The Darker Confessions of A Stay at Home Mom

I feel like I have been there and done that but I have never felt that someone else understood it and could put it in words I could relate to. That is until I read Heather Michelle's Stay at Home Mom confessions. I must admit that I was both thrilled and shocked that she would offer up our guilty little secrets so easily (this after just waking from a nice long nap myself). However, I feel compelled to add 4 not so glamorous and darker confessions that are sure to keep you all thinking, is there nothing more that these Stay at Home Moms won't reveal?

We don't spend all day in the kitchen.
There are so many nights that we admit to completely forgetting about preparing for dinner. It often comes out of a box or mix. Just because we are home all day long doesn't mean that we will slave away in the kitchen coming up with a nutritious, healthy family meal. Sometimes Mac n' Cheese just happens, or the Pizza man comes knocking. Dinner doesn't come with a vegetable, meat, side and desert. We cheat and make sandwiches with an apple or cheetos or a can of soup. We are human and just because we stay home does not mean we look forward to those home baked goodies so many others think we provide and happily do for the family. In fact, you'd be surprised how many stay at home moms are the ones picking up cookies at the local grocery for class parties.

We make up excuses.
We really do try to help out as many of our friends as we can but so many times we have our own obligations. There are people in our circles who are more than willing to try and pile more on us, simply for the belief that we are home all day anyway or because we may have helped out in a pinch in the past. This happens so much so that we can become more than overwhelmed and walked on and feel like we are neglecting our own homes and families. We are usually the ones friends call on to baby-sit or run their errands because there are many of us who feel guilty for not saying no. It is true that saying no to a friend or family member can be far worse than making up an excuse. However sometimes making up an excuse that conflicts with their needs is the only route to go when we are faced with someone who habitually asks for our help. It is easier to say you have another obligation or the kids are sick or even that you are sick, when really all you want to do is keep your time free for yourself and your own family. Does it sound mean? Sure but not everyone realizes that we don't want to spend all day looking after someone else's kids, or getting their groceries or taking movies back or hitting the library. I mean, we're home anyway so why wouldn't we help out a friend?

We can be very lonely.
Despite what the books and movies and even prime time TV would have you think, many stay at home moms do not meet up for mommy classes, play dates and lunches with the girls. Most of our days really are spent at home with the children. With that isolation can come low self-esteem and depression. Talking to a babbling infant all day long can be very tedious and exhausting. It can be a lonely world we live in and so the first thing we want to do when our partner walks through the door is talk their ear off because finally someone who has a vocabulary larger than their weight understands the words coming out of our mouths. The Internet and television can often replace our closest girlfriends and is an easy trap for us to fall into. Many stay at home moms don't even realize how lonely they truly are until depression sets in. If you were to walk into your local elementary school with all the stay at home moms lined up, you wouldn't be able to tell the depressed ones apart from the other stay at home moms. Oddly enough, many of us will admit that though we get lonely, we don't really do anything about it.

Resentment happens.
This is probably the hardest one for many stay at home moms to admit but I will be happy to tell you that I for one can be resentful of my working friends and husband. It is not an easy thing to do some days; stay home and maintain the house, the children the family and keep it all running smoothly. Stay at home moms are under a scrutiny that if we admit to resenting our working counterparts, then we have some how made the wrong choice and we should get up and go to work. Well, it is not like that at all. We don't resent and envy every day. We have bad days just like anyone else, where we wish we could trade lives with some other mom, or we wonder how things would be if we worked. It's not bad, it's just normal. Everyone has a "grass is greener" moment but when stay at home moms and working moms have these moments, we get at each other's throats over it. What we end up doing is hiding it when we have a bad day and letting it fester. It's when we do this that we can fall into the lonely trap and get depressed as well. It should be safe for me to call up my working pal and tell her, "Man, I would love to go to work today" and not feel like I am under the magnifying glass or condemned for saying it out loud. Likewise, a working mom shouldn't feel the same if she utters the words, "What I wouldn't give to stay at home."

I am not implying that every stay at home mom holds inside these darker confessions. Truly I believe that there are moms out there who do make the homemade cookies for class parties and pour over recipe books searching for the right dinners. There are even moms who do lead completely full lives and never feel resentment, envy or lonely. I will admit to even talking to moms who are happy to be the car pool mom forever and baby-sit for anyone who knocks on her door. But then there are the rest of us, and that is whom these confessions are for. For the millions of stay at home moms who would never think of saying what they really feel out loud for fear of backlash on their decision to stay at home with their children.