Baby steps

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Feeling accomplished

I mentioned before that part of my struggle as a new mom who happens to be staying at home is feeling like I'm not doing anything. I know I am nurturing a child and maintaining a household, but nobody seems to want to pay me for that. And for a very, very long time, I have not really been maintaining the household, just basically keeping the walls from falling down around us. There's a poem, "Song for a Fifth Child," that says "Quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep! / I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep." 

I've tried to keep this stanza to heart as I watch dishes pile up, but I am starting to believe part of my recovery or sanity, if you will, has to be finding the time to keep a tidier house. I am using Pinterest to find chore schedules and tweak one to our house's needs, and I'm using an app called "Unf*ck Your Habitat" to motivate myself. 

I feel like a major mood booster at the end of the day is being able to say, I went on a walk, the baby tried a new food, we read three books, AND I organized the pantry, folded and put away three loads of laundry and tidied the kitchen and living rooms. 

I know some days are always going to be better than others, but I think taking pride in my household is important to keeping my head up.

Working, mom?

At age 17, I was taking orders over the phone and waiting tables at the most filth-encrusted Pizza Hut in central Indiana. I slid on the black headset with unwieldy battery pack at McDonalds one summer, where I rinsed dishes until the early morning hours. I made sandwiches and lattes, wrote business stories and took shaky video in a Kentucky courtroom. I spent one miserable month trying to sell warranties to surly Best Buy customers so I could make rent my senior year of college.

The point is, until Raspberry came along, I have always worked. I had to stop working 33 weeks into my pregnancy because of early labor, and my boss could never get me working from home approved.

I tried to return to work when the Raspberry was 6 weeks old, but my depression and guilt, along with an ill-timed nursing strike from my tiny human, made it clear to me then:  I needed to be at home with my baby so she could thrive and I could recover. 

She's almost 6 months old now and starting on solids. She still nurses quite often, but it's not every 45 minutes like it used to be. And our finances are looking grim.

I'm starting to put in applications for part-time work. I think if I can find something local, it will be all right to leave the raspberry with papa on his days off and go make us some make-those-ends-meet money. It's not only a financial necessity, I think it may help with my recovery as well. Days when we make it out of the house are always better than the days we stay cloistered. 

What are your experiences with working or staying home with your children? What advice do you have? Please leave a comment below.