… the musings of an overly organized thirty-something, married, southern librarian turned stay-at-home-mom with too many opinions, too much ambition, just enough kids, and a stubborn, mouthy, redheaded country boy to accompany her through life.
Nearly 12 years ago, I decided to start a blog. At the time, I was a freshly divorced grad student, navigating the dating world… poorly. I needed a place to share my shaky recovery from a deeply unhealthy relationship and my somewhat disastrous attempts at dating. Belle of the Library was born.
As the years passed, my blog changed with me. I went from blogging about grad school and dating, to writing about being a teen librarian, to sharing the ups and downs of marriage, and even creating a separate space to vent about my infertility journey. I wrote about pregnancy and, for a short time, being a working mom. Now, I suppose I’m just one of many mommy bloggers, but my love of writing persists, so I shall as well.
While I can’t say I’ve ever written this blog for anyone but my future self, it does feel good to get likes and views. As information sharing has changed, I’ve seen fewer of both, which can be disheartening after spending a few hours editing a post. I, like everyone, want to be heard. I want other women, who feel as I do and/or share the same experiences, to feel a little less alone. I want to know that my writing makes any impact in the world. I’ve considered ways to increase my readership, at times, but then Scarlet falls off the changing table or Thomas knocks over a potted plant and it vanishes from my mind.
I suppose my biggest objection to branching out to Instagram or TikTok has largely been one of respect for my family’s privacy. While I’d love to have a greater presence, I refuse to sell my children’s childhood or sense of security by sharing intimate photos and details for the entertainment and attention of strangers. Perhaps, I also fear failure in such a crowded market. I’m not especially niche blogger, neither an extreme Christian homemaker or a successful boss lady momfluencer. Ironically, after a lifetime of striving to be perfectly ordinary, it’s now a handicap.
Recently, my aunt has encouraged me to boost my viewership, upon learning of this blog. She, herself, began an online crafting series during Covid-19 and now helps other women expand their own online presence. So, if you have any interest in following my daily shenanigans… like the fact that I just made a triple batch of banana bread in the lid to a cake carrier, because I didn’t realize I didn’t have a dish large enough to hold the batter… please follow me on Instagram.
I am so excited about having four children in three years, y’all. That’s not just because so many people who suffer infertility have to compromise on their ideal family, either. I have one brother, who’s three years my senior. We see each other every year at Christmas. That’s it. I have four step-siblings who are actually pretty great, but are naturally closer to one another than to me, because they grew up together, all born within four or five years of each other. Logically, I understand that the relationship differences aren’t due to our age gaps, so much as the fact that when my parents divorced, they each took one child in some kind of heartless Parent Trap scenario. Still, after a lonely childhood, I’ve always dreamt of having four children, close in age. I just never really planned on that happening in under three years.
When I tell people how old my kids are, the response is generally negative. I have my hands full. College is going to be expensive. They’ll all be teenagers at the same time. Yada, yada, yada. Yes, I have my hands full… in a way infertile couples only dream about, so that’s quite alright with Jake and me. I don’t plan to fully fund my children’s college, but instead send them to Catholic school in hopes they’ll work hard for scholarships, encouraging community college or online school while they live at home. I love teenagers and fully believe that will still be the case when my children qualify for the title. Yes, yes, I’ll see when I have them. Generally speaking, I do adore having my children all so close in age, even so young. They’re developmentally on the same level and interested in the same things, so we get more out of clothes, toys, and equipment. We don’t have to keep hitting reset just as we get a child eating by themselves/potty trained/in school, having forgotten what it was like to have a baby. No one’s ever left out, because they can all play together. Having started with twins, no one has ever expected to have either Mama or Daddy to themselves. I didn’t have to start at 33 and end at 43 to get my ideal number. Overall, it really is pretty great having our four children so close in age. However, there are a few things that do make life a little more difficult that, in all the negativity, no one mentioned. Such as…
They’re developmentally on the same level and interested in the same things.
Yes, this is a perk in many ways. At the moment, I have twin girls who will be three in June, their almost 16-month-old brother, and a new baby in two weeks. There is not a single toy in my house that doesn’t interest all of my children, from the high contrast black and white baby toys to the Barbies and firetrucks. We’re even waiting until the last minute to get out the bassinets, because the girls will want to use them for their baby dolls. The downside is that, although my twins probably have better sharing skills than most toddlers, I still frequently have to intervene, because they’re both two. There is not an older, more mature sibling. Neither of them is better able to comprehend that her sister had the toy first/gets a turn/wants to play alone… and now enter Baby Brother. For months, Jake and I had to remind his sisters that Thomas was not a pet. He has feelings, interests, and just as much right to play as they do. While they’re finally starting to understand, that doesn’t mean they’re always on board.
Yes, Violet and Scarlet are technically older and more mature, but they’re still two. On an average day, the greatest emotional regulation I can expect from anyone else in my house is that of a young toddler. They have limited communication skills, limited understanding, and the tantrums to which those limitations lead… and that’s okay. They will grow out of it. They’ll also never remember a time when they didn’t have to be considerate of each other. Already, when offered any kind of treat or toy, both girls will ask for one for their sister and brother. We’re making progress, however small. It’s still a lot, constantly playing Baby Mediator, especially as Thomas grows curiouser and more opinionated, as well.
I’m in high demand.
Jake and I started our family with twins. No one in this house knows what a single child household feels like, from the dinner/bedtime routine to family outings to birthdays and holidays. That helped prepare us for our current and future level of chaos in a big way. Still, small children need a lot of attention, no matter how self-sufficientand all of my children are small. What that looks like on an average day is one toddler getting an owie and a Band-Aid, the other getting upset because she wants a Band-Aid too, and their brother eating fistfuls of dirt from my house plants while I’m doctoring real and imaginary injuries.
Just as I don’t have a child who’s more emotionally mature and can be expected to understand that her younger sibling doesn’t know how to share, she also can’t comprehend that her wants aren’t needs and don’t take priority. Try explaining to a two-year-old (or a couple) that the the snack she was promised doesn’t rank with her brother having just fallen off the sofa. Worse, try gently setting a baby down on the ground in a public park, so you can run to rescue the screaming toddler who doesn’t realize that the only way to stop the scalding slide from burning her skin is to get off. I know adults who don’t realize that their emergencies are not everyone else’s emergencies, so I imagine it’ll be some time before my children catch on.
