Why I Turned Down My “Dream Job”

I called my husband as I left the interview for my dream job, willing to bet I would get an offer in the next few days.  I remember the energy I felt, the passion for a project that would hopefully become my 3^rd baby in a few short weeks.  I remember telling my husband that I hadn’t felt this way about work in a very long time.  The interview had been amazing; not one of those stuffy tell me about a time you encountered conflict and how did you handle it type of interviews, but a truly interactive and stimulating interview.  I headed home to my little family utterly excited about the next chapter for me.

I should step back however and explain why I was so drawn to this opportunity.  I was excited for the work itself, yes, but I was most excited about the idea of working from home.  I had been playing with the idea for months to continue working or quit my job and become a stay at home mom.  The draw to be home with my children was not something that I could ignore anymore.  Working from home seemed to be the perfect answer.  I had visions of cooking my children breakfast while answering my morning emails.  I envisioned lunch breaks at the park or playing in the back yard.  I tried to be reasonable with my expectations.  I knew I would still need the same nanny arrangement that I currently had to ensure there would be time in my day for work but the idea was so alluring.

Now the downside….. TRAVEL.  At first the idea didn't seem so bad.  Many of the clients were located a drive able distance or a 45 minute commuter flight.  One client was across the country in CA but I could handle 1 or 2 trips a year I would just bring the kids and hubby with me.  Everything would work out.  See my oldest is 2 1/2 years old.  I've left him 3 nights in his entire life.  1 when he was 6 weeks old, 1 for a wedding in which I made sure to dedicate the day to him and 1 night when I gave birth to his brother.  My 10 month old has never gone to bed with out his mother.  The idea of their possibly being a day when I wouldn't see my children seemed unbearable.  I know children need some independence and I do get that but I don't know if I'm ok with not seeing my children everyday.

I spent days telling myself it would be ok.  It's not like I would be leaving them with strangers I would be leaving them with their FATHER.  If I'm not with them isn't their daddy the next best thing? My husband was so supportive he kept telling me to do what made me happy.  What would make me happy?  My career is important to me but my family is my world.  

While sitting in the dark while my toddler babbled away fighting his heavy eye lids, tears began to run down my face.  It wasn't that long ago his broken sentences made little sense and much to the imagination.  Now I get a full recap of his day (starting with the theme of today's episode of paw patrol), what was he going to be like 6 months from now? My little baby is making strides into toddlerhood, cruising all around the house.  What happened if he took his 1st step while I was away on business?

The next morning I turned my dream job down.  A little sadness washed over me as I pressed send but I knew it was the right decision for my children.  I didn't count on what happened next.  The company re-extended a more lucrative offer.  At that moment I second guessed my decision.  I mean it feels really good to be wanted that badly.  I spent a few days replaying my decision in my head.  This time I picked up the phone and called someone I consider to be an amazing mentor.  She is the person I want to be when I grow up!   Ultimately, I stuck with my decision and haven't looked back but I learned some important lessons along the way.

I am both a mom and a business person.  I always wanted to be the person who had it all and did it all.  But the reality is no matter what decision you make in life something is going to have to give.  In my case, I want to make sure I have quality and abundant time with my children everyday and I'm not willing to give up even one day.  That by no means is the right answer for everyone.  I know with that decision I have to temper my expectations of myself in regards to my career progression.  With higher positions comes more responsibility. That is a responsibility that I can not take on right now and I have to be ok with that.  Lesson learned!!!

Hats off the all the super moms, you are my inspiration.

Personal Space and Pregnancy

I must be way behind the eight ball on this one but this news story on touching pregnant woman’s bellies came up on my facebook newsfeed today.  (http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/28/living/parents-illegal-touching-pregnant-belly/)  I’m amazed that I missed this running in 2013 because the story coincides with my first pregnancy and the experience I was having myself.

In brief, the story discusses how one PA woman filed harassment charges after a random man touched her pregnant belly in the grocery story.  It appeared that the public had mixed emotions on the subject and the man being charged said he thought that was a social norm.  When has touching become a social norm?  While I appreciate the miracle of being pregnant and birth, I do not feel it is an invitation to throw respect for people’s personal space out the window.  I question why it is appropriate to touch a pregnant person’s belly but not some super toned person with 6-pack abs?  

They both have interesting mid sections.  Because mine is hosting another person it’s just free game to touch my belly.  However this does make me wonder if there should be something on the books to deal with this subject directly.  In PA a harassment conviction carries a fine up to $300 and/or up to 90 days in jail.  I do think 90 days in jail is a bit excessive but please respect my person space even if I am taking up more of it.  There are laws on the books for cyber bullying (its literally the offense right below harassment in the PA legislature. 

