I’ve been a working mom for the past three-and-a-half years, and I’d be lying if I said it ever got easier.
Sure, the routine evens out eventually. In our case, it took nearly two years to fully establish itself, with a cross-country move and my husband’s temporary stint as a stay-at-home dad, but we’ve grown used to daycare drop-off and pick-up, to the occasional late meeting or visit to “Mama’s library”, and jam-packed weekends filled with all the things we don’t get to during the week.
In a lot of ways, it helps that I love what I do. At first, it felt like a cruel twist of fate that I got to hang out with everyone else’s kids all day, as a full-time children’s librarian. Sometimes I was even a little jealous of the parents who got to bring their kids to the library on a late weekday morning.
But it also means I get to see new picture books first and bring them home for Sprout. It means I have front-line experience with early literacy techniques — and our now-preschooler is finally at an age where we’re seeing the benefits every day. When my husband was staying home, it meant they came to library programs often — and they still do when they can! Sprout loves to visit me at work, and I love that it’s an environment that’s appropriate for that kind of visit.
In a lot of ways, being a librarian has made me a better person, and a better parent. And that makes it worth it.
Right?
Recently, a friend who is a new mom was asking for advice about going back to work. Although I value my work and know that it’s important, I joined the chorus of experienced moms offering reassurance that yes, it would be hard, and yes, you might feel guilty.
I remembered what felt like when my daughter was eight weeks old and I was staring down the next eighteen years of working full time while she was with relatives or at daycare or school or wherever else she’d be while I was at work.
I remembered longing for the days when a break could actually be a break. Now I spent my two short breaks and lunch hour in the back room, attached to a breast pump, instead of actually nursing my baby. I remembered our frustration when she wasn’t reliably taking a bottle, and worrying that it was all for nothing.
I remembered that I was “lucky” to have finagled a paid maternity leave — all I had to do was sacrifice my vacation and sick time for the next year. Sick baby? Sleepless nights? Oh, well. Power through it, or take a day without pay.
But finally, after a few months, we found a routine, modified it as needed, and got better at being parents along the way.
As I was sharing my standard pieces of advice this time, however, something struck me. Something that I’d said before that always nagged at me a little bit: Getting to go to work is actually kind of nice — you get to talk to actual grown-ups! As if that talking-to-grown-ups time was some kind of quality “me time”. As if going to work was, somehow, a form of self-care.
NEWS FLASH: It’s super not!
Work time is just that: work time.
Family time is family time.
Those things are both important… but so is taking time for yourself.
And that’s something that I realize (and that I’ve realized over and over again) I’ve gotten really bad at.
So this time, my advice was not to fall into the same trap. That no matter how much you love your job, it’s never the most important part of the equation. It might never be as important as it was before. Or it might just seem less important in the grand scheme of things — because no matter how much you love your job, it’s still a job.
Before Sprout was born, I would bring work home with me on a semi-regular basis, both physically{a project I needed to finish{ or mentally {that conversation I had with a coworker or patron that wouldn’t stop playing in my head}. It just felt like a normal part of doing a good job. I try — yes, try, because sometimes it’s inevitable — to avoid it now. But those sacred three hours between work and bedtime are my time with my daughter. Sometimes I get to it before my own bedtime, and sometimes I don’t. And that’s okay.
So I’m making myself a new deal and trying to take my own advice. I will figure out a way to make time for me every once in a while. Maybe take a class. Meet up with friends I don’t see often enough. Honestly, it would be great to read a book for myself every once in a while, instead of one for storytime or bedtime reading.
And in the process, I’ll work on convincing myself that it’s not selfish to need that time. It’s self-care, pure and simple.
It’s that time that will make me a better person, and a better parent. I owe it to my family, and I owe it to myself.