Doing anything is like extended deep-sea diving.
Have you ever tried to take a photo of three children under three? Even with today’s technology, it requires the coordinated effort of two people, one to repeatedly press the button as fast they can and another to dance and shout behind them in an attempt to keep their attention for .01 second… while simultaneously remaining poised to catch the baby if he falls off the ottoman.
Happy Easter from my family to yours.
Now imagine carting three small children to the eye doctor, because Violet chewed up her only pair of glasses one month before insurance would pay for the appointment. Getting everyone loaded into the car is chore enough, especially eight months pregnant. Then, I have to drive across the city, get everyone safely into the building, simultaneously psych up Violet for new glasses, while convincing Scarlet that she’s not missing out, and dragging Thomas away from all the displays within his reach. That’s typical of basically every doctor visit. Picture a day trip to the lake. We dress everyone in bathing suits and cover them in sunscreen before we leave. Each kid needs a floatie for safety and Mama and Daddy need one for comfort. Everyone has to have a towel, of course, but we’ll also need snacks, lots of water, and diapers. We’ll bring the beach blanket to set up our home base and, if we’re feeling adventurous, chairs. All of thisis done with the extraordinary optimism required in thinking the day will go well, that the kids will have fun, no one will get hurt, and it will have been worth the trouble over all.
It’s not that taking my babies with me everywhere I go is a bad thing. On the contrary, I love shopping with them, watching them spin in circles while I wait for my tires to be changed, getting them Big Girl Waters and surprising them with a trip to the park. Surely, as they get older, can get themselves in and out of the car, look both ways while crossing the street, take total control of their own bathroom needs… things will get easier. Right now, however, there are just so many variables with soon-to-be four under three and it’s literally impossible to prepare for them all.
I’ve never been so anxious in my life.
People, especially mothers, worry about their children. That’s common knowledge, bordering on cliché. What no one told me about having four under three, however, is how much more I’d worry. It’s not that I care a greater amount. It’s just that more can go wrong. If I had four children in a tornado warning, ages 10, 8, 5, and 1, the 10-year-old could be reminded of her disaster prep lessons. She could take on the job of helping to get everyone to the storm shelter, while encouraging the eight-year-old to remember her lessons, as well. Mama would shoulder the biggest burden in preparing the shelter and comforting all children, but even the five-year-old could walk down the steps, however terrified, while only the one-year-old would be wholly dependent.
Despite all the negative remarks, no one pointed out that, for a few years at least, children with such little age gap are all wholly dependent on you at the same time. People ask me all the time, how I do it with so many, so little. My answer is quite honest: they get hurt a lot. In an average week at home, no matter how vigilant I am, someone’s getting injured while I’m tending to someone or something else. My Scarlet was barely two the day I told her to quit running back and forth on the sofa, only to hear screaming when I returned to folding laundry. Since that child only has the one cry, whether Sister touched her toy or she broke an arm, it took a good 10 minutes to realize how serious her injury was… and another thirty for Jake to convince me she didn’t need to go to the ER for an X-ray of her possibly broken nose.
These are just the homebound antics. Perhaps it’s because I’m pregnant or obsessively reading the news, but these days, I cannot stop thinking about what I’d do in a situation where everyone was in danger and I had limited time to act. What if we’re at the park and two of them run in opposite directions, both heading for a street? What if there’s a fire and Jake and I can’t get everyone out in time? What if I have a wreck driving on the highway? What if I get carjacked at the mall, when they’re all still buckled in? Maybe we should exclusively go to the other park. Did I turn the stove off or not? Maybe I should only take the back roads. Is the mall really even safe for children? You don’t know anxiety like “Mom Planning the Hypothetical Rescue of Her Four Toddlers and Babies in a Flash Flood” anxiety.
I have no help and it’s essentially impossible to get any.
Aside from Jake (and that is, admittedly, a big aside), I have no help. From the day we brought home preemie twins under five pounds each, their Mama recovering from a heart condition, pneumonia, sepsis, and an emergency C-section, it’s just been us. While my Gramma does buy my children alot of toys and clothes, at 89, she’s just too old to physically assist. My step-mother, though wonderful, has four children and six grandchildren of her own. She also heads the disaster relief department of a national non-profit. Though I’ve been assured that she won’t have to travel during my scheduled C-section, I’m still petrified that a hurricane or tornado will hit and she won’t be able to take the kids while we’re in the hospital. She and my dad might watch our children a couple of times a year, while we celebrate a birthday or promotion, but otherwise, it has always been the norm for Jake and I to do this crazy life on our own.
It actually does not bother me that Jake and I don’t get date nights. We keep a strict schedule, which means we have the evening to ourselves by 8:00, at the latest, every night. Our hectic life means we enjoy quiet nights in, trying new recipes, watching whatever’s streaming, entertaining friends with game nights, or just playing with the kids in the living room or the yard until bed time. It’s quite alright with us not to have a “break” from our children. We both know that one day, we’ll be in our 50s reminiscing over the years when they were small. What’s tough, is not having any assistance when it’s not a luxury.
Taking babies to my appointments at the fertility clinic, though allowed, was something I absolutely refused to do, if only out of consideration for other patients. Taking the girls to my appointments a few weeks from delivering Thomas was so rough, I’ve done everything I can to avoid it this time. In both situations, Jake and I have had no one to help. We didn’t want to share the FET when we were going through the process, but even now, there’s just no one to ask. Jake has been using his leave to stay home with all three kids, so I can go alone… which is required for the high risk doctor who won’t allow them to come anyway. Additionally, as this pregnancy has become more and more difficult for me, I’ve just… had to deal. Jake has to work and things like Mother’s Day Out are simply too pricey when you have three or four kids. Even hiring a baby sitter, just for fun, costs a small fortune, because while my children are so well-behaved and so adorable, there are also so many of them. Most of the time, it doesn’t get to me, but these last few weeks, as I’ve sat in the floor crying while the girls concernedly ask “Mama owie?” I have felt a bit blindsided by the fact that, partly due to my own circumstances, but also due to the sheer number of very small children I have… help just isn’t available.
