Friday, November 30, 2012

Working mama blues...

The transition from a stay at home mom to a working mom has not been an easy one. It hasn't been easy on me, on Kelton, or on the kids. I don't really know how to describe it except hard. I have to work. Our family needs the money from me working until Kelton either gets on disability or becomes able to work again. But he is not happy as a stay at home parent or with not being the provider of our family in a financial sense. And I'm not happy "bringing home the bacon." I'd much rather be at home in my kitchen frying it up.
The worst transition has to be for the kids. Kelton has tried, but is not a homeschooling parent. And that's fine, not everyone is meant to homeschool. And we're okay with sending the girls to public school this year once Christmas is over, but it still is a reminder of what we've lost as a family. And right now as a one car family, if Kelton has to go somewhere while I'm at work, he has to borrow his mom's car (I work too far from home to make bringing me to work financially feasible most of the time). Her truck only has enough room for Zane to go with him, so the girls wind up staying with my mom and Rick. Which is great because they have grandparents willing to keep them. But it makes it to where we see even less of them. The girls don't understand why mom has to work and only gets to see them for maybe an hour a day. (This is a big reason I was looking for overnight hours.) I see my relationship with my kids suffering for the sake of working, and it breaks my heart. I just keep praying that once I am able to either be back at home full-time, or even cut down working to part-time that it isn't too late to repair that damage. I doubt it will be on their ends, but I don't know that I'll ever let go of the guilt I feel for them being in this predicament.

If I am able to separate myself from these feelings, working is actually going well. I do like my job, I get paid well for what I do, and I work with some pretty great people. My only issue is that I'm gone from my family too long. It's 45 minutes away, so on a day when I'm not working overtime, I'm gone a minimum of 10 hours. From 9:45am to 7:45pm. Lately, I've been leaving for work by 7:15am, so I'm gone 12.5 hours. I get home, we eat dinner, and then the kids are in bed between 8:30 and 9:00pm. Right now I rarely see them in the morning since they're late sleepers. Once school starts, I'll see them for breakfast and to drive them to school (they'll walk home together after school). Very, very little time with them. Of course, I see Zane more since he has no real schedule right now, but even he is out by about 10:00pm and wakes once to nurse at night and then is back out.

I think my major issue right now is burnout.