It’s Hard Being A Stay-At-Home Mom. Let’s Not Forget That

This originally appeared on Mamamia. Republished here with permission.

One of the hardest things about becoming a stay-at-home mom is the feeling that you’ve turned invisible. Once the gifts and the cards following the birth of your baby subside, the indifference to your daily grind can be depressing.

No-one, it seems, is interested in listening to the minutiae of a life run by shitty diapers and breastfeeding. From the moment my baby wakes me, my day is a litany of bodily requirements: pee, drink, change diaper, feed, burp, feed, drink, soothe, pump breasts, change diaper, feed, burp, feed, soothe, eat, drink, soothe, panic when I realize that I haven’t showered yet and it’s already noon.

As for healthy living? Forget it. I scoff spoonfuls of peanut butter for breakfast straight from the jar. Eat family-sized blocks of chocolate to help stay awake. And if I’m lucky enough to do a yoga stretch it’s to the soothing strains of the Wiggles.

The only time I feel like an actual person—and not just a baby-burping milk bar on legs—is during our daily walks. There’s nothing like a friendly wave to remind you you’re still alive. And it’s rare that a local doesn’t accost us on the footpath, peek into the stroller, and get a giggle from my daughter. A simple pleasure, perhaps, but the walk a day helps keep the Zoloft at bay.

Just because I’m open to the smiles and cheery words of, well, pretty much anyone out there, however, doesn’t mean I’m trawling the streets waiting to be noticed. Particularly by the sorts of crowds gathered at the watering holes that swell my seaside home—known for being “a drinking town with a sailing problem.” One watering hole in particular is a party bar with main street frontage tables. A perfect place, complete with rails to rest your elbows, to drown some Coronas and watch the view go by. And by view, I mean eye candy. And by eye candy, I mean sun-kissed 20-something pony-tailed women strolling the boardwalk in bikini tops and miniskirts. Not stay-at-home moms like me.

So the other day, in the middle of the afternoon, when the bar was packed with young men, the last thing I expected was to register on anyone’s radar. But as I pushed the stroller past the buzzing establishment, a man leans over the rail like a drunk cock-fighting spectator, shouts out “We can make it another one for ya,” and raises the foaming head on a glass of frothy beer enthusiastically in my direction.

My first reaction to his crass comment was to shake my head in disbelief. I mean, really? In the sleep-deprived fuzz of my brain, I felt something akin to pity, and wondered if the idiot in question had any idea what a woman’s perineum is like in the weeks following the birth of a child. Does incontinence turn him on? How about stretch marks? Or cracked and bleeding nipples?

My second reaction was more visceral. How dare he disrespect me? The inner feminist within me raged. I am a nursing mother of a newborn baby girl. His comment was sexual harassment. It demeaned me as a woman. It was lewd, and crude, and could even be seen by some as an act of verbal violence. So with a sense of outrage, I pulled the cover down over the stroller and we kept briskly on our way.

Friends who have gone before me into the harrowing world of Mommyland had warned me it was busy. I’d hoped they were exaggerating. I didn’t consider that they could actually be understating it.

How your life becomes consumed with rushing from one task to the next, and yet it’s impossible, when you try and think about it, to pinpoint exactly what you’ve done. And when I got home from our walk that day, it was no exception. Everything was urgent. I was busting. My baby needed changing. Not just changing, but bathing in the sink as well, since runny poo had bubbled up over her diaper and smeared across her tummy. I was thirsty. She was hungry. And wailing, which meant my boobs had done their let down. Milk dripped from my nipples and soaked through my dress and spotted across the floor. The phone was ringing. And the washing machine was beeping.

And when I’d finally done all that, I wanted to pass out in a coma. But I didn’t have time for comas. I still needed to organize dinner, hang out the laundry, empty the diaper bin, and load the dishwasher. So I headed to the fridge for the next best thing: a chocolate bar.

My hand was on the fridge door when I caught myself glancing at my frazzled reflection on the shiny metal handle.

My hand dropped from the fridge.

Now it’s true that being at home with a baby can often feel deadening. Shrinking your life to the bodily bare essentials: food, water, toilet. Shrinking your world, like that feeling you get when you pick up your phone and no one has called and no one has texted and no one has emailed and no one has liked your latest post on Facebook.

But could I really have sunk so low that there was a part of me that felt flattered by the ridiculous remarks of a drunk man?

And that’s when I realized something.

Maybe the only person disrespecting me was…me. Maybe it was time to consider that I wasn’t just the milk-stained, limp-haired, cottage cheese-thighed bag lady I imagined I’d become. Maybe it was time to have some pride in myself and my new role as a stay-at-home mother.

Motivation can come to you from a host of different sources. Reading an inspirational book, flicking through the pages of a parenting magazine, accepting encouragement from women at your mothers’ group, or just being open to what your inner voice is saying.

I realize the man was drunk. And he shouldn’t have said what he said. But at least it triggered my inner voice to announce it was time to sharpen up, and since that day I haven’t looked back. I choose to eat well (at least most of the time). I choose to face my new life as a stay-at-home mother with the same courage and drive required from any high-powered, paying job.

It’s about respecting yourself, and being there for your baby. And you can’t put a price tag on that. Regardless of where the inspiration came from.

Suvi Mahonen is a former journalist now turned freelance writer. Her non-fiction has appeared in various newspapers and magazines in both Australia and Canada including The Weekend Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and Practical Parenting. Her fiction has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies including in The Best Australian Stories 2010 and Griffith Review. A portion of a longer work-in-progress was nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize. You can find more information about her here.

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