The Back-to-Back Pregnancies
Of course, people commented on the physical toll of back-to-back pregnancies. They talked about being fat for years at a time. They mentioned the discomfort. Many women, along with my doctors, talked about physical recovery in regards to everything from my uterus to my calcium levels. I was told by more than one doctor that I shouldn’t even have more children after the girls. So, yes, I was warned. I’ve been fat, though… from age nine to 24. I’ve been the kind of fat that makes existing uncomfortable. It was objectively worse than being pregnant with twins, up until the point where I almost died. As for my uterus and calcium, if Michelle Duggar could have seventeen successful pregnancies, I didn’t see why I couldn’t have three. What no one told me, though, was the emotional toll this would take, particularly already having small children under my constant care.
I got pregnant with Thomas before the girls were even walking. They were an adventure, but they weren’t particularly difficult. Tantrums were few and far between and they had just begun to get fun. As my pregnancy progressed, so did they. I do remember a few especially difficult days, like taking both girls for a finger stick blood draw, desperately trying to comfort one as she had her finger painfully squeezed for 10 minutes, screaming in pain and terror while the other looked on in horror. Naturally, I had to do it all over again, causing her to suffer, too. Still, the girls were only 17 months old when Thomas came home, so through much of my pregnancy, they crawled or toddled, only able to get up to so much mischief. Though I was anxious, I felt good, overall.
This pregnancy… well, if I wasn’t done before, I would be now. I previously wrote about feeling lost to pregnancy, having been trying to conceive, pregnant, or post-partum since before Covid-19. It’s not just that these back-to-back pregnancies have begun to make me feel like a stranger in my own body. The physical side effects are worse this time, as I stack pregnancy on top of pregnancy. The ligament pain and muscle spasms are immobilizing at times. The fatigue and difficulty breathing occasionally has me worried about something more serious. As with Thomas, I’ve been sick every day since conception, unable to function before 9 a.m. most days. I’m also just a wreck emotionally. Having begun with the frozen embryo process, this pregnancy has just been really hard from the start. Being on so many hormones, with three at home, felt impossible. I couldn’t control my emotions, with them or Jake. I was so overwhelmed. I told myself that it would get better… after the transfer, after the positive test, after the ultrasound, after the drugs ceased. That just hasn’t been true. I’ve been so anxious and overwhelmed since June. It’s become physically exhausting at this point… and I still have three beautiful children at home, who adore their Mama and want her to give kisses and play.
On my good days, I know that I’m doing pretty well, generally speaking. We do pre-packaged crafts and play in the backyard. I do home haircuts and give toddler pedicures. Even if I’m too sick to make it to storytime, we still make Target and Sam’s Club runs every now and then. I can even reassure myself that they won’t remember the times Mama snaps at them or breaks down and cries for seemingly no reason. On my bad days, though, I feel like I’m missing some of the most wonderful years of my children’s lives. Is this not the reason I quit my career, to be home with them? Here I am, though, crying in my car in a Target parking lot, as someone throws a tantrum.
I’ll be perfectly clear. Despite everything I’ve mentioned, I am so excited to have my fourth and final baby. My family will be whole, in exactly the way I imagined, in spite of infertility. My girls will have a sister, my boys a brother, and we’ll have been done within the timeline we always planned. I adore being a mom, more than anything I’ve ever done in my life. I am thrilled with the minimal age gap between my children. I was often alone as a child and my children will never feel that way. They’ll always have a playmate, a support system, a family. They are worth it… but the more or less temporary struggles of having four under three might have been a little easier, had someone told me.
Our world today is full of so many stressors and complaints. While one might think a time of year when we emphasize good will and gratitude would dampen that effect, that’s not necessarily the case during the holidays… especially for moms. This is such a busy, expensive, exhausting few months, it’s easy to forget how good we have it. We take for granted so many luxuries for which our foremothers would have happily killed, from dishwashers to Roombas to Baby Brezzas. So, in honor of Thanksgiving, I give you my list of my most loved modern treasures.
Fast Dry Nail Polish When Jake and I met, he used to comment that my nails were a different color every time he saw me. I’ve never paid for regular manicures, but even working two jobs at the time, I loved painting my nails when I could get a free hour or so. I felt so feminine and put together. After I had my girls, I actually did get my nails done a few times, but found the appointments just took too long and gave them up even before quitting my job would have necessitated it. Until recently, I’ve only managed such a privilege as an at-home manicure for special occasions, if that. I’ve really missed that little thing that was so very me, though. So this summer, I decided to give fast drying polish another go. Surely it had improved since the early 2000s, when it inevitably looked thin, matte, and tacky. Indeed it has, because today I can give myself a decent manicure for $5 a bottle in under five minutes during nap time. Not only that, I’ve already taught my two-year-old daughters this little bit of bougie self-indulgence. At the first sight of a bottle of nail polish, they hop right up onto their little picnic table and hold out their tiny feet, calling ordering me to “Paint!”
Online Shopping Online shopping is my go-to when adults complain about how difficult life is, today. While we all have our trials, procuring everything from household necessities to custom birthday and Christmas gifts has never been easier in the history of time. I can choose stocking stuffers or restock toothpaste and toilet paper from the comfort of my sofa while Jake and I watch a sitcom after dinner. I can schedule regular deliveries of phthalate-free laundry detergent on Amazon so I never even have to order it myself. I can stock my grocery cart throughout the week and schedule to pick it up without even getting out of my car. No matter our other woes, Samantha Stephens would have given up her magic for the ability to shop online.
Industrial Carpet Cleaner Long before I met jake, I dreamt of the day I would own a Bissell Green Machine, just like the ones I used to save up to rent at Lowe’s one or twice a year, when I lived in my apartment. Yes. That’s right. While all my twenty-something gal pals were gettin’ some strange, I was fantasizing about an industrial carpet cleaner… and in 2021, my dream came true. Jake’s brother gifted us a $200 eBay gift card he surely won at a rodeo to celebrate our twin girls. After some cajoling and providing a bit of proof that eBay doesn’t actually sell much baby equipment, Jake made me fall in love with him all over again. Folks, there is nothing more disgusting than children, no matter how adored. So this holiday season, as the weather keeps us inside and we host numerous gatherings in our home, I am so very thankful that, unlike my foremothers who scheduled professional carpet cleanings only when budget and time allowed, I can deep clean my rugs and sofa as often as my heart desires. That is, indeed, quite often.
