The Working Mother

Nine months of pregnancy, sixteen hours of labor, and finally your bundle of joy is lying in your arms wondering why he or she couldn't have stayed in a little longer. After a few days, you and your child go home and it hits you. You are now a mommy. If you are lucky, you get six weeks to be with your child before thinking about daycare, and then the day arrives. You drop your child off to his or her new "mommy" for the day, and you are off to work. You cry the entire trip to the office, and it takes about thirty minutes for you to get yourself together before you can go inside.

As you sit at your desk, looking at the recent photos that you have downloaded to your screensaver of your child, there is a gnawing in the pit of your stomach. You can not concentrate on anything but getting to your child. Not that anything is wrong, but you want nothing more than to be with your little one. You call the caregiver at least five times, and they assure you that everything is fine. None of your work gets done, and you do not feel the least bit bad about it.

At five o'clock, you race out of the office barely saying goodbye to your co-workers. You speed down the road to your caregiver and burst through the door. It does not surprise you that your child is snuggled happily in the arms of the caregiver. You are relieved. Not only that your child is fine, but that you can take him or her home and be mommy.

As time passes, you and your child have moved into a routine. But things seem to get a little more challenging. Maybe you no longer find your job fulfilling. You would rather stay at home and raise your child than to have someone else doing it everyday for you. You cannot handle the fact that someone else is teaching your child all of the things that you wanted him or her to learn from you. You've missed their first steps, their first words, or even the first time they held their own bottle. Or, maybe you cannot wait to get to your job in the morning. You crave the interaction with adults on a daily basis. You feel a little jealous that someone else witnessed your child's firsts, but you know that you will be with that child for the rest of his or her life. You still enjoy your career and prefer being away from the house during the day. You do not mind staying just a little bit later to get your work done. Both scenarios are in no way wrong or right. It is what works best for you, the mother. But whichever scenario you are dealing with, one thing is for sure, you are a working mother.