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About 5 minutes after I got pregnant with Azita I started reading mommy blogs. Since I was awake all night with swollen feet and nausea and the worst insomnia of my life, I had a lot of time to read. The funny thing is that somehow in reading a lot of these blogs I got the impression that I, as a working mother, would have it made. I seriously believed this.

I would have the best of both worlds. I would spend enough time with my child to enjoy her company, but I would also get to spend a lot of time in the company of adults, being intellectually stimulated and having adult conversation.

I would somehow have only one job that was over when I left the office. I’m not sure who I thought would take care of my baby when I got home, but somehow the mommies led me to believe this.

All of the above is a big crock. And, here’s the part where just about half the blogosphere will pick up arms and take the offensive against me. I am convinced there is a stay-at-home mom conspiracy against those of us who must (or choose) to work outside of the home.

I feel the need to begin by saying that I have a great deal of respect for mothers who devote their lives to raising their children. My sister has done this, and I think she is the best mother in the world. I look up to her as a mother, and I think parenting 3 young children keeps her as busy if not often busier than I am. I have made no secret of the fact that were we able to keep a roof over our heads and food in our bellies on just Roger’s salary, I would in a heartbeat make the same decision.

What I don’t understand is why stay-at-home mothers feel the need to denigrate the work the rest of us mothers do. I realize that is a blanket statement, because I know a lot of stay-at-home mothers, many who occasionally read this blog, who do not do this. But I read many a blog post where I feel this is the case.

As I said, I understand just how much work it takes to raise a child. I say this because I am now a mother, and I am raising my child even though I also work outside of the home and someone else takes care of Azita for 8 hours a day during the week. I still raise her. I’m just also raising a product line and about 15 accounts and the product support for all of my company’s clients.

Consider the following breakdown of a typical weekday for yours truly.

4:55am : Alarm goes off.  First snooze.

5:09am: Second snooze

5:19am: Turn off the alarm. Groan for a few minutes.

5:30am: Out of bed. Get dressed to workout.

5:35am: Make breakfast for Azita.

5:45-6:50am: Workout.

6:50-7:00am: Shower, put on makeup, do hair, get dressed.

7:00-7:20am: Clean up Azita, brush her teeth, get her dressed, beg her to decide on a pair of shoes. Chase her around the apartment with said shoes, begging her to let me put them on her feet.

7:20-7:30am: Help Roger get bags and lunches packed, make travel mug of coffee, pull together whatever Azita needs for daycare.

7:30-7:45am: Check work email and plan work schedule for the day.

7:45-8:15am: Daycare dropoff and get to work.

8:15am-4:45pm: Work. And I mean non-stop work. No naps. No lunch breaks. No coffee breaks. Sometimes no bathroom or water breaks.

4:45-5:00pm: Go home. Work comes with me, of course.

5:00-6:00pm: Make dinner, while answering work emails, and (if Roger is working out) taking care of Azita.

6:00-6:30pm: Family dinner.

6:30-6:40pm: Give Azita her nebulizer treatment.

6:45-6:55pm: Azita’s bathtime.

6:55-7:45pm: Try (and beg and plead) to get Azita to sleep. A few nights a week, Roger does this, so I can do homework for the class I’m taking.

7:45-11:00pm: Back to the grind. If I have a lot to do for work or have something due for school, I’ll stay up as late as 1:00am to get it done.

11:00pm: Read for 15 -30minutes in bed, until I fall asleep.

Rinse, lather, repeat the next 24 hours.

Really, the only thing that is different in my schedule from a stay-at-home mother’s schedule is the part in the middle when I go to an office. I understand that there is something nice about having adult conversation during the day, but does it make my work any less tiring and draining than taking care of a toddler and a home full-time?

Like a stay-at-home mother, my job as a mother also never ends. I also get no breaks from motherhood when I have the flu or I’m operating on just a few hours of sleep. In fact, I also get no breaks from my second job — the one that pays the bills — when I’m sick or operating on just a few hours of sleep.

I understand that many women (and men) put down the accomplishments of women in the home, especially those who have made their home and their children their lives. I am not one of those people, and I say shame on anyone who does this. But from where I stand it seems like many women shell out the same bad treatment to those of us who have made different choices, and I think they should be ashamed as well.

Maybe one day women can feel pride based on the merit of their own accomplishments rather than by putting down the accomplishments of others. I hope one day Azita will live in that world.

4 Comments

zahra, July 22nd 2010 | Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Parenthood + Childhood

At the End of the Day

Last week the worst thing happened. Our daycare situation suddenly became not so stable. It was upsetting on many levels, the worst of which was that no matter what the end result Azita would have to undergo a pretty big change. She would have to be separated from people and a place she loved for the first 18 months of her life, and I had no chance to ease her into a new situation.

