Pregnant, but not unambitious!

I think people generally assume when they see me, 6 months pregnant with a 9-month-old son, that I am your "cliched" SAHM - mindless, not very intellectual, and kind of a baby machine. I don't really blame them... perhaps in my pre-baby days, I might've made such an assumption, too. It just irks me that wherever I happen to be, when they see my situation, people immediately come up and ask me questions about the pregnancy ("You're pregnant ALREADY?? Wow, you guys are good/fast/busy, etc. - hahaha."), about my son, about my husband ("Where does he work? Does he like his job?"). I want to yell, "What about ME?" I have career aspirations, too, you know. I have dreams and I am a very smart woman. I might not be working right now, but does that mean I don't WANT to work EVER? Does that mean that I sit in front of the TV all day and eat twinkies while my son cries in his crib? Am I destined to drive a minivan full of my 7 bratty kids, looking harried, frizzy hair in a ponytail? The answer is a resounding NO. I think it's high time people realized that pregnant women or SAHMs are not always unambitious, or stupid, or fat, or lazy. When people hear I want to go to graduate school next year, they usually blink and then slowly process this information before saying, "Oh!" Yeah... oh.

I don't mean to sound bitter, but 15 months of this has been getting old. I am especially annoyed at my SAHM friends who DO always and only define themselves by their children and their husband. I applaud people who want to stay home, and who enjoy doing it, and want to do it for the rest of their lives. That's great. Kids love when their moms are home. But really, you guys are ruining it for the rest of us. These SAHM friends of mine are notorious for only ever talking about their babies - how much their babies poop, what they eat, what toys they want to buy for them - and their husbands - where they work, their career aspirations, what they want to do when they advance, etc. I want to scream, "What about you?? What do you want for yourself??" Recently, I have taken to asking them about themselves. Usually, they sound uncomfortable and make vague motions about maybe going back to school or getting a job "when the kids are grown up - but I do want a house full, so who knows when that will be!". This would be fine with me, IF they were happy. But they're not. They're constantly complaining about how their husbands don't help at home, or that they're the ones up all night with the baby, or that they feel brain dead. Then DO something about it. You have the choice, and the opportunities. It doesn't have to be this way. 

I recently had a conversation with my husband, and realized that we were on different pages. He knew that I was going stir-crazy at home and wanted to get back to work, but he assumed that I was going to go back to work part-time when the new baby comes. And that I would stay home for the first 2-3 months before I went to work. I had an honest talk with him where I told him that no, I would take the right job as soon as I was done healing from the birth, even if it was full-time. And that most likely my job WOULD be full-time because I know the company I'm going to work for, and while they are flexible, they are not that flexible. Plus, I might need to work there for a while before they give me work-from-home privileges. I told him that I want him to be comfortable with us getting a nanny to watch our kids, and that I don't want to be the one who has to sit at home if he isn't comfortable with it. I am the luckiest girl in the world, because he completely understood where I was coming from, and said, "Yeah, that's not fair. If I have a problem with a nanny, then I can stay home or work from home." So that's what he's going to do - work out a deal with his company where he works from home a lot more while I work outside the home a lot more.

Through all of this I've learned one thing - communicate and compromise, and you will end up happy.