. I needed Nonny to get through the nightmare of evening exam review and the exam itself.

Then, to further complicate matters, while Nonny was with us, Hubby and I snuck upstairs one morning while she watched the kiddos and spent a little quality time together, and by the time I took the National Insanely Expensive Exam it was clear: I was pregnant. Again.

I had by then spent about a year in Iowa doing the stay at home thing. It was an especially difficult schedule for me because Hubby often left at noon or so and didn't get home until 8:30 pm or later. During the morning, the kids are usually at their most biddable and not so hard to manage, but by about 6:30 almost every day I was at the end of my rope and the kids were squirrelly and bored and watching far too much TV. I always had plans and delusions that we would have specific activities at certain times and we would do fun and creative projects all day and so on. But I am not Mary Poppins and my plans to create a cute little line of children who amiably followed my every command provided I just sing to them never panned out. Instead they kicked and screamed and climbed on my body like it was a jungle gym and made each other shriek and begged to watch Dora. And I was weak, so I let them. And then they wanted more Dora and Scooby Doo too. And so it went.

When I was five months pregnant (and had stopped throwing up on people daily) we opened our practice in Iowa. I was pretty excited to start working again. First of all, I really do love being a Chiropractor. Also, while working, I left the house at noon three days per week, with the kids in tow, brought them to the sitters, and didn't see them again until about 7:00 pm. By the time we got home, Hubby followed within a hour or even less if we got groceries on the way home, and my sanity was preserved. And the sitter had a degree in early childhood education and sent them home with projects involving paint and noodles and the like and I was both thrilled (that they were finally doing fun create things without watching TV all day) and chagrined (that I never pulled my shit together and did this stuff myself).

When Ribh was born I took two days off work and just brought her with me when I returned again. The hours I was spending at the practice kept creeping up as I added duties with teaching classes, training new staff, handling all the finances and so on. By the time I left Iowa last month I was easily working full time. It was too much.

And now I am back to the Full Time Mom thing. I will work again, but it's complicated. First of all, I need to get my Georgia license, which costs money. Secondly, I am NOT planning to open another Chiro office myself. And I don't want to work as a Chiro under somebody else's office and management styles and so on. I have developed very specific ideas about how I practice and when I practice and I must be able to put together both a schedule that will allow me to be home with my kids when I need to as well as manage my patients how I see fit. So, I will need to find either a VERY accommodating colleague or set up what is called an Independent Contractorship where I will just be essentially renting space in someone's Chiro office.

There is also a possibility that I could get hired at the Chiropractic School where Hubby teaches. This could be a great solution IF I can find a position where I can come home in time to meet the kids after school. But I'm not real keen on putting Peevers in child care just yet. So...maybe later.

So, for now, I am a Stay at Home Mom. A Homemaker, if you will. It's been two weeks since I resumed this post. As before, the morning goes pretty well. Gabe is at school. The girls are pretty amiable. Hubby is usually around. (He is on the evening schedule again.) We run a few errands. I clean and the girls play. By late afternoon the scene is considerably different. Gabe is home and making his sisters scream. Various neighborhood children come in and out of my house and the kids dump every container of toys my children own (which is a considerable amount). My own children come and go and I strive to keep track of them. Then they come home crying that someone hit them or pushed them or looked at them cross-eyed or whatever and I explain AGAIN that I will not be a referee and they need to work it out themselves. And I continue to try to clean (or paint!) or nurse Peevers or make dinner or whatever. And then I feed them and clean up the mess and clean up their messes and clean up their filthy little bodies and then clean up the flood in the bathroom.

Hubby comes home and reads them books and tucks them in. I slump on the sofa with a glass of wine in my hand, feeling like the world's suckiest stay at home mom, because we didn't read any books or do Gabe's homework or even sing a single song yet again. And I need to go to the grocery store. And I have no money because I am not working.

I don't know exactly why this job is so difficult for me. I consider myself to be pretty creative and competent. Perhaps it is the repetitiveness. I wipe down the same counter about 87 times per day and clean up the same pile of toys about 12 times and repeat my Mama Catchphrases so many times I catch myself mumbling them in my sleep. But my Chiropractic job is repetitive, and I don't mind it.

Perhaps it is the way my subjects disregard my work. And undo it as quickly as I do it. It feels like I should wear a uniform with Sisyphus as my company emblem as I attempt to keep this place and my children reasonably clean. Sometimes parenting is an unending exercise in futility. Especially when you are alone with them. All afternoon and evening.

Maybe it's just the way the demanding little tyrants scream for things and disregard your calm and repeated instructions. In fact, they often go and do the exact opposite of what you just asked them to do. On purpose. If your boss treated you the way mine treat me, any self respecting person (or sane person) would quit after one day. But you can't.


The Take Home Message: Hug a Stay At Home Mom Today. She probably needs it.