I’m staying home with my five-month-old (and working here and there, partly for money and partly to stay sane), and I might as well just come right out and say it: I definitely have days when I’d rather be just working. Taking care of a baby is hard (and older children are even harder, in many ways) (how come no one told me this?), and that’s why the mere idea of being able to sit at a computer for an uninterrupted block of time during daylight hours–no rushing through projects before my son wakes from his always-too-short-naps–is enough to get me begging on my knees.

This didn’t happen to me when my first son was born. Why? Probably because I went back to work part-time when he was 16 weeks old. I did the requisite amount of lamenting our separation every Tuesday and Thursday, of course, but looking back, it truly was a gift, having that job to go away to.

We always hear about the working mom who wishes she could stay home but not much about the other side of that coin. What about the mothers who wish they could work but can’t?

Right now it makes more sense for me to stay home with my infant, so that’s what I’m doing, and even though some days I would kill for Mary Poppins to umbrella down from the sky and take the kid into a chalk painting for a few hours, overall I really am happy with the situation. To be honest, though, I suspect this happiness is tied tightly to the knowledge that I will only be in this position for a short time (we have a daycare spot saved for June 2013) because, like I said in the simplest terms above, taking care of a baby is HARD.

Have you ever been in the position of wanting to work but needing to stay home? Did you even dare say that out loud or is this one of those things “good mothers” aren’t supposed to talk about?

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