"You have a Baby and you go to WORK?!!"...

"Don't you feel guilty about coming to work and leaving your baby at home?" Actually today was the first day that I was able to drive to work without crying, so thanks for reminding me that I am a horrible mother...Wait a minute, you are asking me this from your office here at work while your children are at daycare!...Why are you judging me? Does it make you feel better about your choice to be a working mom?
I rush out of work to meet my son at a mommy and me class...Afterwards I am invited to go to lunch, the following day, by some of the moms..."Oh sorry, I can't, I have to work. But if you want to meet up on a Saturday, I would be love to." 3 grown women sit speechless, staring at me like I am an alien. They have heard of women like me but they had never met one...and here it comes..."You go to WORK?!!! What's that like?"
What you will do as a woman once your child is born is a subject of great debate. Prior to having children I naively didn't realize so many people even cared about how my post partum time would be divided. Goodness knows no one ever seemed to care about the hours I spent wandering the mall looking at eyeshadow. Or that some afternoons I liked to look at the pores on my face for several hours in the bright light of the day. But that was BC, before children. I have however, quickly learned that everyone has an opinion about what I do now...because I'm someone's mom! BTW, I'm not the mom to any of their children, so I'm not sure how they have the right to such strong opinions about what it is that I do, EVER.
Stay at home MOM or working MOM...don't we share the same last name? Doesn't that make us family? We certainly share many of the same hardships...like 9 months of sobriety, a lifetime of putting just about everyone before ourselves, a body that will never quite be the same...I could go on and on about all of our commonalities...Interestingly, the only thing that perhaps separates our daily plight is that some of us work outside of the home.
I will tell you that I have no opinion on whether or not you go to work...I have many of working mom friends that don't do so for economic reasons. They had careers first and then wanted to be moms, is it wrong that they continue to work? And then there are my friends that had careers and decided that staying at home was right for them...I'm not sure they know how much easier it is to go to work!  At the end of the day we each have to do what is right for us and our families. How can we judge that for someone else? And why do we want to? I have never heard a man say, that guy's not a good dad because he works...quite the opposite. And to be truthful I have asked my husband if he thought one of his friends was a good dad...his response was something along these lines. "I guess. I don't know. What's for dinner?"
If you are wondering what has prompted this tangent from my usually whimsical, satirical subject matter;  I stumbled on to this blog..The mom pledge blog (http://www.themompledgeblog.com/).
The mom pledge begs that we respect each other as mothers and the choices we as mothers make. So I ask you to take the pledge. Being a mom is without a doubt, the hardest job in the world...I support your decision to be a stay at home mom OR a working mom...I do NOT, however, support your choice of wearing those Mom Jeans! And frankly I will not tolerate you judging my decision to work or not...

I hope you are having more Peaks than Pits to your week...After the shooting in Colorado, I know I am happy to have my kids here to hug tonight. Jackson announced tonight, over the monitor, "Momma, you are my sunshine"...big time PEAK...Now he needs to go to sleep so I can chat with my old friend Pinot Noir!