Dungeons and Dragons Hear me out… in early 2020, I wanted to start a DnD group at the library for my teens, but had no idea where to begin. I knew that my old friend Niki’s husband, Percy, was really into it and he agreed to serve as Dungeon Master. That was almost four years ago and our bi-weekly game night as grown into two separate campaigns led by Percy and Jake. It also now includes three former co-workers I’d never see otherwise. As a somewhat introverted stay-at-home mom, I don’t require a lot of socialization, but these games have been my lifeline to adult interaction that doesn’t center around my children. Every two weeks, I enjoy a weekend of junk food and gaming with friends, without all the hassle of scheduling a get-together, sending invites, collecting R.S.V.P.’s, and planning an engaging evening of fun. The date is set. The activity is set. I might be pretending to be a gorgeous elven sorcerer while doing it, but I get to bask in scheduled grownup time amidst a life of diapers, laundry, and tantrums.
Smartphones As a millennial, I’ve had a smartphone for most of my adult life. While I’ll admit that they’re often misused and abused, a smartphone makes Mom Life so much easier. I can listen to music and audiobooks all day long. I easily keep up with local, national, and international news. I find recipes online and can reference them while cooking. I’m able to take amazing photos and videos I can post to my family-only Instagram so my Gramma feels like she’s a part of our every day life. I video call Jake at work to show him something cute (or horrible) the kids have done. I can even chat with the women in my romance Discord for some daily adult interaction. Yes, I do utilize blocking apps to keep myself from constantly reading about world events and stressing myself out, but in so many ways, my smartphone is the mother’s assistant previous generations desperately needed.
Photo Album Software I feel like I have to make it clear here that I am not a paid blogger when I say I’ve been using Mixbook.com to create annual photo albums since 2010. All those pictures I take with my smartphone actually do end up in an album that I work on pretty much constantly throughout the year. I carefully choose my photos and upload them into my project, where I organize them and add captions. The result is a collection of fairly expensive (but totally worth it) photo journals to remember my life… as a single college student, a Girl Boss, a newlywed, and now a wife and mother. Earlier this year, I finally gained possession of my mother’s old boxes of photos. As I’ve been going through them, scanning the pictures to make Mixbooks of them, I’ve struggled to sort the years from the mismatched stacks and albums into any chronological order that makes sense. Though I’m not sure she’d have ever been organized enough to use it, I’m certain my mother would have adored the option to preserve her memories so easily. I can even compile my short phone videos into a longer, more watchable, home movie… when I get the time.
Good Earbuds Again, not a paid blogger, but earlier this year I searched desperately for good earbuds, comparable to my beloved (but discontinued) Samsung Galaxy Buds +. After trying and returning what had to be half the different options in existence, I found a pretty great alternative (Soundcore Space a40s, if you’re curious). Y’all, if my parents had had the option to turn on “noise cancellation” when I was a kid, I’d probably remember them as being much more tolerant and patient. While this technology only goes so far, it does dampen the sound of non-urgent background whining and fits to a level that makes them far more tolerable. While I’m always aware enough to notice a real emergency, listening to trashy romance novels over the sound of my girls fighting over which identical pink chair they want makes me a kinder, gentler Mama. I’m certain we’d all be much more compassionate toward our boomer parents if we knew what life was like, exclusively at full volume.
Assisted Reproductive Technology It must be said, as miserable as our infertility journey has been, were it not for science, Jake and I wouldn’t have our family. The stress, tears, debt, awkward appointments, injections, pills, and invasive procedures have all led me here. IVF was always a fear of mine and I’d never wish it on anyone, but my mother having been adopted in 1960 when my grandmother couldn’t conceive, I am so very grateful to have had the options we have today. I’m also thankful for the innovative (though admittedly quite pricey) medical technology living in the U.S. affords us. God, love, and science were in the creation of my precious children, wheras 50 years ago, I’d have had to accept a life without them. I will never forget that.
An Amazing Husband I will never claim to have the perfect marriage, but I do have a pretty terrific husband. Not only has Jake given me literally everything I’ve ever wanted, he’s done so with little to no complaint. When we got married, he was making $11 an hour, while I made more than half that, because I asked him to leave the oilfield. I’d grown up with a blue collar dad who worked non-stop and simply did not want to be an oil wife. I wanted a family and for my husband to be there to help raise them. I didn’t need luxury clothes or designer purses. I needed Jake and he obliged. He also obliged when it was time to buy a house, pay off my student loans, spend $35,000 to have children, and become the sole bread-winner when I just could not handle being away from my babies. He’s found a way to get us a gently used minivan, decorate cute and comfortable bedrooms for our children, and keep us all clothed, fed, and entertained. He comes home during every lunch break and every night. He’s never, ever, been one to leave everything to me, just because I stay home. He changes diapers, bathes babies, cooks, cleans, and gives me breaks when I need them. He even took on the brunt of twin potty training when it began to overwhelm me. That’s more than any of the women who came before me can say… in fact, it’s more than many of the women in 2023 can say. He’s pushy and overly opinionated and kind of a terrible listener, but Jake is an amazing husband and father. Without him, none of the above would matter, because I wouldn’t be a mom. Those perfect little people wouldn’t exist. This Thanksgiving, I am most thankful for him and the family he’s helped give us.
It’s been a big year, y’all. Jake and I celebrated five years of marriage, continued the adventure of raising our IVF-conceived twin girls, and began planning an embryo transfer in hopes of growing our family. We even met with our fertility doctor and scheduled the procedure… only to find out it wasn’t needed. Day one of the cycle that would have kicked off our frozen transfer never came and we celebrated our little ladies’ first birthday just before announcing our miracle baby due in December. We spent the summer arguing over boy names, transforming our larger extra bedroom into the girls’ new room, and preparing to have three children under 18 months.