Following the same theme, why do people think it’s acceptable to touch my baby?  Why when I’m in the grocery store do people think its acceptable to reach into my cart and touch my baby in the baby carrier covered in a blanket.  Don’t they realize they are a big ball or germs?  Or simply my CHILD is a person and not a toy?  Are you going to pay for their health insurance, diapers, formula, clothes ect.  If not don’t touch without permission.

With that being said, many of my friends weren’t the biggest fan of my no touching policies.  Even my husband had to ask permission.  So I wonder  do other people share my sentiments or am I in the minority in thinking personal space should apply to pregnant woman as well

An Open Letter To My Husband After Two Kids

To my husband, after I’ve had two kids,

Do you remember a time before we had kids?  Do you remember staying in bed until 11am on Saturday morning and trying to decide if we should have breakfast, no lunch, no breakfast?  Do you remember vacations?  Do you remember lying on the beach for hours reading a book?  I would pack more bikinis than days we were vacationing with lingerie to match.  Do you remember going to dinner at a restaurant?  That feels like a lifetime ago.  Actually it was two lifetimes ago.  Before my mind was always consumed with the kid’s schedules, spending time with them, and finding “family activities” for every weekend.  Back when I had confidence.  Where did that confidence go?  It seems to have gone missing with the body I used to have.  The first time it was so easy to get my baby back, not so easy the second time.  The extra 10 lbs and the stretch marks are a constant reminder of both the person I lost and the miracles that I gained. 

This caught me by surprise.  I was thinner after baby #1 than on our wedding day.  This wasn’t supposed to happen.  This wasn’t the dream that we talked about.  We talked about dinner as a family, playing in the backyard, vacations and holidays.  We talked about the things we would teach them and the memories we would make. We talked about how we would live not how we would feel.  Me post partum baby 2 is very different.  What will I look like post partum baby 3 or 4?  Will there even be hope for me to find myself.  Will the girl that you saw on your wedding day ever come back?

I cringe when I think about who I have become.  So shy, so unsure of myself.  These other moms bounce right back.  They are so confident with their “mommy bodies.”  I’m jealous of those mom’s that can balance themselves and their kids.  The ones that still find time to get their nails done and juggle 4 babies.  After 2 pregnancies, after two labors, after thousands of bottles and diapers changed I seem to lost myself.  I know she has to be right under my nose but I can’t find her.  I think she’s hiding under the mountains of toys or the clothes that I aspire to fit into again.  I pray the old me comes back sometimes but I know she won’t.  She’s gone, I’ve been changed by these two little faces that look up at me so lovingly every day. 

So meet the new me, mommy of two.  While I’m struggling to love me, you’re not.  You still look at me like we’re 16 years old.  I still catch you sneaking peeks when I am bending over.  You don’t judge me when I’m eating a bowl of ice cream for dinner at 9pm.  You never point out when I’m being unreasonable.  You back me up when I go into “mama bear mode.”  You love me.  You have the confidence in me that I lost.  I’m trying hard to see what you see, honestly I am trying.  I promise I will love myself again, I will get there.

Thank-you!  Thank-you for the beautiful life that we have.  Thank-you for loving me no matter what.  Thank you for always thinking I’m the prettiest, smartest and sexiest girl in the room.  Thank you for our family.  Thank you for making put that bikini back on J.

The Day My Son Wanted Nothing to Do With Me

While on vacation with my entire family I had one of the most heart breaking things happen... my son wanted nothing to do with me only my mother (his grandmother).  My mom watches him everyday while I am working so they have a strong bond, but this was completely heart breaking.  If I would take my son into another room for a even a simple task of changing his diaper he would scream bloody murder for my mother.  He wouldn't eat any meals at the table with the rest of the family he wanted to sit on the couch with "Mimi" and eat (despite Mimi sitting at the table with the rest of the family).  We took him to the beach and Mimi had to be the one in the ocean, Mimi had to play in the sand.  When we got back Mimi had to cook his lunch and put him down for his nap.  At bedtime, Mimi had to give him his bath and put him to bed (a task usually reserved for only mommy and daddy).  At one point my husband attempted to help my mother and my son pushed him away and told him no.

