To be honest. . .


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You get me, MorningStar. :) I'm a piano teacher, too, but had to quit when I was pregnant with the twins and life hasn't allowed me to start up again. I do have friends that are willing to help, but it's hard for me to ask someone to take 2 toddlers, let alone all 5 of my kids. One of my very best friends tells me every week to leave them with her for a couple of hours on her day off so I can shop without them. She's wonderful. I have 3 older sisters and they all work so they can't help as much as I helped them when their kids were little (LOL), but at least I can look at their lives now and see that this isn't forever. I also want to enjoy the good, fun parts of this time in my life. I'm trying. And I'm feeling much better than I was when I posted this. Thank you.

I would happily take them all.

Move to Utah!

P.S. I even promise to bring them back when you want them to come home.

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You get me, MorningStar. :) I'm a piano teacher, too, but had to quit when I was pregnant with the twins and life hasn't allowed me to start up again. I do have friends that are willing to help, but it's hard for me to ask someone to take 2 toddlers, let alone all 5 of my kids. One of my very best friends tells me every week to leave them with her for a couple of hours on her day off so I can shop without them. She's wonderful. I have 3 older sisters and they all work so they can't help as much as I helped them when their kids were little (LOL), but at least I can look at their lives now and see that this isn't forever. I also want to enjoy the good, fun parts of this time in my life. I'm trying. And I'm feeling much better than I was when I posted this. Thank you.

It's hard to say yes to those offers because you want to return the favor, but you should say yes and then bring her back a treat or something. :D Maybe you could even just play the piano for a while. Drove me nuts that I could never play at home without one of my kids thinking it was an invitation to pound on it.

Glad to hear you're feeling much better! We want to have one last child and I will be in that boat again. You just never know what will happen during pregnancy and after the baby is born. First we need to move into a house and make sure we have enough money to supplement my lost income.

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  • 1 month later...

For a long time, my husband worked 60 hours or more per week (which didn't include his long commute), so there was rarely any time for myself. His last job was so stressful, I started to really worry about his health. When lay-offs began, he took a lower paying, way less stressful job and he works four 10 hour days. It came with financial stress though and he talked about getting a part-time job, which would not have improved things much at all. What he needed was overtime, but then he was told they couldn't work overtime anymore unless it was approved or they were on-call. I finally decided it was time to start teaching piano lessons. Why have my husband be gone a lot more for $12 an hour when I could make $50 an hour and spend more time together? I also love teaching and it's great to show my parents the 7 years they paid for my piano lessons was well worth it.

$50 an hour for teaching piano lessons? Wow!
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  • 5 years later...

I work and plan on continuing to work when/if I have kids. My husband also works.

My mom was the same as you and slowly grew more and more resentful of SAHM life and having her body ruined by multiple kids etc. She tried to get back into a career too late to really be successful. She still thinks she can diet and exercise her way back into her 22 year old body and blew up at me when I referred her to a friend who would have given her lipo at an extreme discount (I was honestly trying to help because she has complained about her "permanent baby weight" for decades).

She's still a bitter woman about how her life turned out. I may be overcompensating but I never want to end up as miserable as she is. I won't presume to give you advice but if you have a passion for something besides being a SAHM maybe trying to pursue it now rather than later will help you feel better. 

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One thing you should do is look over your daily process; are you making more work for yourself than necessary?  For example, my ex wife would get extremely picky about "machine wash cold with like colors" and such to the point that she was often washing 3-4 items in a 4.0 cubic foot washing machine.  A few relatively minor wardrobe changes and being less picky about that cut the number of loads per week by more than half, saving water, time and detergent; it's a lot less effort to wash a dozen things at once than three loads of four things each.  When it was just the two of us, she would do the same with the dishwasher, running it less than half full after every meal.

Look at combining kitchen prep time too; depending on the recipes, it often doesn't add too much time or effort to go ahead and get at least part of another meal prepped while you're doing dinner, then stick it back in the fridge or the freezer for an easy evening later in the week.  (Anyone who has worked in a decent commercial kitchen will have tons of tips on things like keeping sliced fruits and vegetables fresh for a couple of days in the fridge, keeping ready-to-cook meat from freezer burn or fridge dry-out, etc.)

