Transitioning to a SAHM

A lot of people have asked me how, why, when, etc...I decided to be a Stay at Home Mom! So I thought I would get it down officially on the blog 1. so I don't forget and 2. to answer the questions :)

This may or may not be a surprise to a lot of people, but Jared and I have been working to get to a point where I could be a stay at home mom since I had Christian. I always, ALWAYS thought that I would be a working mom. I like to work. But then, I had a kid. Suddenly leaving home every day just wasn't as much fun anymore. With Christian, I went back to work after 6 weeks. SIX WEEKS! Can you believe that? He wasn't even 2 months old yet. It seems terribly cruel in retrospect, but I did what I had to do in order to provide for my family. But it was horrible. Sure. I liked Fidelity, it was a good company, the benefits were fantastic, the work was challenging but not overly stressful, but leaving that sweet baby at home was hard. HARD. I had lots of moms and others tell me, "You are so lucky to work. I would love to be away from home and these little (monsters/tyrants/terrorists/hellians/enter your favorite adjective here)." Well, I didn't feel lucky. I felt cheated and distraught and angry and bitter.

It was time to start recognizing that being a working mom was NOT what I wanted after all. The problem: Since I had always planned to work, we made financial decisions based on a double income. That was not easy to face. So we bit the bullet. We cancelled the smart phones. We cancelled the cable. We cut our dates, eating out and fun budget in half...and then in half again. We took all of the money saved and paid off debt. First was the credit card. Then the car. The furniture we "couldn't live without". The list goes on and on. All that STUFF we thought we needed. It turns out, I would eat top raman every day if it meant not having to leave my infant with someone else. We slowly paid off everything we could. We bought a house that isn't our dream, but is nice enough and big enough and has a lower payment than most people's car payments. Not everyone can claim a mortgage (including taxes, insurance, etc...) under $500. We traded in the gas guzzler for a car we barely fit in, but that cut our payments and gas by almost $250 a month.

We have sacrificed for what we wanted, and you know what? It's liberating.

When I was pregnant with Leila, I knew I couldn't keep working. I was convinced that I would give my notice as soon as my maternity leave was over. Unfortunately, God had other plans. I am going to share something with you that some people may scoff at, but I hope you will love and respect me enough to keep those comments to yourself.

September rolled around and it was time to go back to work. My plan was to work 2-3 weeks and then give my notice. The day before I was supposed to give notice, I was driving to work and praying about quitting and all of a sudden I got a very clear, "Not Yet." Devastated doesn't quite sum up my feelings about this revelation. I cried. I cried all day. I cried a few days. After everything sacrificed, how could I possibly have to keep going? How was I going to work 40-50 hours a week, raise 2 kids and with a husband working 12 hour days, still do the cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, laundry, baths, bedtime, etc...? The weight of the responsibility was suffocating. To those single parents who have done it, my hat goes off to you. You are stronger than I am.

Then something happened. At the end of September Jared was supposed to transition to a new salon and start October 15th. Good. Great. NOT great. By the middle of October it was clear things were not working out. The salon owner decided she didn't want Jared after all. So he was scrambling to find a new place to set up shop. It became clear WHY I wasn't supposed to quit as planned.  He found a salon he was excited about, got the job, and when he told me, we both knew it wasn't right. The Spirit immediately left my heart and I knew that this wasn't the place for him. So our prayers changed. The paths we were praying about were both wrong so at this point, we needed a new path to be opened to us. The next day, a solution that was staring him in the face, that he hadn't seen, became clear. A friend had asked him a few weeks before if he knew someone interested in sharing a Sola Salon with her. That day he realized that person was him! It didn't seem like as good a deal as the other salon, more footwork and he would be back to booth rent, etc...but it FELT right. So we did it. By November he finally had a place to work!

At the beginning of December I finally got the "Go Ahead" answer from the Lord that it was time for me to be home with the kids. The logical side of me just couldn't do it though. At the end of December Fidelity gives its employees a profit-sharing into our 401(k)s of 10% of our salary. So I decided to wait for that! It ended up being perfect because I was able to get the profit sharing, Fidelity made a $1,000 deposit into my health savings account, and I had some "perk points" that I could use to cash in on items I wanted. So I was able to get a bike, an iTouch, a new surround sound system for Jared and a few odds and ends. It was a nice ending to a very successful career with the best brokerage firm on Wall Street. And I don't mean that sarcastically.

I am grateful for the opportunity I have to stay home. I have had so many people tell me how hard it is to be home and I would like to say, "I know. I had no disillusions that this was going to be a cake walk. If you think this is hard, try doing both." It is hard. Being a mom is hard. But I love it, and I wouldn't have it any other way!