There my husband and I were, standing in the kitchen of our rented beach condo, heartbroken wondering what to do next.  My two month old was happily sleeping in the bedroom, surely he still loved us but what did we do to make our toddler favor his grandmother; I didn't want my youngest to favor her too.  I began sobbing into the kitchen counter feeling like a failure as a mother.  I love my kids, they are my everything.  All of my time is devoted to caring for them and being with them.  Yes I do work 40+ hours a week but I wake them up and make their breakfast in the morning, I am getting home when they are waking up from their afternoon naps (thanks to my 10 minute commute) and spend every weekend doing activities with them.  So why did my son want to be with his grandmother over his mother?  What seemed like an eternity later, my mom emerged from the bedroom, my son had fallen asleep and she apologized to me.  She felt bad that my son was favoring her, it was no fault of hers no fault of my son; it was just the fact in that moment.  I went to bed that night feeling very defeated and very heartbroken.

I woke up the next morning to my son snuggled in bed next to me (his bed was in the same room as mine for vacation).  He had woken up in the middle of the night and saw mommy and daddy were in the room and climbed into our bed for comfort.  Obviously, the topic of conversation at the breakfast table was the big elephant in the room.  With the prodding of my brother and sister (thanks again!), we discovered that Mimi had "altered" my son's routine after my second was born.  As my second son likes to eat leisurely, Mimi has started allowing my toddler to eat meals in the family room with his toys so she can focus on feeding the baby.  Since Mommy and Daddy have only left my son to be put to bed by his Mimi (or anybody else) less than 5 nights, Mimi has snuggled with him and watched Sesame Street with him until he fell asleep.  The answer wasn't that he loved his Mimi more than Mommy and Daddy the answer was he liked the way Mimi did things.  As Mimi put it, Mommy and Daddy have more rules.

I was very worried that this was going to continue throughout the entire vacation and extend into our "normal lives" once we got home but thankfully it didn't.  When Mimi became aware of what was happening she enforced mommy and daddy's rules and the Mimi fascination seemed to dwindle.  He still loved his Mimi and wanted to do things with her but he also wanted to interact with all his other family members as well.

Our first night home my son got right into bed and fell right asleep just like he was doing before we went for vacation.  He fell right back into his normal routine in stride as though it had not been interrupted for the week prior.  He was content when Mimi left when Mommy got home from work (even if he wasn't content to stay inside since it was raining and his brother is 2 months old).  He's the exact same kid as he was before we left for vacation except with more words and requesting ice cream every night (Thanks Uncle B).

This was a definite learning experience for me!  Sometimes being a Mommy is a thankless job and sometimes that means not being the "fun one" or the popular one with your kids,  I need to focus on my relationships with my kids and not focus on being the most liked person in their lives.  That doesn't mean however that I don't want to be the most liked in their lives and that it doesn't hurt when they favor someone else.  What am I going to do when they want to go away on a trip without me or want to get married?  I think those things are going to break my heart, but I can't cry in the kitchen forever or can I?

Why there are no pictures of my kids on the internet

Social media how I love and hate you all at the same time.  It seems odd that I feel comfortable blogging my thoughts, feelings and intimate moments to be stumbled across by anyone who logs onto the internet but when it comes to my children they are nowhere to be found.  My husband and I have made a decision to keep our children off social media.  As both my children are under the age of two that means no pictures of them being posted.  Oh how family members hate that pesky little rule that we have.  “This would be such a cute instagram photo” is usually accompanied by “your no social media rule is dumb.”  They argue I will put pictures of myself on the internet by why not my kids.  They are totally correct.  It’s my decision to post my own story on social media, because that’s what it just is a story.  I choose what it is that I WANT people to see or know about me.  I can be anyone I want to social media.  I’m proud of the baby weight that I lost, I’ll post a picture of myself with a cute outfit on not a picture of my bare stretch marked ridden stomach.  I want people to see the good and not the bad.

Why do I keep my kids off social media do you ask.  The answer is my kids are innocent; they have no control over what is being put out there for them.   Once something is on the internet it’s there forever.  Those images are so freely accessible it amazes me.  An acquaintance learned that lesson the hard way and her experience was a real eye opener for me.  This person posted a picture on Instagram of her child with a few different hash tags.  A few months later a friend of hers commented on why did she let a particular entity use her kid’s photo.  She hadn’t given permission; this entity found the photo online and used it in an article they were writing.  Everything was totally legal and now her child’s photo is in a post and there is nothing she can do.  Thankfully it was a tasteful publication, but where else is that photo.   I don’t know about you but there are a lot of places on the internet that I wouldn’t want to find my child’s photo.

We’ve all seen someone screen shot someone’s facebook page, shap chat ect. and post it to another forum.  Even with the most stringent of privacy settings, your “private posts” could be made very public very quickly.  I’ve witnessed people wanting to call child services on a parent or child that they don’t know because of someone reposting a photo with no context.  How many of us have a picture of their child that taken out of context could be taken the wrong way?  I’m sure that photo of my son in the driver’s seat of my car with the parking brake on holding keys in his hand from a vehicle nowhere around could be considered very dangerous to someone who doesn’t know me, my child or the context of the photo.  The fact of the matter is any picture can be used or manipulated in any way to make it fit whatever story a person wants to tell.  It bothers me that people feel so entitled to share other people’s photos.

