How to turn off Mama guilt.

Suddenly I’m a working mother.  (What a ridiculous term by the way, what mother isn’t?!).

And yes I know, technically I have been working/ sewing/ relief teaching for over a year now, but in many ways that didn’t feel ‘real’.

Now that I have regular work days and my own class, I feel like I ‘qualify’ to call myself a working mother. Ugghhh. Crazy I know.

At the moment I feel like maybe I’m not doing either role very well at all. Or maybe I am, I don’t know, but the little voice in my head that likes to turn on the Mama guilt doesn’t think so.

I spend too much time at home with Eamon thinking and planning for what I need to do for work, and spend my time at work wondering what Eamon is doing and honestly, feeling a little bit sad.   It also hasn’t helped that I had a couple of late nights and early starts for meetings this week and at one point only saw him for 5 minutes in the morning.  (Although I had actually seen him through half open eyes for most of the night when he wasn’t sleeping).

I come home from school and I can barely keep my eyes open and we end up watching more ABC4kids then I would care to admit.  Then to compensate I try to fill our days off with fun activities, only to end up totally wiped when it’s time to go back to work.

It’s not that I dislike the work either. In fact I am really enjoying being back in the classroom again, dealing with the quirks and charms that is the teenager.  But it is that conflicted feeling of wanting to be in two places as once that is running me down.

So I’m letting it go.  No more Mama Guilt.

How?  By being present exactly where I am in the moment. When I’m with Eamon I will be 100% there.  When I’m work I’m going to quit daydreaming of home.

By reminding myself that I need to look after myself too which includes ditching the worthless worry.  I need to stop thinking I don’t have time anymore for the things I want to do, for me, just because I’ve already spent so many hours/ days away from him.  He is coping fine (regardless of how he wants to play it when I drop him at daycare).  I need to remind myself that I am a better Mama when I am there if I have taken some time for myself as well.

By replacing guilt with a reality check.  I’m going to be conscious of these thoughts and instead of letting them control my mood I’m going to remind myself that in 10 years it’s not going to matter either way. He isn’t going to worry whether I was at home with him all of the time or not, what he will remember is if I was really there with him in the moments that I could be.