Staying At Home With Children...

Staying home with my children was a tough decision, and is a tough decision for many stay at home parents to make. I had a great job and worked for a great supervisor, and had a wonderful repore with all the employees. I even got a promotion before I went on maternity leave. Some will say, actually many will say why would you not return to work if you had all of those great things. Seriously, how many people can honestly say that they love their job? In today's society two incomes are usually needed to make ends meet. So why not return to a great place of employement where the pay was good, and the employees were nice, and for the most part everyone got along?

I went on a long maternity leave, and finally me and my better half decided that me being home with the kids would be best. I was torn. I enjoyed working for my boss, and I did not want to leave her without anyone to assist her, but what I wanted even more was to be at home with my kids. I went back and forth in my mind of what it would be like dropping my newborn off at day care (I did not have to do this with my first child, I stayed home with her for the first year), and dropping my school aged daughter off at school, which she would then go to after school care until I was able to pick her up. It saddened me to think about my newborn son sleeping in a carseat most of the day or strange crib, constantly getting sick, and not recieving the love and affection from mommy or daddy throughout the day. It saddened me even more thinking about my daughter being dropped off before school, so I could make it to work on time, and then staying after school, until I was able to pick her up. With me at work, their father at work, and the kids at day care and school, when would we see each other, or should I say when would we really spend any quality time together? If I would have gone back to work, there would have only been a couple hours in between picking up the children and bedtime to do anything. After picking up the children, I would have to help with home work, try to spend some quality time with the baby, cook dinner(eat, hopefully we would all be able to sit down together), clean, get everything ready for the next day, read bedtime stories, put kids to sleep, then finally it would be time for me to try and wind down, hope to spend some quality time with my honey, go to sleep, wake up and do it all over again. I know many, many people do this every day, without a complaint without hesitation, and I commend them for doing it, it is not easy. I just could not see myself and my honey working to death to pay someone else to raise our kids. Part of the joys of having kids in being able to watch them grow up. Again, not everyone is able to stay home or even wants to stay home, these are just my personal opinions. Being a mommy is a never ending job, but being a stay at home mom, is even tougher. You hardly ever get a break, but I still would not change anything.

For those of you considering staying home, it is a tough decision and it should be well thought out, and you should have a back up plan, a couple of back up plans if possible. It can be done, but you will have to budget, communicate with spouse/significant other, be supportive of one another (this includes the entire family), and most importantly, have faith, believe that you made the right decision.