As a working mom (who is also a blogger and runs a freelance business on the side), I thought I'd give you a glimpse into my day-to-day life. I shot photos about every hour – sometimes more frequent, sometimes less – one day last week (ok, full disclosure, some of these are from the day before the rest because I was going to do this last Tuesday and forgot most of the day, so I made up for it on Wednesday; MOM LIFE!) and here's what a typical work day looks like for me.
Real Talk: Mom-bod
Imagine, if you will, that you have a really comfy, super casual sweater that you like to wear all the time. One day, you are wearing it as you sit on the couch and you absentmindedly tuck your knees in and pull this cozy sweater over your legs and sit there binge watching Supernatural (or whatever) till it’s time to go to bed as a ball of comfort. The next time you go to put on your favorite sweater, you find that it has been stretched out and no amount of dryer time is shrinking it back into shape. Sad face.
Well, that’s what happens to your body after you have a baby…CORRECTION, that is how I describe what happened to MY body after having lazy baby. My tummy skin is just stretched out and I hate it.
I’m not a thin woman, nor have I ever been in my entire life. But I was ok with my body before the baby. Mostly. I knew those lines, those curves, that skin. Now it’s just a big flop. If I look at my stomach in the mirror too long these days, I sometimes tear up. I guess I’ve just reached that age and that time in my life where no matter how much weight I lose, my skin is never going to fit my body (without surgery).
Mr. LL still loves me and my body, and I suppose that’s a comfort. I want to love my body again though. I shouldn’t be so hard on myself though, it took me 20-some-odd years to get that comfortable with my body. I’ve only had this new one for a little over 6 months.
But right now, I hate it.
MORE REAL TALK:
Real Talk: Just one day a week
To preface this post, my mother watches Lazy Baby while Mr. LL and I are at our day jobs. She comes around 8 every morning and leaves when Mr. LL gets home (he’s usually home anywhere between 4:30 and 5 in the evening). When I was pregnant, I didn’t want to assume or impose upon my mom, who was already dealing with her mother-in-law who has her own health issues that need to be dealt with, by asking her to take on this task. However, over last Thanksgiving, when I was talking about my hunt/research into daycares my mother stopped me right there and declared herself “daycare” and that was that.
Since coming back to work, things have been working out. My mom will need the occasional morning/long lunch/afternoon for doctor’s appointments and for the most part, I’m able to accommodate. However, the bigger Lazy Baby gets, the harder it is getting for my mom to handle the day to day of it all. We are at that awkward part where she ways a ton and isn’t mobile, so it puts a strain on even Mr. LL who carries 400 lb. water heaters on a regular basis.
So, last week, my mom asked if she could have one day off a week. A day where she could schedule appointments and to just, ya know, not carry a giant baby around I guess. I completely understand, and she is doing us such a HUGE service by taking the burden of childcare off our plates, that I want to be able to accommodate this request. I asked around for people who watch kids, contacted a couple (one was asking for WAY too much for us to be able to afford and the other is pretty busy), and I even called a couple of daycares (only to discover that all state accredited daycares have to assign a crib to a baby and no other baby can sleep in it – in other words, they weren’t going to do a one-day a week deal with me). I thought about asking my work if I could four days a week for 10 hours a day, even though the thought of not seeing my baby at all those four days breaks my heart (she’d be in bed, more than likely, by the time I would get home).
It kept me up a couple of nights. Mr. LL had a suggestion for someone close to our family but I don’t feel like this person would treat Lazy Baby the way I want her to be raised (not that this person would hurt her in anyway or anything like that, she just has a very different personality and is very strong willed). Him stressing the fact that we really can’t afford outside care and suggesting that this person was “our only option” didn’t help my anxiety.
I did come up with a temporary solution; I spoke to my boss about it, and we marked out a 2-5 days each month so my mom could pick one day a month to have off (aside from the usual holidays and etc.) and I would just use a vacation day that day. I’ve been at my current job for just over 10 years now, so I have a lot of vacation time and Mr. LL doesn’t have as much so I usually have random days I have to take here and there anyway. I know this is just a bandage on the situation, but maybe it will buy us some time to figure out a solution to this problem.
MORE REAL TALK: