How can I enjoy this time as a SAHM more? Feeling career slipping away...

[MabelMay]

Hello. Will try and keep this as brief as possible.
I am 33 years old with a DS of 18 months, and am also 5 months pregnant. Before having children I had a very satisfying career in a creative industry as a freelancer. Since having my DS I decided not to go back to work full-time but have struggled to find good jobs on a part-time basis. I've done a couple very short-term. Now I am 5 months pregnant, not working at the moment, and pretty much unemployable because I am sporting a rather large bump. I am resigned to the fact that I will probably be spending the next 12 months as a SAHM; although I am worried that no-one will want to employ me after this long break away from my work.
First of all, all of you SAHM-ers and similar, how can I make this time at home with my son feel full and rewarding? How do you survive on the days when you crave some adult company or work/activity that doesn't involve your son? How have you coped with seeing your careers plateau or disappear altogether? How do you make your life feel interesting/exciting?
Don't get me wrong - I love my DS to bits and have been a dedicated mum but I really really miss being in the workplace a lot of the time too. I need some SAHM survival tips and reassurance that my working life is not over!

Thanks.

I really struggled with this initially. I was also a nurse. DD started school a couple of weeks ago and I can't beleive how quick the time has gone. My attitude has changed a little now as I know I won't have DS to myself for very long before he is off to pre school.

I now set myself a small project each day, could be anything from sorting out a drawer to decorating and I also make sure that we get out of the house every day. It's small but it does provide some satisfaction.

I was a reluctant SAHM for a while when even a part time job outside the home was impossible. What kept me going was other adult company apart from other mums with children and some intellectual interest. I put my youngest in a creche for a couple of hours each week so I could take a language course and I sang (my great hobby) in a symphony chorus, which helped me maintain my self esteem. I did get back into work (now full time) eventually and although I missed out on climbing the managerial ladder, I have returned to my old career with an interesting job working for interesting people.

Hi MabelMay

I have DD age 3 1/2 and DS age 15 months - similar age gap to what you will have. I am a solicitor and I went back part time after DD but gave up completly after DS. I found the first few months after having DS really hard and I survived by getting out of the house every day- I would also take them out in the car for something to do - infact if you can get tehm to sleep that way it is great to take a flask of tea or stop at a drive through then park up somewhere and read a book or magazine whilst they sleep. saved my sanity many times! YOu can also go to the car wash with sleeping children!

I meet up with friends most days - I met lots of lovely Mums at NCT groups and we all have more than 1 child so are all in a similar position. I also think that well timed groups are a life saver - I found singing or active classes in the morning quite good as I could often get the children to sleep afterwards. I always feel cheated if the kids don't sleep after a class! Library is also good - sometimes have storytelling and mine is v baby freindly - could easily spend half a day there.

As far as career goes - I constantly moan to DH about my predicament and frequently plot ways to escape being a SAHM but I also focus on the negative things such as rushing around in the morning, the commute and juggling childcare which usually makes me feel a bit better and luckier to be at home.

MY final thought - have somthing to look forward to at the end of each day - mine is a glass of wine the minute the clock turns to 6pm but it could be having a bath or even watching your favoroite programme. x

In today's paper = study of 3000 women via a househouse survey over a long ish period. Those who worked part time were happiest although it pains me to write it, but both full and part time working women were happier than those staying at home. I thnk it was in the Sunday Telegraph

ohg od work is so oevrrated

Interesting Xenia.....I would be so miserable if I worked! But I guess someone has to make up the minority . Going to see if I can find the survey on line as I would be interested to read it.

Most women now, 100 years and 1000 years ago here and abroad work and worked. There may be a very few today and even fewer in Victorian England who didn't but they're rare so discussions about choice are pretty irrelevant to most families.

You've gotta look at the whole SAHM as a really positive thing. I've just gone back to work after being SAHM for 5 years (crap was it that long?). Felt really lucky to be at home for my kids and not have to go back to work. Beat myself up over giving up work to begin with but really glad I was able. It's a good thing. Your kids are lucky!

