Becoming a Stay-at-Home Mom: A Series?

[Note: Some of you already noticed this in your Google Reader, and thanks for your personal emails – I so appreciate them.  I wrote this and posted it yesterday, and then I remembered it was our wedding anniversary and, for my own sake in years to come, I didn’t want to say these things on that day.  Anyway, here it is today.]

Last night while browning the pork chops I had [what at that time seemed like] a great idea.

I thought I would invite you along on this adventure with me of becoming a full-time stay-at-home mother and all the excitement and learning curves that it entails.

But the idea is not as appealing on Monday morning, although the scene is set for telling good stories.  (Meaning the baby is asleep, the fire is crackling, the rain is falling, the house is cozy…)  The reason the idea is not as appealing is because it requires me to tell you that I am not a stay-at-home mom because I really want to be a stay-at-home mom.

I am a stay-at-home mom because I cannot get a job.

There, I said it.  I feel like there are not a lot of other people who become stay-at-home mothers because they simply are unemployable.  Most women who choose to be full-time homemakers and mommies really don’t want to do anything else more (which, honestly, is true of me) and set aside great careers to do this (which, honestly, is also true of me) and could get a great job if they wanted to (which, honestly, is not true of me).  Other people who become stay-at-home moms have “earned” it: they worked, they went to grad school, they had a career for awhile, what have you… and now they get their long-awaited reward: full-time homemade motherhood.

But me?  I worked my last shift as an ICU nurse on July 3, 2011.  Elliott returned on July 4, 2011, from a year-long deployment and we left a few weeks later for a new life in Sicily.

Even before we moved to Sicily I was trying to get a job here.  I tried for 6 months to get a job here and I was unsuccessful.  The biggest blow was being turned down for a nursing job I really wanted.  It was a cushy desk job in a beautiful office with a huge window.  I would have been the nurse working for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Overseas and my job would have involved seeing military moms and their children, dispensing nutritional advice and breast pumps, and teaching classes at the hospital and the school about how to eat healthy food.  I would have loved that job, I know, and I would have been good at it.

But the call came the day before our Christmas party when I was up to my elbows in flour.  “Is this a good time to talk, Rebecca?” my I-thought-future manager asked.

“Umm… yes, sure.  My baby’s napping, so this is a great time to talk.”  [immediately I kicked myself for such a mommy statement]

“OK, well, I just wanted you to know that we have decided to hire the other candidate for the job for WIC.  I’m so sorry.”

She said the other candidate had more experience.  Well, I guess there’s nothing I could do about that.  I’ve only been out of university for three years and so I’ve only had two jobs, and both of them were adult ICU jobs, not pediatric nursing positions.  So I understood that I wasn’t super experienced.  And I guess I understood that I didn’t get the job (even though I’d been visiting the office and sending my resume in since July to get that job as soon as it became available).

I was pretty beat up about that for awhile.  There were a lot of tears and Elliott did a lot of comforting and Lena got freaked out because her mommy was crying.  But eventually I had to pull myself together and move on.  I had tried to get a job and now there were no other nursing positions available.  There still aren’t, over a month later, and I don’t know of any that will become available until the summer or possibly the fall.  I might apply for those, who knows?  But right now, I am a stay-at-home mom.

I want to say very clearly that I was disappointed not to get this job – or any job – but I also was seriously conflicted about it.  I love Lena so much and I didn’t want to take her to daycare on base each day (even though she probably would love being with so many other kids all day long).  I wanted to be a dedicated, thoughtful mother; I wanted to put her in cloth diapers, potty train her absurdly early, read stacks of books to her each day, take her to the market each Wednesday, set up playdates with other babies and children, and so many other idealistic things.  I love being at home, too, and I love knitting and reading and baking and keeping a tidy home.  I love the flexibility of my schedule so that Elliott and I can pack up and travel any time we get the itch.  Both Elliott and I weighed the pros and cons a thousand times of me working vs. me being flexible at home.

I said over and over that “I’m not sure I’ll even take the WIC job if I get it,” but after I didn’t get it, I knew I would have taken it.  I would have taken it and of course complained about leaving Lena, but I would have taken it and I would have been so proud to have it.  I would have loved seeing my paycheck join Elliott’s again in our bank account.  I would have loved feeling like I could do it all: be a successful professional as well as a mom as well as a wife as well as a happy resident of a quaint Sicilian town.  I would have loved knowing I was beefing up my resume, preparing for grad school sometime soon.  I would have loved dressing up for work (no scrubs!  wowzah!) and interacting with so many different people and learning new skills and reviewing pediatric and maternal nutrition and developing this subset of skills.  I would have been so proud of myself.

Well, God said nix-ay to the pride, I guess.  And now I am not proud.  Now I am a stay-at-home mom because there is simply nothing else for me to be right now.  And I’m not even that good at it!  (But I’ll let you see that for yourself as time goes by.  As I share with you this adventure of being a full-time mom at home.  What do I do with my days?  You shall see…)

In the meantime, know that for all the pretty pictures I put up on here, for all the dreamy ways I talk about our life, for all the beautiful fodder I churn up to share with you… I am a little ashamed that I am doing this instead of working as well as doing this.  I am a little sad because it has been a steep, swift change from my first job out of college at the top of my game to quietly nursing a baby to sleep three times a day.  I am not used to it yet.  I do not own this transition yet.  This is not me yet.  I don’t recognize myself in all this, I don’t look at my life and say, “Yes!  This!  This is me!  This is who I have always wanted to be, this is where I want to expend my life’s energies, this is the fullest realization of the person God created me to be!”

The truth is that I just don’t know yet what God created me to be.  I know that it looks a lot different from what I imagined.  I know it is better than I could ever have imagined, not because it is more glamorous or more beautiful or more fun, but because it is right and good and true and desired by God.  I am desired by God.

That’s all for now; I hear my baby waking up from her nap.