Hardest Decision of My Life: Becoming a SAHM

Making the decision to become a stay at home mom has been the hardest, but easiest decision of my life thus far. I always knew I didn’t want my children being raised by strangers, but I also knew I didn’t get multiple degrees to stay at home. So what do you do when your baby stops eating and sleeping at daycare?

You write your resignation letter.

I have been with my job for going on five and a half years. I have a management team that supports and cares about their employees and a working family that notice when you are out. I have a great shift where I get off at 1:30 in the afternoon and start early enough to be the only one in the office for 3 hours. Some would say that is a horrible shift, but I’ve been doing it for so long now that it doesn’t bother me.

But this decision to be a SAHM was still the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. I love my son and I know it’s for a good cause but I honestly, I don’t know if I’m cut out for it.

Now please don’t get me wrong, I do not have anything against stay at home moms or dads for that matter, I admire you for being home with your babies, I just never wanted it for myself, it’s the opposite of everything I have worked for my entire life.  

I’m a worker! I’ve worked my entire life from the age of ten when I began babysitting and/or mowing lawns until I could get a fast food job at sixteen. And I haven’t stopped since! And for a short time during college and after I had multiple jobs. But now?? No job!!! Well no money-making job that is.

I now have the most important job, mom, and I know my little man will be keeping me busier than I have ever been, but I won’t be getting a paycheck. And that makes me scared among other things!

Scared of becoming a dependent woman. Dependent solely on another person. One of those women who rely solely on their husband and his money. I vowed my entire life I’d never become this type of woman, but here I am!

I fear becoming lazy. I fear gaining more weight, I’m already overweight and have been working on it, but now, when will I find the time? I fear not having time to take care of myself. I fear becoming someone I don’t recognize in the mirror and figuratively speaking.

I fear becoming dumb, I have a master’s degree, but now I won’t be using any of my higher education. What if I lose it! My entire adult life I have prided myself on getting through a Master’s program and undergraduate program on my own. But now I won’t even be using it.

I fear losing myself!

And worst of all, I fear becoming that woman who resents her husband even thou I know this was my decision, I wrote the resignation letter after all, but I fear I’d start resenting him because his job paid more than mine and that is why I was the one to quit a job I loved, when he hates his, most days.

And the biggest fear of all, I fear my husband getting so disgusted with the new, unmanicured hands and feet, fatter, not working out anymore because I’m always exhausted, spending all of his money because I don’t have any of my own, me that he cheats on me with an independent woman who has her own money and job. I fear him leaving me for another “old” me! I know his type, and a stay at home mom/wife is not it. He fell in love with me because of my work ethics, my ambitions, my dreams of owning my own business, my independent personality.

I fear becoming my mother, being stuck in a loveless marriage for years because she had become so dependent on her husband that she couldn’t get out because she had no money of her own. I fear being stuck.

To be honest these are just a few of my fears. I have so many fears when it comes to thinking of being home with my son. These are just the fears I have with myself, all the fears I have for the way it will affect my son, is enough to have an entirely new post about. And I may, but for now this was a very hard decision to make!

But fears and all aside I know I made it for the right reasons.

My son!