Of course the old adage is true and it poured mightily this last week as we not only went without daycare for a week but also rushed to find a new, quality environment for Azita to spend her days.

Work was insanely busy and stressful. Family was, well the same as it’s always been. I reached a breaking point. I walked through each day so full of stress that I couldn’t eat. I could barely sleep. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. By the end of the week I had a permanent sick feeling in my stomach and a stabbing pain in my chest that irradiated out to every extremity. I looked forward to the weekend, but it was quite the disappointment. What should have been a fun time was made uncomfortable and miserable instantly by the inclusion of someone I was hoping to never deal with again.

And the thing that hung over my head weighed on me more and more heavily. This morning we dropped Azita off at her new daycare. We are already in love with this place, but it was still nerve-wracking to think about it. The drop-off was exactly what I feared. Azita cried. She wailed. She clung to me, her hands around my neck, refusing to let go. I spent the day with more non-stop requests and stress at work, feeling as upset as the first day I dropped Azita off at daycare 16 months ago.

But the day finally came to a close, and when I walked in to the place where my daughter now spends her days, she smiled so joyously and ran to me, a toy clutched in her little hand, yelling “Mama!” as she ran into my arms. Her new daycare provider just about beamed as she told me how happy and playful my daughter was throughout the day. It was the best cap to one of the worst weeks. The thing I needed to make everything better.

I do now realize that if I stick it out and focus on the right things, the positive things, things will always get better. The journey may take longer than I like, but eventually I will reach the destination as long as I keep walking.  And at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.

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zahra, July 19th 2010 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in Parenthood + Childhood

A Life Unheard

I’ve been feeling a bit down lately. Partially because a great plague has befallen our family, and it truly sucks. I’m a bit of a hyper, always on the go sort of person, and this illness has stopped me in my tracks, and it’s made Azita a big old grumpy puss. I’m not used to this because she’s almost always happy and cheerful.  Luckily this bug seems to be on its way out. But my general malaise remains firmly planted. This morning on my way in to work, as I sat there dreading the rest of my day (a regular occurrence as of late), I realized why.

I live a life unheard.

I walk through my days piping up when I think I have something to contribute to a conversation, and no one hears me. I go to work 5 days a week and have discussions in my area of expertise, and I leave the conversation realizing that no one listened to anything I had to say. My thoughts on the subject had no bearing on any outcomes. So I spend my days implementing other peoples’ ideas, and it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating because I went to school for a really long time. Too long. And in 8 years of my decade of higher education I studied the same thing to death, and then I found a job in the same field and worked in a career doing these things. And 13 years later none of that matters. I’m doing mindless work, and I don’t have a mind that likes to sit still.

Then I go home and things aren’t much better.

Let me preface what’s to come with a statement that I think I have a great husband. He does laundry and dishes, and he even scrubs the bathroom floor. With bleach, just how I like it. But he doesn’t listen to me.

Maybe it’s because he’s a man. We have a conversation, and when I’m talking I can see in his face that he’s thinking about something else. More than likely he’s thinking about the next thing he wants to talk about, because inevitably he interrupts me to express his opinion. And he never remembers anything I tell him, like “don’t forget we have x, y and z this Saturday” or “the doctor said we need to do a, b and c at Azita’s checkup.” He always insists I never tell him these things. Anyone in my family can tell you that I have a freakishly impeccable memory. I can remember conversations I heard when I was 4 years old nearly word for word. I can remember exactly what I wore to the first day of school in kindergarten. I can remember the exact cash register in the exact Giant near my childhood home where my sister bit me when I was 7 and drew blood because she wanted to sit on the bag tray at the end of the register’s conveyor belt. I’m just saying, I have a good memory, and if I remember that I said something, I said it.

My husband never remembers anything I say, because he never listens to it in the first place.

I expect a little of this in life. I know that what I have to say is not always interesting. We can’t always be on all the time. I also know people are sometimes preoccupied with other things. I myself am guilty of not listening quite a lot for this very reason. We are all busy and harried at times. Sometimes I can hardly hear a conversation because my mind is racing and mulling over the million things that need to get done. But when someone talks to me, usually I’m listening AND hearing.

I was raised in a home where children were seen and not heard. As an adult, though, I’m used to being heard.  I mean, in a work setting, I frequently know what I’m talking about. And in a personal setting, well, I think I’m usually nice and pretty damn funny. I’ve been known to entertain a room with my wacky stories, and I think I have an interesting opinion about some things.

