SAHM Learns To Relax

I hate to hear myself talk, think and complain. I try not to bother my husband with my mental ramblings, because he’s busy. He’s working three jobs and then finding ways to be with me and the kids, with very little sleep and without complaining. I wish I could do that. I hear myself and I sound so ungrateful, but really I’m not. I’m just so depressed that I want to run and hide, but because I can’t, I complain.

I know he wants me to be superwoman. I know because he says it. He calls me superwoman. He tells others I’m superwoman and yet all I hear is “be strong, because I can’t afford to have you fall apart.” I try. I really do. I end up arguing with him about going back to work all the time. I want to go back to work, because I feel like such a looser.

There isn’t any glory in being a SAHM. I know feminists everywhere, including my pre-mom self, would shriek at this statement, but I feel the whole movement of women who wanted the right to go back to work after children and the development of day care centers, was because women wanted to get a break from being a mom all day. Diaper after drool, after cartoon, after bottle number 422.

I need a day off. Motherhood is the only job in that doesn’t come with a day off. I can’t call in sick. I can’t lie and say I have the flu and go to the beach instead. Okay, so I can go to work in my pajama’s. Okay, so I can sing the theme to all of the Noggin programming and scream about the letter of the day on Sesame Street with my three-year-old and tickle my twins until they pee in their glorious Pampers, but what I really want is to have my cake and eat it too.

What I want is to have a job that I can brag about and a fancy degree to go along with it. I want the pictures on my desk of all of my kids, while I rave a bout being a mom of twins and a three year old, while they go to learning centers all day and can read Chaucer by the time they enroll in Kindergarten.

I want to go away on vacation with my husband and kids to Hawaii and Europe. I want to have a dinner date, every now and again with my husband and remember what it was like to love him from across the table, instead of being so preoccupied with the kids that I hardly notice him at the table, except to watch my purse while I do a diaper change, or I watch his plate while he does a diaper change. Damn it, I want it all.

I know I’m lucky. I know I’m blessed as some would say. But that doesn’t change how I feel as a woman. A woman who wanted so badly to have children that by the time the fifth doctor told me I would never have children, I felt an ache in my womb that cannot be described by words. A loss so deep I felt it would never stop. Now that I have all that I wanted, I want more. Isn’t this part of being a woman? Or am I so needy, selfish and greedy that I don’t deserve to even speak or write these words. I mean, come on, who am I? I feel like a fish out of water, a woman without an identity. Am I alone? Am I the only SAHM who wants more and feels guilty for it? I don’t think so.

Feeling like I want more than I have, on top of taking care of three children all day, can really stress me out. When I become too overwhelmed I try to find ways to relax and have fun. Here is a list of five coping skills/mood changing/uplifting things that I use to help me relax.

1. Give my toddler a Capri Sun and put on the soundtrack to Grease. Put the volume up and sing and dance until we can’t anymore. It’s a natural high.

2. Put on a CD of silly songs that I have that also have the same effect as number one, but just to have on in the background, while we play games or do art projects.

3. Get on the computer and talk to other mom’s, friends or family to feel more connected to the outside world.

4. Make my favorite coffee charged drink and eat a chocolate covered donut and get myself moving off the floor or couch, which ever I landed on that morning.

5. Make a list with my toddler of positive affirmations and we sit in front of the mirror and repeat them to ourselves. He laughs and makes silly faces too, which makes me laugh and it’s all good.

Being a SAHM is more than just sitting in your pajamas, watching Spongebob and eating Cheerios, it’s a 24-hour period of reminders that we are no longer a part of the work force, contributors to society the way that we had become accustomed to. It means experiencing jealousy that your husband, your equal partner, is out socializing at work and earning a paycheck, a monetary validation that he is doing a good job. As a SAHM, you have to create your own validations. More than the fact that the children grow and learn. You love your children and you feed and teach them things daily, even if you don’t realize it.

Getting up every day by the sound of your baby (or babies in my case) babbling and cooing in their crib is a sound that may wake you up at the most ungodliest of hours, but it also wakes up your soul and puts a smile on your face. The warmth it brings to your heart and the drive it gives your body to get up, brush your teeth, wipe the tears from yesterday off your face and pick up the baby that you spent hours upon hours in labor to deliver is what drives you. The baby that taught you just how strong and weak you are as a woman, all in the same moment.

The baby that was created by you and the person you love with all good intention to make the circle of life go on, with your addition to that circle. It’s not important if you brushed your teeth, or your hair for that matter, its only important that you lead by example. To relax and find joy in the little things that make up the relationship that will grow everyday. Whether your stressed out, relaxed or trying to get everybody to the doctor for a check up and realize half way there that your still wearing your pajama’s, relax, because what good is getting upset? Work those pajamas.

Photo of Spa/Beauty. Copyright jadey919. From Stock Xchng.com