Parenthood Juggle: It’s Enough for Me

At the party store yesterday, my son was choosing decorations for his fifth birthday bash, coming in just a few days. I quit my job without a backup plan in December, and my husband is a stay-at-home dad, so it’s been a tough few months for us. Finally, last weekend, I finalized a great new job, we sold our house in the Washington, D.C. area and bought a new one in the Bronx. All is in place, and so we turn our thoughts to celebrating our child.  

We were negotiating what we could afford (I had given my son a budget I wanted him to stick with) when the store clerk, watching the interaction, said: “Is having children hard?” My kids and husband wandered off, and the store wasn’t busy, so I told her the truth.  

Yes, having a child, for me, was devastatingly hard. I wanted children more than anything else, and I had held/changed/watched/cared for many over the years, and so I thought I had it down. I held a very flexible job so I could be a mom. I married a very tender man so we could have children together. I built my life around the idea  of having children. The reality, those first few hours in the hospital, holding a tiny squawking baby that I barely trusted myself to change: Those were impossible.  The first few months with my son: I will never be able to recreate for someone else (certainly not in a check out line at a party store) how unexpected the lack of sleep; the painful recovery from birth; the sore nipples; and his often inconsolable crying shattered me. I thought I was a natural! I thought it would be easy! I thought I would never do this again.  

My job, during my pregnancies and parenting, has actually been my lifeline. When I was a child, although not Mormon, I envisioned myself a stay-at-home mom, and a teacher. When I was in college, I realized that the world was so much wider than I expected, and that I lacked the patience required to teach.  I moved to D.C., became an editor, and then a communications director, for non-profit associations. I became a leader, a supervisor, and a colleague. I blossomed at work. At home, instead of being the nurturing, calm parent I envisioned, I’m the strict parent, the fun parent, the one that’s there for breakfast and dinner. My husband is the primary caregiver to our three children.  

In those first months of staying home, my longed for and greatly anticipated maternity leave, I couldn’t wait to get back to work. I loved nursing my son, and watching him, and holding him, but there was so much I didn’t understand, so much that made me sad and even angry — I wanted what I was familiar with, and good at: Work. All that I had envisioned (baking bread while my son sweetly napped, having dinner ready for my husband at five, learning to knit …) became a march of survival — if I can make it to noon, I can drink a forbidden caffeine filled drink. If I can make it to 4:30, I can get in the car with my son and go pick my husband up from work, so I’m not alone any more.  

On the worst day, I called my mother, wordlessly sobbing. She called her friends and my friends, and they chimed in with what had helped them. A dear friend called me and said, “I stood at the top of the stairs, with my daughter screaming but safe in her crib. I thought to myself, ‘if I throw myself down these stairs, at least I’ll be able to be in the hospital, and to rest.'” Hearing her story, her shared desperation, pulled me gently through another day. Listening to my stepsister tell me about how she struggled and how she pulled through, got me through another day.  

Visitors didn’t help me, because I wanted to appear to have it all together. I wanted to BE the mom I had thought I would be, with the bread made and the cookies cooling. So I would rush around while the baby squalled in his swing (oh my son hated to be put down) to appear clean, presentable, perfect. Instead of opening the door with tears running down my face, unchanged and unwashed, asking for help: Which would have been a more accurate picture.  

One day I even bundled my weeks-old son into the car and drove to the Blue Ridge Mountains. I don’t know why — he cried the whole way there and back — but it soothed me to see the wider world. It helped me to think that these sad times would pass, and it would get easier.  

My mother-in-law moved in with us at the three month mark, and I ran back to work. I know my job, and I’m good at it. If there is a problem, I can usually fix it, or find someone to help. If I need a break, I just go on my computer and catch up on a few of my beloved mommy blogs. If I want to eat lunch, go to the bathroom, call a friend: These are all things I can just do  without involving anyone else.  

I enjoy my work, but I still wonder, after all these years, why I can’t be the stay-at-home parent? Do I not love my children as I should? Is my idea that they are fine  in great child care, or now with my husband, just me trying to get out of a challenging job? When my husband travels and I watch the children, especially when I was pregnant, I scare myself with my quick temper at the children. I am a genuinely loving parent, in small doses, but I cannot be their full-time caregiver, and I struggle to know what that means in my life.  

I’m glad  my husband is so good at parenting, that he truly does bake the bread, and make the dinner, and clean the cloth diapers, and a thousand other amazing things that I cannot do. And he’s doing it with three small children, not just one tiny infant.  I struggle and hope that it is just one aspect of my parenting that is lacking; and that my children will be stronger for seeing how happy I am in my day job, and how happy I am to see them, all of them, when I come home. I hope that my loving to be with them, my wanting to eat with them, play with them, teach them and learn from them will be enough. I’m not a surgeon, or a highly skilled doctoral candidate doing things no one else can do. I’m a communications director. I help people explain what they want to say, with clarity, in a field I love.  

It’s enough for me. I hope it is enough for them.  

So, I told the woman, as we were wrapping up, that it was harder than I had ever imagined, but so much better, too. That the tiny crying baby has grown to be one of my favorite people in the world, and that the smile on his face lights up my whole life. That parenting is nothing like what I anticipated — so much harder — and everything that I hoped for — so joyous. Then I grabbed the balloons and went outside to join my family.  

-Submitted by Elizabeth Kiker

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