Are there times that I want to post pictures? Of course, what mom doesn’t want to show off their children?  I see other people post photos and I think to myself it was so cute when my son did something similar.  Or when a family member comments how they haven’t seen my kids in a while; it would be so much easier to post a picture online for everyone to see rather than sharing pictures individually. 

I don’t want to make it sound like I keep my entire life and everything about my kids off the internet.   I made a status update when my son took his first steps.  My obligatory Facebook post for my second pregnancy is found below:

                                           

No big brother holding up a sign announcing little brother’s arrival on facebook, just a simple picture stating Santa brought a little something extra this year.  Did the lack of my son’s picture detract from the happiness? No.  When little brother was born a simple facebook status was enough.  We live in such a digital society that social media is almost a given.  People do wedding invites electronically, party invitations are online as well, I don’t know about you but if I want to know the weather today I pick up my phone to check it out… walking outside to check is a thing of the past.  I want my children to be the narrators of their own stories…. They don’t need mommy to do it for them before their stories really have had time to begin.

#mommyfail

#mommyfail I feel this hash tag could sum up my feelings at least once a day... especially now with two. 
Everytime my son falls down or bumps into something I feel the size of an ant.   Isn't my job to protect my children, make sure they never get hurt or ever feel sad? If I was doing my job as a mom they would never get hurt or know pain or be upset.  Since I don't own two bubbles to keep them in I've had to lower my expectations.
Anyone who has boys know the rough and tumble life that has become my norm.  My toddler has developed this habit of yelling out "I'm ok" after he tumbles to the ground.
Recently, a series of events unfolded in my house that culminated in my toddler needing ice and my infant being carried across the room by the same toddler.  As any mom would; I felt like a failure.  I called my husband and told him about my failure and about my concerns, and looked to him for encouragement that I could continue through the day.  That evening still wrought with guilt I said to my toddler as I put him to bed I love you and tomorrow mommy will do better.  He turned to me and gave me a big hug and said I love you too for the first time.  After the happy tears streamed down my face I had a realization.  No matter how many times I "fail" I'm still mommy.  That doesn't matter to my boys... all that matters to them is mommy being there.
That was the moment when I chose to focus on my #mommywin instead of #mommyfail.   Every little victory is worth celebrating.  I made a choice to stop letting myself feel guilty and embrace what I do well or my small accomplishments.  Being a mommy is hard work, there is no manual, no days off and alot of overtime but it's also the most rewarding job I have ever had.  I would encourage all mommies to focus on their #mommywin instead of the #mommyfail and get the sense of satisfaction I have been able to find.

Welcome!!!

First, this blog is an experiment for me.  I have never blogged before but I am looking for a forum to get my thoughts across and be a safe haven and support for working moms everywhere.  My goal is not to criticize other parenting methods or other people's beliefs but rather offer my own insights into what has worked for me.  I think I look at parenting a little differently as most, as a scientist my nature I look at things more analytically and parenting as been no different.  

I am a full-time working mom, with a 1 year old little boy and another on the way (15 weeks!). As a first time mom, I did what most do and scoured the Internet looking for parenting advice.  What I found was most of the information I found was good information but very hard for me to put into practice being away from my home 45+ hours a week.  I am one of the lucky working moms, I do have my son at home with a nanny minimizing the amount of time I have to be apart from him, however I know that is not the case for most working parents.  Reaching out to other mother's, for me, was difficult as well I couldn't help but feeling judged for being a working mother.  Everyone assumed that the decision to continue working was purely financial, but in my experience it was much more than that.  Who was I if my entire identity could be summed up by wife and mother.  What did those two words mean?  Could I be a good mother if I didn't know who I was myself?  Could I be a good wife to my husband if my entire identity was tied to someone who shared half my genetic code?  I love my family and would do anything for them, but aren't I more productive and loving to them if I love myself?

I chose to work, however I choose everyday to make time for my family.  Just as I choose to go to work, I make the choice to sit on the floor and play with my son, I make the choice to cook dinner for the family each night, I make the choice to sit at the table and eat as a family, I make the choice for bath/bedtime to be family time and not a chore, and I make the choice to spend time with my husband alone every night to make sure that relationship still thrives as well.  Isn't that what parenting is about, making choices?  The choices that you think are best for your child?  While time with your child is precious they grow up way faster than nature should allow, I question is less time better in the long run if the majority of that time is quality time?