I guess I don’t know how I got in this situation. It’s pretty damn lonely life never being heard, and the worst part is that I sometimes think I’ve resigned myself to this being the way life is. But I’m not ready (and I hope I never will) to walk through life like J. Alfred Prufrock. I may be a loner at heart, but I need some engagement to keep me going.

So, today I RSVPed “Yes” for a working mamas playdate. I’m going to make some working mama friends, and we’re going to play in a ball pit with our babies and hopefully talk. And I’m looking forward to it and feeling better about things already, because there’s nothing like taking action in the present to turn life around.

5 Comments

zahra, March 9th 2010 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in Uncategorizable Ramblings

Work Day, Snow Day, Sick Day

It’s an old story, the struggle between working (outside of the home) and parenting. Certainly I’ve talked about this struggle here on this blog. This week in Arlington has really pushed that struggle to an extreme for me and other mothers in the area, as the area has been pretty incapacitated by a couple feet of snow with more coming down as I write this. That means that getting to work has been pretty hard. Actually, it’s been impossible for me.

Between lack of daycare and the high level of difficulty of getting to the office with a baby, a laptop, and work and baby supplies,  I haven’t been able to make it into the office since last  Thursday. That isn’t to say that I haven’t worked. I’ve been working from home, and actually, I’ve had a very productive few work days. So, why do I feel nervous and guilty?

I know I’m not alone. On one of my favorite discussion boards recently I read a post by a woman whose child had been sick. After a few days of working from home she began to worry about her job. I’ve heard basically the same story from friends and coworkers and family. It’s a fact of life in this country. Even employers who claim to be family friendly value face time over actual work produced.

So, what does a parent do? What do you do when snow shuts down daycare or when your child is sick? Who wins — your child or your job? Both men and women face these stresses and worries, but I think it’s worse for women.

I don’t know the solution to this dilemma, but I think my sister said it best when she said that women’s lib was both the best and worst thing to happen to women. Yes we are now technically equals in the workplace, and we actually have the option to go in to an office and work if that’s what we choose. But, in many ways things are harder now than ever. We are now in a workplace that was designed for men, and a mother just can’t fit in without denying the mother side of them just a little.

I have faith this will change. Mothers are needed in the workplace more than ever. Many countries are waking up to this fact and starting programs that make it more possible for us to have it all (e.g., check out this site). Maybe one day the U.S. will catch up with much of the rest of the world. In the meantime, I’ll be working from home tomorrow like many other people in the area, and I’ll do my best to simultaneously take care of my daughter and not worry myself into an early grave.

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zahra, February 9th 2010 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in Parenthood + Childhood

Hi Ho Hi Ho

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I wish I could say that it’s because I’ve been busy celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday and being thankful for everything in my life.  But that’s not true, unfortunately. I mean I have been thankful and thought a lot about what I am thankful for. And, I do plan on finishing the declarations of thanks I started last week. However, the point is that I spent the entire weekend working, with a little family time thrown in here and there, and I’m really unhappy about it. That is, with the working, not the family time.

In the current economy, I am certainly grateful to have a job that pays me a paycheck that pays my bills and allows me to buy my daughter some nice things here and there. Don’t get me wrong. I am grateful, and I am not whining. But allow me to whine just a little. I actually like what I do. For a long time, my career was the most important thing to me. In fact, my career was the most important thing to me next to my brand-spanking new marriage about 6 years ago when I first started my job at Blackboard. So, it shouldn’t surprise me that since my current boss was also my boss at Blackboard, he might expect the same undying devotion to my job.

Well, I can tell you that devotion no longer exists. I still love what I do, but I love Azita more. And, when I spend a four-day weekend that is supposed to be about thankfulness and family and friends working until 2am while my daughter cries for my attention, I start to get pretty damn annoyed with what I do. Heck, I start to get pretty angry. I’m angry that my boss expects me to ignore my daughter and work nearly 24 hours a day just to make a minute dent in my workload. I’m mostly angry that I just did it. I should have explained it wouldn’t be possible and that my family comes first.

But I didn’t. I didn’t because I’m afraid that I’ll lose my job if I don’t lose myself to it. It’s an irrational fear at first glance, but it really isn’t if you live in the D.C. area where nearly everyone is married to their jobs. It’s easy to look at the employment landscape and to fear that unless you also give your job everything you have, including a relationship with your daughter, that you won’t be able to continue earning.

I have to say that this is one reason it is becoming more and more tempting for me to get up and move somewhere where life is a little slower and family is a little more important. For now, I’m off to the mines every weekday morning, but I need a change. Azita needs me to change, and I’ve decided that I need to start taking the steps I need to take to make that change happen.

