Reply to SAHM and Dads: How did you know it was right for you?

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Reply to "SAHM and Dads: How did you know it was right for you?"

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[quote=Anonymous]I chose to stay home for both practical and emotional reasons. Practicality wise: we moved to a new state when I was 7 weeks away from giving birth to my child. There was no way anybody was going to hire me when I was 7 weeks away from giving birth, so I elected to not work those 7 weeks and see how things went after the baby was born.

Well, after the baby was born, we found out just how much travel DH's new job that we had moved for entailed. He was gone about 3 weeks a month for a long time. When we realized how much he would be traveling, it made no sense for us to put DD in daycare so I could work. It would have run me ragged, to do all the nighttime feedings by myself, then get up in the morning and get us both ready, drop her off at daycare, go work a full day, pick her up, come home, and do it all night by myself again. It would have been a nightmare. So we decided I would stay home.

The agreement has ALWAYS been that I plan to go back to work when she is of the age when she'll be in school full time, all day (age 5). But if the right job comes along, or I just decide I no longer want to do it, my husband supports me going back early. She is almost three, so if she were to go into all-day preschool now, it really wouldn't be as big a deal as it would have been when she was a baby. (She can tell me if someone is mean to her or bites her or whatever, she can do more for herself so I don't have to worry if a provider is rocking her or holding her enough as I would have when she was an infant.)

Emotionally, I just didn't want to send her to daycare. Before we moved to the new state, I worked at a great job, and had every intention of going back to that job at 8 weeks post partum. I don't know, if we had stayed in that state, if I really could have done that. I loved the job, but I don't know if I could have put my baby in daycare. And I just have this feeling that the kids who have the highest self-esteem in life are the ones who spent the majority of their early formative years with their mom. Nobody loves you like your mom. I had the chance to be able to fill all the days of her first few years with total love. This is no dig against kids who go to daycare- they have some skills  that my daughter doesn't yet, like, I don't know, counting to 50. She can't do that. I don't think daycare is bad. I just wanted the positivity in my daughter's life that would come from spending the first part of her life home with me.

If it hadn't been an option, of course I would have sent her to daycare, and I'm sure she'd have thrived. But I did have the option, and I figured, you know, she has her whole life to be in school all day and then eventually she'll move away and be an adult and work. There's only a few short years there in the beginning where you really get to fully enjoy them and that's what I wanted to do. [/quote]

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