Working moms: The emotional side of returning to work

by Bethany Lynch

All moms are working moms, but I also have a job outside of the home. At first, I thought I would love being a working mom. I envisioned myself as a worker bee that would love working all day while my children played. I thought brightly lit, highly staffed daycare centers would be our best option. I never thought I would want to be home all day. While I desperately wanted to be a mother, I honestly had no idea how much my feelings would change once I had a baby.

I was extremely unprepared for the wild wave of emotions about returning to work that I experienced almost as soon as I found out I was pregnant. My amazing career that I had worked so hard for and thought was such a blessing for my family became a thorn in my side. The need to provide for my family away from home made me question everything.

The hardest part was accepting that I could not stay home or even reduce my hours. I resented my career. I resented making more than my husband. I resented every stay-at-home mom whose husband made enough and every working mom that could work part-time. I was angry. Cutting our grocery budget was not enough. Moving was not an option. I felt stuck.

I struggled for a long time with the idea of being a working mom. It was probably a year before I came to peace with the idea and accepted that I was where God wanted me to be. The best advice that anyone gave me was that a wife is called to be a helpmate. Ultimately my marriage is priority. By working, I was not only supporting my children; I was supporting my husband.

Of course my children are more important, WAY more important, than my career, but there is so much I can provide for them by working. I could go on and on about the advantages and disadvantages of working outside the home, but ultimately, I had to accept that I could not change my situation. I had to find advantages to having a career, and I had to praise God for helping me realize what a great mother I could be to my children—not despite the fact that I work but because of it.

In future posts I will share with you the decisions we have made about childcare, routine and discipline from a working mom’s viewpoint—all with a Babywise twist.

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Bethany is a wife and working mother of two young children. Married 8 years to her supportive husband, Lee, Bethany says that without Babywise her life would be impossibly chaotic. Babywise has helped her children, 2 ½ year-old Kai and 11 month-old Caitlin, become happy, healthy, well-rested and obedient. Despite her busy full-time job as a neonatal pharmacist at a fast-paced children’s hospital, Bethany loves to write about her family’s adventures on a family blog, and she has recently started a healthy-living blog called Babysteps to Organic Living.