Maxed Out Working Mom

All moms work hard, there is no question about that. Whether it is full-time, part-time, at home, or outside the home, it is all overwhelmingly exhausting at times. I happen to work outside the home. I spend most of my daytime hours counting down the minutes until I can leave and head home to my next job. At work, my brain is a never ending “to do” list of all the things I need to do at home. At home, it’s a laundry list of everything I should be doing at work. As the stress mounts, the guilt mounts. I’m either feeling guilty I am at home with my kids when I should be at work, or I feel guilty when I am at work and not with my kids. I can’t win. If you are a working mom you might relate to some of these.

You know you’re a working mom if…

• Your kids leave the house almost every day with either mismatched clothes or messy hair…sometimes both. You just don’t have time to argue.

• Most of the time, your laundry doesn’t make it out of the clothes basket into the dresser drawers or closet. 

• Your calendar is filled with reminders for your kids doctor appointments, conferences, and sports schedules in addition to your conference calls, team meetings, and webinars. 

• You have never been to “breakfast with mom” day at school. 

• You can find diapers, underwear, Barbies, Legos, and wipes in your laptop bag. 

• You go to work nearly every day with spit, snot, or food crusted to your clothes. 

• You cry on your commute into work in the morning because you just pried your child off your leg and left them screaming at the window with their teacher watching you drive away.

• Your employer thinks you are out interviewing for a new job…You are not. You are just out with sick kids that often. 

• Your teachers see your kids’ “firsts” before you do (first steps, first words, etc). 

• You never drive when you go out to lunch with co-workers. No way you are letting them see the rotten food and garbage all over the kid-mobile!

• You feel guilty for leaving work before a project was done because you had get a kid to gymnastics…but you would feel even more guilty if you missed gymnastics.

• You have shown up to work with a princess or Ninja Turtle Band-Aid on your finger. 

• You get home from work just in time to feed the kids, do homework, baths, and put them to bed each day. 

• On the bright side…Work is the only place you can go to the bathroom alone with the door closed or finish a cup of coffee while it is still hot!

To all my maxed out and exhausted fellow working moms out there…hang in there.

Cheers to stress, exhaustion, and doing our best to survive! I'll take another glass of wine, please…

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