Do you have close neighbors with kids around he same age?  Even trading off for an hour or two can be really helpful, besides giving them another playmate to keep them occupied during those times.  Watching one or two extra for two hours is a lot less hassle when it means you get two hours of the other parents watching yours while you run errands or catch up a chore that yours get in the way of.  (My oldest was terrible about grabbing for sharp and/or hot things, so a 5 minute repair with a soldering iron, torch or razor knife needed 20 minutes of setup to gate off the area and make sure she was safely occupied first.)

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9 hours ago, NightSG said:

One thing you should do is look over your daily process; are you making more work for yourself than necessary?  For example, my ex wife would get extremely picky about "machine wash cold with like colors" and such to the point that she was often washing 3-4 items in a 4.0 cubic foot washing machine.  A few relatively minor wardrobe changes and being less picky about that cut the number of loads per week by more than half, saving water, time and detergent; it's a lot less effort to wash a dozen things at once than three loads of four things each.  When it was just the two of us, she would do the same with the dishwasher, running it less than half full after every meal.

Look at combining kitchen prep time too; depending on the recipes, it often doesn't add too much time or effort to go ahead and get at least part of another meal prepped while you're doing dinner, then stick it back in the fridge or the freezer for an easy evening later in the week.  (Anyone who has worked in a decent commercial kitchen will have tons of tips on things like keeping sliced fruits and vegetables fresh for a couple of days in the fridge, keeping ready-to-cook meat from freezer burn or fridge dry-out, etc.)

Do you have close neighbors with kids around he same age?  Even trading off for an hour or two can be really helpful, besides giving them another playmate to keep them occupied during those times.  Watching one or two extra for two hours is a lot less hassle when it means you get two hours of the other parents watching yours while you run errands or catch up a chore that yours get in the way of.  (My oldest was terrible about grabbing for sharp and/or hot things, so a 5 minute repair with a soldering iron, torch or razor knife needed 20 minutes of setup to gate off the area and make sure she was safely occupied first.)

Or we can bring back polygamy and wife #1 can take care of the kids while wife #2 takes care of laundry and wife #3 takes care of the kitchen.  :evilbanana:

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18 hours ago, sharmaine said:

I work and plan on continuing to work when/if I have kids. My husband also works.

My mom was the same as you and slowly grew more and more resentful of SAHM life and having her body ruined by multiple kids etc. She tried to get back into a career too late to really be successful. She still thinks she can diet and exercise her way back into her 22 year old body and blew up at me when I referred her to a friend who would have given her lipo at an extreme discount (I was honestly trying to help because she has complained about her "permanent baby weight" for decades).

She's still a bitter woman about how her life turned out. I may be overcompensating but I never want to end up as miserable as she is. I won't presume to give you advice but if you have a passion for something besides being a SAHM maybe trying to pursue it now rather than later will help you feel better. 

My mom is the complete opposite of your mom.  She was a midwife and quit her job the day she got married.  She's almost 80 now and she's still bossing everybody around in her 4'10" frame.  Both of us are currently crashing on my brother's house for the next few months and I feel like a little kid again being assigned my chores... I can hear her voice calling from the opposite end of the house and I can't bring myself to ignore it!  To be honest, I kinda like hearing my mom just as energetic as she was 40 years ago.  Mind you, I'm neck deep in middle-age and have teen children of my own, my brother and his wife a few years older... but my mom is still The Boss and my brother's wife is just happy to concentrate on her pediatric career and let my mom rule the roost where she's most happy.

Different strokes for different folks!  Women have such varied life stories that it's great to talk about the many different ways women dealt with motherhood over the course of human progression.

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@Guest. I hope that I am not making you feel worse but...I would not last 6 months as a SAHM. I can barely clean out a closet without going completely nuts. And I have no kids! The only way that I can get chores done is to play loud music or play ‘beat the clock’. I take my hat of to you! I think that you are terrific to have stuck it out so long. I could not! You deserve applause! 

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