6 months into my year off being a stay at home mom with twin girls.
I’m 6 months into my year off & being a stay at home mom, 5 months into twin parenthood and a month into our new house. And what keeps me up at night? “Am I still relevant?”
The August 2013 issue of Parents magazine tackles the question “Do Mommy Wars Exist?”. Now I can see where this question is coming from. How are women doing it? I feel a huge amount of pressure to stay relevant. To stay on top of the latest in my career. To stay on top of what my friends and family are doing. And a huge amount of pressure to keep my bangs cut. Kind of funny when you think about it. Listen, you can’t do it alone. I can’t do it alone. Every mom needs a friend they can call, a partner to cheer them on and a bedtime routine that let’s them enjoy the day. My really good friend Kristina, who has been a stay-at-home for the last two years, gave me the best advice this week that went a little something like this:
“Yes, some days are really good and some days are really hard. At the end of the day, I just remind myself that tomorrow, the babies are one day older.”
I’m learning that this pressure to stay relevant needs to be tackled and then laid to rest. Yes, it is important to not fall completely off the band wagon of what is happening in the working world and what you loved to do before babies arrived. However, it is just as important to not fall off the need for sleep and exercise.
So this morning I discovered one thing that is relevant to student affairs and one that is relevant to parenthood.
New Student Affairs Skill: “Being able to relate to a stay-at-home moms returning to school”- Taking time away from work has really put me in touch with what stay-at-home moms are experiencing. I can now relate better to adult students who are returning to school after they have taken time away from work.
New Parenting Skill: “Look them in the eyes” – Aim to look the babies in the eyes when you are feeding them, and aim to look at your partner when you are eating. There is so much love and connection to be discovered when parenting. I keep forgetting that part. I keep thinking that love and connection only happen in the “falling in love” part of marriage. I’m now learning how there is so much love to discover when you enter the parent stage of your relationship.
This photo is from that article. In a way it helps to explain what working moms and stay at home moms are tackling.