An incessant reader of news, it was some time in early June that I stumbled across an article declaring that while the used car market had improved, it would most certainly worsen in the fall. Jake had briefly mentioned upgrading the Kia Sorento we had bought when we found out we were having twins, but I’d brushed him off, insisting the SUV would suffice, as long as we could fit all three car seats in the middle row. The Sorento was paid for, comfortable, said to seat seven, and had relatively few miles on it. Buying another new car less than 18 months later seemed superfluous and needlessly stressful. Regardless, I decided to make sure that we could indeed fit three across the middle row, since the back would be virtually inaccessible with car seats in front of it, only to realize…
When Jake and I bought the Sorento, we’d intended it as a ten-year car, assuminga seven seater would actually, you know… seat seven. It really hadn’t occurred to either of us that we’d be in the market for a minivan when we began planning for baby number three. After the fiasco that was buying our Kia Soul in 2019, struggling to find just the right SUV in 2020, paying it off early with Jake’s lucky Bitcoin earnings, I truly did not want a new car… any new car, regardless of type.
Ever responsive toward and utterly dependent on research, however, I immediately accepted that not only was the market in the best shape we could hope for, but that it wouldn’t get any easier or less stressful to shop for a minivan later in my pregnancy. So, I texted Jake about our predicament and began searching for the best model within our price limit.
Folks, buying a minivan was exactly the nightmare I had feared, perhaps worse. Not only was I shopping for a completely different, more expensive, unfamiliar class of vehicle, in a competitive market, I was wading through a newfound swamp of Mom Snobbery. Review after review, I simply could not escape the elitism behind some of the brand names and their elevated prices. Models that seemed to offer exactly the same number of features, safety ratings, and comfort levels were tens of thousands of dollars higher. While many objective articles described the Dodge Caravan as a budget model with a rougher ride and lower mileage, listing the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid as a top option for the fuel conscious, I never did figure out what made the Odyssey and Sienna such premium vehicles when all specs remained the same. After reading some of the reviews himself, Jake still points out every Honda Odyssey he sees, with mock awe.
Ultimately, we ended up with a black, 2019, Chrysler Pacifica Limited 35th Anniversary. It isn’t fully loaded, but does include some nice bells and whistles that are new to us, such as leather heated seats, a heated steering wheel, and remote start. Though finding it was a month-long headache, once it was ours, we were excited… and confused that when we shared the news, everyone seemed to expect us to feel defeated at having purchased a minivan. Even after highlighting the benefits of more leg room, dual climate control, flat-folding seats, and remote doors, everyone seemed to be waiting for our response to some kind of minivan stigma.
Before Jake and I had children, I actually do recall insisting that I’d never own a minivan. For purely practical reasons, I didn’t want to spend substantially more money to drive a much more cumbersome vehicle with worse gas mileage. As far as I understood, an SUV would accommodate just as many people, at a lower price. I just didn’t see the point. I certainly had no distaste for what it would say about me or my stage of life. Upon further reflection, in fact, at one time, I’d dreamt of having and eventually becoming a Minivan Mom.
Growing up in the 90s, minivans were at the height of their popularity and said something to me even then. They were a symbol of all the things I wanted as a child, gradually progressing from the frivolous to the completely justifiable.
Parents who owned minivans lived in three bedroom ranch homes in suburban neighborhoods with ice cream trucks and friends just down the street. We lived in a trailer on ten acres, with few children nearby.
Minivan moms either stayed home, worked part-time, or were teachers, so their kids didn’t have to attend daycare. The dads were home every night and weekend and in good spirits. My mother was a nurse, my father a lineman for the electric company, both exhausted after working long hours, nights, weekends, and call shifts.
Minivan families lived in clean housesand the children wore cute clothes and practiced basic hygiene. Even when we moved to a traditional house, it was a borderline hoarder home, only cleaned when we hosted holiday celebrations. In time, my parents became too wrapped up in their crumbling marriage to pay much attention to grooming and fashion and it showed.
Minivan families ate at the kitchen table, played board games together, and the kids were never allowed to watch anything beyond a PG rating. When I was nine or ten, my parents started spending evenings arguing in the garage, leaving us to call Gramma to bring fast food and entertain ourselves however we may.
Minivan parents took family vacations and had loving, supportive, intact marriages. My dad stopped coming along on trips when I was eight and left a month after my mom’s brain surgery when I was 10. Not long after, my brother moved in with him and I stayed with my increasingly violent mother, while my father tried to recapture his youth.
Growing up, our trailer was just down the street from a foster home, where the parents were known to be abusive to their children, so I fully understood that other kids had it worse than I did. Objectively speaking, I didn’t have a miserable childhood, and see no reason to rewrite history to better or worsen it. Still, I perpetually envied what I deemed my normal classmates, who seemed to come from happy, functional homes, lead by parents with appropriate rules and boundaries. They were good at sports, from ballet and cheer to soccer and basketball. They were never blacklisted from sleepovers, because their moms explained the purpose of edible underwear to their friends when they were nine or let them watch Leprechaun when they were ten. They were slender and sweet, wore their hair in high ponytails with big bows, and the boys thought they were cute. Their parents budgeted for the bills first, so the electricity and water never got cut off. Their moms taught them to apply makeup and talk to boys they liked… and somehow, it seemed they all drove minivans.
You also don’t walk around the block for an hour to repeatedly pass by the boy you like, when he’s outside playing basketball.
As I got older, the minivan association morphed from a symbol of the ideal childhood to that of an ideal adulthood. My southern suburbia was particularly known for its Nicholas Sparks-esque young marriages, right down to the dysfunction and drama, minus the geese.
While I was far from the only 23-year-old divorcee in Shetland, there existed many more young marriages, between high school and college sweethearts. I’d like to assume at least a few were and are still happy. Though I’m no longer active on social media, I’ll never forget the time in my life when I thumbed through the profiles of my old classmates with envy. All those years, they told me my middle and high school bullies would amount to nothing and the Mean Girls were posting photos of grand Southern weddings to oilfield men, who paid for the degrees they’d never use after having babies immediately upon graduation. They bought cookie cutter McMansions in gated communities, carried Coach purses, outfitted their baby boys in Air Jordans, and drove minivans... all while I struggled to keep my head above water, massively overweight, living off of financial aid in a seedy motel after another eviction, while my ex swore he had paid the rent with money from the job he swore he actually worked. Spoiler alert: he didn’t.