Thanks to everyone who has posted so far. Wish I could thank you all individually as I've seen some great survival tips and also share the mixed feelings of so many of you. It's really good to hear from those who feel or felt the same as I do.
I have enrolled on a language course for the next few months (just one morning a week), just to keep me feeling like I'm learning something or progressing on some front other than childcare and the domestic - leaving DS with a childminder for the day.
It's especially hard for women these days I think because more and more of us are having kids in late 20s/early 30s just as we're reaching the point in our careers we've been working so hard towards... so then it feels like an even greater wrench when you have to see that disappear - if not permanently, then at least for a while.
On the other hand, there is a lot about being a SAHM that I appreciate and like. I like that it's ME, mum, who is doing the bulk of the work in taking care of my DS - and I like not feeling that I'm missing out. I love those little moments that I know I would miss greatly working full-time.
I've read some great survival tips here and also it's just so encouraging to know that there are loads of other mums out there who have been and are going through the same ambivalent feelings that I have.
Glitterchick, thanks for those words of encouragement!
X

Oh dear. I find Monday mornings really hard. Was feeling much more positive about SAHMdom and then woke up this morning and feel down about it again. A part of me feels I should be going off to work... Isn't that ironic? Cos when I was working I often HATED monday mornings.

Xenia - you say most women work or have worked in the past (200, 1000 years ago etc). That's true but 200 and 1000 years ago most of the work that women did was within the cottage industries, i.e. AT HOME. They would still be the chief caregiver to their children. Men would go out to the fields and the women would stay in the home with their young children, spinning, churning, weaving, whatever. However, they would be with their children. Also grandparents and extended family living with them or nearby to share with childcare. This is true of many rural societies still nowadays.
The concept of women going OUT to work only came about with industrialisation and urbanisation, so it's only been around for the last century or two - and that's when things for women got complicated. They had to make the choice (if they were lucky enough have it, which most weren't) between looking after kids or going out to work.

It's actually pretty rare outside of developed countries and particularly in history that women have left their children with other people and gone out to work.

Just a thought.

MabelMay - you are quite right to point out that most women have worked within the home for most of history and across most cultures. Actually, that is true of men too - only with industrialisation did work and home become separate spheres.

However, women who worked within the home still used childcare in some societies. In pre-revolutionary France, the wives of shopkeepers and artisans sent their children out of the city to wet nurses (sometimes for years) in order to work in their husbands' businesses where they had no rights at all ie they were working in the worst form of patriarchal environment imaginable. The practice of sending babies to wet nurses is highly documented, since wet nursing was a regulated profession.

Women's work is not necessarily the path to women's freedom .

Sadly and very unfortunately I see many French women in similar situations today. My butcher's wife is in virtual slavery to her husband - her children are at school Monday to Friday, she works in the shop on every day but Sunday, the children are sent to the countryside to grandparents during the school holiday...

MabelMay - a tip for Mondays - Mondays are boring days everywhere - so I make sure I have a cleaner in first thing on Monday for the morning, she irons, I put away and tidy, then she cleans - and presto, by lunchtime all the weekend mess is gone, all the clothes are ironed and put away and I sit down with some good reading/have a long soak in the bath and some beauty treatments while my daughter has a nap.

Hi Anna - thanks for the Monday tip. I guess it's the just the effect Monday has on one's psyche, whether you're working or not.

Very interested in what you say about the French and wet-nursing. I remember reading about that some time ago. In fact - one fact sticks in my mind. Many of the wet-nurses, because they were desperate for money and relied on the income of the mums of the babies sent to them, would neglect their own babies, to the point of letting them die, in order to keep the 'wet' babies thriving and thus ensure a regular income. Can't remember what book this was from. Something called 'Mother Nature' I think. Anyway, that's going slightly off topic obviously but still interesting!

I guess the fact is I just miss my old work. But it's nigh impossible for me to go back and involve myself to the extent that i did before I had kids. I'm having to get used to a new idea of myself I suppose.

MabelMay - gosh, so the poor mothers who were enslaved to their husband's business and had to send their children to wet nurses didn't get to see their children live, and the wet nurses didn't even get to keep their children alive.