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zahra, November 30th 2009 | Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Family + Friends, Parenthood + Childhood

Apprehension

It’s Sunday night. The sun is slipping down behind the trees, leaving behind a lavender and orange wake. The crickets and tree frogs have started chirping, and a slight breeze tickles the leaves on the giant oaks as it sweeps the crisp night-time air through my open window. I’m sitting on the couch with a sleeping baby on my lap. Her little belly rises and falls slowly. Her mouth is relaxed into a little, crooked pout. Her impossibly long lashes brush her cheeks. The tv is off. There is no music. Just the quiet and chirping and breeze and the occasional car rushing down the street in front of our home — a symphony by John Cage. I could get addicted to this idyllic world, but somewhere in my chest is a hard pit that rises up to tighten my throat. It ruins this moment. In only 12 hours I’ll be driving to daycare, ready to leave my baby with someone else. And suddenly the noise comes crashing down into my head and my life seems like an impossible situation.

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zahra, September 27th 2009 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Short + Sweet

My Glass Half Empty Post

I’m back at work after a week long vacation. We didn’t travel anywhere. It was just a blissful week of spending all day and night with Azita. I was tired of missing all of her firsts, and there have been a lot of them lately — crawling, pulling up, cruising, more coherent babbling (she now says “mama” and “baba”). I had hoped I’d get to witness a first something in this week off, but I didn’t. She’s now back in daycare where someone else gets to be there for all of the milestones in her life. This blows. It really, really blows. There’s no other way to look at it, at least not from my point of view. Right now I’m sitting at my desk at work, “looking forward” to a long day — we have a work thing that will keep me away from her until 7:30 tonight — and feeling about as woeful as I can get, until I get to see my darling little squirrel tonight. Yes, we call her “squirrel.” Actually, “squirrel” is her nick-nickname. The full nickname is really “squirrel butt”, and that’s definitely another post for another time. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go cry at my own pity party.

2 Comments

zahra, September 14th 2009 | Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Parenthood + Childhood

Monday Morning Blues

Azita was crying when I left her at daycare this morning. I know I’m lucky. This is not a usual occurrence. In fact, she usually smiles and coos and giggles at the sight of her main caretaker (hereafter referred to as Miss Poppins). I always leave her there knowing that I am leaving her in the hands of people she loves, and who dote on her. This morning would have been no exception, except that the advent of crawling has turned Azita into a perpetual motion machine. And, beware her wrath if you try to stop her. Miss Poppins had to stop her this morning, at least until a soft, clean crawling surface was put down. I know that the crying was probably a short-lived thing — when I looked in the window on my way out, she was already smiling and babbling at some of the other kids — but I couldn’t help feeling the same way I felt on that first day I dropped her off at daycare. I remember that day acutely. I refer to it often as “the worst day of my life.” I don’t think I’m being overly dramatic either.

On that day many friends plied me with words intended to comfort: “Don’t worry. In a couple weeks, you’ll be looking forward to Mondays.” Well, it’s 5 months later, and I think I can definitively say that I will never look forward to Mondays. Nor, I’ve decided, do I want to.

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zahra, August 10th 2009 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized

Pre-holiday Travels

It finally happened. My job sent me to Europe, the U.K., specifically. I went to a conference in Durham and then spent a day and a quarter in London. It was a lovely trip in spite of the cold, and both Roger and I had a great time. One thing that is not to be missed is riding the national rail across the English countryside. We took the train from London’s Kings Cross station all the way up to Durham, and we saw some of the most beautiful countryside.  Sheep, horses, and cows abound, and the grass is so lush and green — the most brilliant emerald color. In spite of our lack of sleep, we found it easy to stay awake and gape at all of the natural beauty.

The flight back to the States was not such a beautiful thing. Delays left both of us grumpy, and it wasn’t long before we were bickering. Luckily, we quickly got over our grumpiness after we had a bite to eat, because Roger had to hold my theoretical hair back while I vomited repeatedly during the landing. To say that the landing was bumpy would be an understatement. It was a roller coaster ride, and it didn’t take on the first try. The captain had to abort the approach, circle around, and attempt the landing once more. The second time wasn’t any less bumpy thanks to gale-force winds, and I’m the kind of person who can barely hold down my lunch during a leisurely drive. Needless to say, I made good use of both mine and Roger’s air sickness bags, and Roger was kind enough to assure me that it was not at all disgusting. Very sweet, as it was most assuredly gross. -Zahra

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zahra, December 18th 2007 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Uncategorized