My senior year of college saw a miscarriage, my first year of grad school a divorce, while I worked two jobs substitute teaching and cleaning rec equipment at the local community center… and things started to get better. I moved into a comfortable apartment, where my ex could no longer sneak in and steal things to sell. I met the young men I was so close to in my early twenties, along with Niki, who plays DnD with Jake and I to this very day. I started working for the library system, while continuing to substitute teach and earn my graduate degree. Life was better… safer. I cultivated hobbies, lost a lot of weight, learned to dress and apply makeup. I dated on and off, as I recovered from the trauma of my first and only relationship and tried to decipher whether or not I wanted another. I worked on my credit and learned to manage my money. I grew into someone I liked, someone I wanted to be… but I still felt so far behind the classmates who’d graduated alongside me just six or seven years earlier. They were only in their early to mid-twenties, but they’d finished school, were presumably happily married, bought homes, had babies… and many of them drove minivans.
Ten years later, I of course realize how valuable those single girl years were for me. While the ages of 18-23 exist in something of a fog of memory I rarely allow to clear, 23-27 were the years those should have been. I learned to take care of and depend on myself, mentally, physically, and financially. After a near lifetime of feeling less than, I started to value and respect myself, acknowledge that the only one who had any right to decide I wasn’t worthy of more was me. I could be smart, successful, cute, funny. I could be a happily single respected academic who was really great at crafts, a worldly traveler and career woman who relocated every five years… or I could earn the minivan life I’d so envied at different times. It wasn’t about proving myself… okay, it wasn’t just about proving myself, but choosing the path I wanted, regardless of who my parents were, how I’d grown up, who I was in high school, the mistakes I’d made as a young adult. I finally realized that none of that actually mattered when it came to shaping my future. I had a right to any life for which I was willing to put in the work. I could leave the past in the past.
I’d never put much thought into what a minivan saidto or about me today. It was just the obvious choice until people seemed to expect negative feelings on the subject. To them, buying a minivan meant becoming their parents with their socks and sandals, little league coaching jobs, mom jeans, and pumpkin spice. When I thought about it, it meant surpassing mine. It meant finally having the life I know my mother always wanted and was never quite able to grasp, the life my dad looks back on and wishes he’d valued more. Just as I could have been the academic, the career woman, being a Minivan Mom is an accomplishment worthy of celebration for me. Perhaps others look on and see the pretention and falsehood of middle class suburban white folks. That’s fine and I take no offense, because I wasn’t always in that class.
Twenty-five years ago, I was the the smelly kid with social and behavioral issues. Twenty years ago, I was the fat nerdy girl in overalls and a turtleneck. Fifteen years ago, I was mourning the house fire my ex started, killing all of my pets. Fourteen years ago, I was evicted in the middle of an ice storm, staying with in-laws I didn’t like until we could get into the aforementioned motel. Thirteen years ago, I was conflicted over how to feel about the miscarriage of a child that would have tied me to a sociopath forever. Twelve years ago, I was filing for divorce during my first year of grad school, wondering if I’d ever have the life I’d wanted… if that was even still the life I wanted.
After ten years in a successful career, I spend my days making grocery runs, attending library storytimes, and having dance parties with the baby girls who will never be neglected into outsider status, knowing that one day I’ll be the career mom once again. I’m happily married to a man who’s never known what it feels like to be ostracized, yet handles me with care when I feel left out. I host bi-weekly game nights with good friends and feel included with my in-laws and Jake’s high school buddies when we visit. I fit in and I’m happy. I’ve transcended. These are the best days of my life so far and unrelated or not… I drive a minivan.
Just recently, Jake and I found the nicest public lake nearby. Living on the outskirts of the county, it’s nearby no one else, but the exact distance to the swim beach is 18 minutes from our front door. It’s small, clean, has picnic tables, grills, restrooms, and allows for boating, fishing, and swimming. After the distance, the second best thing about this little lake, is that it costs $5 per car, per day. The nearest aquatic centers costs more than that per person.
Last Christmas, my step-brother announced that he’d booked a company-owned luxury cabin, in Crested Bute, Colorado for Labor Day weekend. The whole family was welcome, at a discounted rate, which depended on how many committed. Because the cabin could only be reserved for four days, the plan was for everyone to stay at a nearby hotel for three to four more. My parents and all of my step-siblings were enthusiastically in, without private discussion, while Jake and I offered non-committal responses, knowing we’d talk about it in the car.
Though we didn’t wish to share the details of our financial situation with my entire family,from the beginning we felt it was optimistic, at best, to think we could take a family vacation in a year when we planned an embryo transfer, which costs about $4,000. So, with the final total up in the air, we tabled the idea, under the heading of “Wouldn’t That Be Nice?” In April, Zane clarified that the cost would be $100 per adult for the full stay at the cabin. Jake and I tentatively agreed that we could probably swing that, but that the hotel was out. In May, we received the wonderful news that we wouldn’t have to pay for an embryo transfer after all. In June, however, I read an article about how the used car market was going to get bad again and finally admitted that we couldn’t actually fit three children in rear-facing car seats in my Sorento.
So, we found ourselves the proud owner of a 2019 Chrysler Pacifica… along with a $1500 pending tag and title and a $100 car payment, when both of our cars had previously been paid off. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was $1500 on our emergency credit card. All the while, my pregnancy was progressing and we needed to move the girls into the larger bedroom, so we could ready their old one for their baby brother. After purchasing a new closet kit, wood and brackets for the 360° shelves Jake built, stain, paint, brush and roller kits, curtains, and additional shelving to make the most of their small shared room from 1980, we were easily looking at another $1200 on said credit card.
In August, I conceded that Colorado just wasn’t doable. A 12 hour drive with 14-month-old twins would be miserable. With gas prices as they were, it would cost an additional $400 just to get there, making it no cheaper than flying. Flying on a holiday weekend sounded even worse with the current transportation issues, all for the equivalent of an extended weekend. We’d already put so much on the emergency credit card, yet still felt we could pay it off completely with our tax return, avoiding any interest. While we could justify charging new baby preparations, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to put a leisure trip on credit, even if it was during my 35th birthday. Instead, we would take our girls on their very first lake trip and save approximately $1,495. While everyone else was in Colorado, our family vacation would comprise a few hours less than 20 minutes away. So, in this time of 40-year-high inflation rates at 8.4%, historically high gas prices, soaring electric bills, and general financial discontent across the country, I sent a group text bowing out of the family vacation… and I was the only one.