Puts a bit of a dampener on the supposed liberating effects of women working .

Most babies whether you were rich or poor were dead by the time they would have reached age 5. Very different times from today when life was often about survival. There were powerful businesswomen in England in the 1500s with estates and lands although obviously the legal protections we now have are better.

A lot of women do and always have worked from home and men. My father saw many patients at home and my sister is based at home for her psychology practice and I am based at home too when I'm not away on business and my exhusband would be here in another room again teaching the piano... very nice cottage industry feel of children and home integrated. Lots to commend it. Go forth and make it possible for yourselves.

I just don't think we had some previous historical nirvana of mothers and babies happy at home. It's unnatural, boring and never really happened except for the very few and even then they have servants or the 6 year old was left in charge of the baby etc.

Precisely Xenia, the past was very different, which rather undermines your point that "most women have always worked". Yes, in terrible conditions, with no rights, no decent healthcare or childcare.

As for doctors working from home in private practice - that is still very common here in France, and it is a major problem as doctors, like all professionals, need the intellectual stimulus and exchange of their professional colleagues. Doctors here come out of medical school, set up shop in the sitting room and seemingly never read a medical text again (though they are influenced by the oh-so-charming reps that the pharmaceutical companies send round on a regular basis).

Well that doesn't happen here. All professionals have compulsory CPD. I remember my father aged 70 suddenly coming under the CPD requirements for the first time (when he still worked full time) and having to go to lectures with 20 year olds which he enjoyed.

Yes, the past is another place and things have never been so good as now and will remain good as long as we don't have too many women getting back into the kitchen/cave in a service role.

That's only just (ie 2007) been introduced in France... and for all that, there is a reason why professional service firms are large - the same reason (that you often give) why it is good for bright children to go to selective schools with their peers - all those brains firing together make for greater knowledge and productivity and hence better service.

Yes, of course but you can still be very good and work alone. It's also nice for children to be integrated with their parents' working lives too, like the mother spinning in the corner, whilst father whittles a stick or whatever the modern equivalent is. Many parents try to work things like that if they are luck enough to have picked careers which can be adapted in that way.

You still seem sad MabelMay. This is a really good thing. A rewarding positive change in your life. You should be happy to give this opportunity to your children. You're lucky, lucky, lucky and you'll be glad you did it. Cheer up.

Don't panic MabelMay. I was in television too and left at about the time I got pregnant with DS. Am job hunting now (he will be one soon) and feeling excited about doing something different - but I spent A LOT of the time I had at home with him worrying about what I was going to do - not so much in terms of job satisfaction as sheer blind panic about not being able to earn enough money that I could support myself if I needed too. What a waste of time, I feel confident now that I can still get a decent job, as I'm sure can you, and wish I hadn't worried so much.

I've been a SAHM now for 21 months. I struggled initially when ds was 1 and dd just 3. Must say I am in my element now that ds is 3 (pre-school 5 mornings per week) and dd is 5 (at school)since I get some dedicated child free time.

Making SAHMdon work for me was about just that - having a few hours off from the children. I can take or leave other adult company...but I simply must have a few hours of not being badgered for apple juice or required to answer circular repetitive questions

I left a fairly high flying career (Senior NHS Manager - next logical career move would have been Director post)...but it helped a great deal in the transition that I was becoming disillusioned / disaffected with my career at the point that I left

Am now feeling that I have to use my brain - not necessarily in a work capacity. Thinking of doing an OU course for fun

'SAHMdom'

I started my course last week and already I feel better! It's weird, but it only took a few hours of using my brain in a non-child-related arena and I felt like a new woman! It helps that I'm really interested in the subject and it's something totally new to me too.
I am starting a language class next week (one morning a week) too just to fill in this window between pregnancy and birth of DC2. Neither course is costly at all. And worth every penny in terms of my state of mind.
I'm less panicked about "losing" my career in TV now. Am also enjoying being with my DS more. It's funny how something as simple as just a few hours can make the world of difference to your outlook. X