Y’all, I try to remember that what other people do with their money is none of my business… and I have a lot of practice doing so. Even before I quit my job to stay home, I never got manicures. I cut my hair and Jake’s. I owned one purse, a leather Fossil bag, which I’ve been carrying for three years, as I did with each of the previous three. My clothes have always been bought on sale from Kohl’s, Target, Old Navy, or Amazon.I keep the newest or last edition phone, only for the camera, because I make annual photo albums. Jake’s was five years old until he got a free upgrade. We don’t have cable and keep our streaming services to a minimum. We rarely eat out, cooking at home with groceries we buy ourselves, sans meal kits. My weekly splurge is maybe a $10 sushi bento box, with Jake’s equivalent being beer. When we do get fast food, we literally always split something we buy with a coupon.
Don’t get me wrong .We’re not destitute or struggling without. We have nice computers, a 75″ TV, and quality furniture. Jake owns the newest XBOX and I the latest Cricut machines. However, these are already paid for, so we spend a lot of time at home and rarely do things that cost actual money when we go out. When we go to the zoo, I get a free pass from the library. We go to the park, farmer’s market, free festivals, church events, rodeos with tickets from Jake’s uncle. We stream new movies or check them out from the library. We host two separate DnD games every other week to maintain a pretty decent social life for parents of small children. For fun, I do various crafts and read, while Jake works in the yard or plays video games. Our tax returns go, primarily, to pay off the 0% emergency card or home improvement projects. Our mortgage payment is a little high, but it’s most certainly balanced out by the fact that we have very little debt beyond that.
I’m not complaining about my circumstances. I live in a nice, spacious home on over an acre, in a safe neighborhood, in a small suburb, in the state with the third lowest cost of living. I love my used car and Jake has no complaints about his 12-year-old truck. I like saving money and enjoy the challenge of finding coupon codes. Target clothes are enough for me. I enjoy painting my own nails. I don’t want a new purse. I’m content to be able to buy and cook good food. I’ve done the math on meal kit subscriptions and they’re a terrible deal, only slightly worse than eating out. I just don’t understand where people are getting their money and why they have so much more than we do. No matter how hard I try to be a good and non-judgmental person, I’m frequently left scratching my head at how people are affording their lifestyles.
With Jake’s friends and family, their circumstances at least make sense. His friends have largely gotten loans to start their family farms and run cattle. His sister has land and cattle because her husband once won quite a bit of money at the NFR and started his own business. One cousin is high up in oil and another helps run the family rodeo company. They’re also all 10 years older than us and most of them can’t even comprehend the term vacation, they work so hard. It’s not these folks who are confusing me and I genuinely hold zero bitterness toward them for their success. When looking at people our age, in similar life situations, though, I’m not bitter, but I am at a loss.
I’m not even on social media, but I still see some of my own family members, who’ve just bought their first home and had a baby in the same year, taking vacations, getting manicures, hitting Starbucks every day, and trying out expensive subscriptions, knowing that how much they earn annually places us firmly in the same bracket. They make similar money to what Jake and I do now or what we did before, but while paying for daycare. Still, they buy new cars, don designer handbags and jewelry, shop at pricey boutiques, and eat out all the time. They never seem to financially struggle during the holidays, whereas Jake and opted out of trading gifts between adults years ago. They had elaborate weddings, live on just enough land to cost some serious upkeep, and own farm animals that earn no revenue and essentially amount to expensive, but Instagrammable chores. They buy hundreds of dollars in gifts for their kids, keep them in stylish clothes and the latest tech, and take so many family vacations. I don’t even like to travel, but I’m still wondering how all these middle class people with small children are affording to do so, while Jake chooses a vacation horror movie on Netflix and I Google “fun and free family activities?”
I did not rejoice in the fact that my family all had to miss their flights and sleep on the airport floor with their many babies, came down with altitude sickness, got food poisoning, and experienced several Covid-19 cases during their Colorado trip… but I did rejoice in the fact that Jake and I didn’t put $1500 on a credit card to share in that experience. Similarly, I try not to somehow console myself with the idea that all of these people are drowning in debt. I truly hope that’s not the case, because although Jake and I had to pay $30,000 to have some babies, our house payment, new car payment, and minimum on the 0% credit card are the only monthly installments debts to our name. We also have investments, outside of Jake’s retirement. While they’re not as robust as they once were, with Bitcoin having bought us our babies, they still equal around $35,000. Additionally, although I’m staying home and these other couples earn two incomes, were I still working, the cost of daycare would have voided my pretty decent earnings when our boy arrives.. Even when Jake and I were both working, earning six figures together, we weren’t even able to daydream about keeping up with the Jones’s the way everyone else seems to be doing, so effortlessly.
What is it? Is everyone investing without me? Have they all inherited money? Are they printing it? Are they somehow not paying $4 per gallon in gas and $250 a month for electricity? Are the seemingly normal life expenses Jake and I experience so ridiculous? Do other people not need to have their thermostat replaced, upgrade their car with the increasing size of their families, repaint the occasional room, and save up for a new front door? Are these people, who seem to be living so lavishly in such similar circumstances to ours, somehow living in a pocket dimension where it’s the 1990s and a bag of frozen chicken doesn’t cost $30? Are they just spending more money? Do they have no savings? Are they all drowning in debt? Am I missing something, here? Am I just blind?
Ultimately, of course, I try to remind myself that the answers to these questions don’t actually matter. I have a nice life, one I’d have only dreamt of at one time. While we do make sacrifices to allow me to stay home, they’re both worth it to us and not that much greater than what we’d have been making were I working to pay for daycare. I wouldn’t turn down manicures, fancy haircuts, and massages, but I don’t feel my life is poorer without them. My children are too young to enjoy movie theaters, eating in a restaurant, or vacations. Jake and I appreciate the option to pause the movie on HBO Max and discuss or rant. We like cooking together every night, feeling it makes our marriage stronger. As for the Colorado trip, in hindsight, it seems we had much more fun watching The Hills Have Eyes after taking our girls to our new little $5 lake.
Still, no matter how hard I try to just mind my own busines, be thankful for all of many blessings, keep from looking into other people’s bowls… I can’t help but wonder, why does everyone have more money than we do?
I’ve been dreaming of writing this post for several years now. Having started this blog on my 25th birthday, I wondered if I’d ever make it here, still sharing my story with Future Belle and her readers. I imagined how my life would unfold over ten years. Would I ever get the job, meet the boy, buy the house, have the babies? I’m sure the overall picture is quite different in several ways, but I am undeniably happy.
You see, today I am 35 years old, a big number in the world of infertility, and I am a mother of two, soon to be three. While I never fully joined the online infertility community, I do occasionally dip my toe in and read stories from women still struggling and others who’ve survived. From the happily married and trying for years, to those still searching for love and unsure of whether they’re ready to take on single parenthood, it’s no secret that women hoping to conceive often dread and fear their 35th birthday. While we all rationally know that every body differs, we still hear echoes of generalizing doctors, aunts, and old wives’ tales warning us that if we’re not calling ourselves mothers by 35, there’s a strong chance we never will. We turn 31 and tell ourselves we have plenty of time. At 32, we get a little more anxious. At 33, we feel rushed. At 34, we start to panic. It’s positively triggering for women struggling with infertility to even think about 35.
There are so many choices in life, so many doors closed after one is opened, by the time we reach our mid-thirties. Over the years, I’ve coped with these missed opportunities through my own (probably scientifically inaccurate) interpretation of the Many-Worlds Theory. Somewhere, in a parallel universe, there is a Belle who works as a veterinarian specializing in large cats… in another, a successful travel blogger… in yet another, a respected theologist or historian. For years, I’d often slip into one of these imagined realities for a time, escaping the monotony of real life for a bit of adventure. Yet, I find myself doing so less and less often, these days. I’m not reporting a fascinating life to Instagram. My father does not live vicariously through me. I’m not a renowned academic, publishing scholarly articles. I’m not even a librarian anymore, something I’d never have imagined on the day I started this blog, ten years ago. Nope. I took the road more travel and I wouldn’t slip into one of these more interesting worlds for anything.
I’m a wife and a stay-at-home mom. My days are filled with sing-alongs, story times, and Target runs. I no longer lead meetings, attend trainings, or make schedules. The only emails I send are links for my Gramma, when she wants to buy something for my girls or the new baby. In ten years, on my 20th Blogiversary, I’ll likely be that respected professional, once again. I’ll put my master’s degree to further use and earn new anecdotal stories from my dad. Right now, though, my most wonderfully average dreams are being fulfilled. There have been several times in my life, when I’ve feared I would never have this, when this was the universe I visited. I’m happily married to my best friend, living in a home on one unremarkable acre, enjoying the most amazing days of my life to date, raising precious babies. One day, I’ll be interesting again, but here, on my no longer triggering 35th birthday, I am trulyhappy.
Six months ago, this week, I celebrated my first day as a stay-at-home mom, coincidentally on Thanksgiving Day. After working my entire adult life, as a student, a minimum wage movie theater employee, a minimum wage city employee, a substitute teacher, a circulation clerk, a librarian, a manager, and finally a teen librarian (some of these concurrently)… I quit.
I suppose that, like most first world workers, I had my grievances with my library system and the field at large, but overall, I adored my job. I worked with great people to serve a community I loved. I made teens feel safe and accepted. I helped curate a varied, current, and unbiased collection. After 10 years with the company, having worked at eight different branches, I had friends across our 19 library system. I was fulfilled… until Covid-19 hit.
I’ve said several times that if it weren’t for the pandemic, I’d likely be the kickass working mom I always intended. Even as a child, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I answered a pilot, a veterinarian, a lawyer, a nurse, a teacher, but never a mom. Of course I assumed I’d have a family, but Mom was not a career. My mother worked full time. Her mother worked full time. My dad’s mother worked full time. The little awareness I had of stay-at-home moms was primarily through a handful of distant relatives who my parents would mock for not working. Being a stay-at-home mom was for the wealthy and the devout. It truly never appealed to me, even after my girls were born… at least until they were about eight weeks old.
I’ve previously chronicled my decision to leave my career, three weeks after I returned to work, and again on my last day five weeks later. The abbreviated version was that I spent the worst part of an unprecedented global pandemic imagining my life without children. After a childhood which grew increasingly lonely, an isolating and terrifying first relationship, my solo twenties, I finally felt like I had the life I wanted. I was the person I wanted to be, someone who belonged. I was ready to start a family of my own, to create the house full of chaos, fun, and love that I’d yearned for as a child. I’d spend my 30s growing a large family that would expand to grandchildren and perhaps even great grandchildren. Yet, on February 13th, 2020, Jake came home from the urologist with devastating news. IVF was our only option. It would cost tens of thousands of dollars. It might not work. My future, as I pictured it, seem to go up in smoke.
I’ve published my infertility blog and won’t recap the heartache Jake and I went through to get pregnant, but it was indeed worthy of its own blog. As many survivors of infertility will tell you, that positive pregnancy test wasn’t the end. For the next seven months, I lived in fear that I would lose my babies, that we’d go in for an ultrasound, excited to see our growing girls, and the heartbeats would be gone. All the while, life went on as much as it could during some of the worst days of the pandemic. It was just three weeks after hearing those two little heartbeats that I was forced to put my 13-year-old beagle down, within days of my mother being put on a ventilator with Covid-19. The day after Mother’s Day she died of a heart attack. Six weeks later, my girls were born and I nearly died of pneumonia and heart complications, myself. It was just too much.
I tried, y’all. I tried to get excited about work, about seeing my coworkers/friends, but pandemic precautions had left me with nothing to enjoy about my job. I spent the better part of every day with nothing to do… so I looked at Instagram photos of my babies, read updates from the daycare about how they were doing, and looked up articles about how to determine if being a working mom just isn’t right for you. I cried almost every time I had to leave my girls and at the end of the day, when Jake and I pulled up to that daycare, I had my door open before the car stopped. I felt like a completely different person, no longer caring that the pandemic would eventually pass and the job I once loved would return to normal. I still didn’t even like other people’s kids, but I wanted to be with my girls.
Leaving my career was one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever made. I went through so much to be a librarian… but I went through a whole lot more to be a mom. Jake and I both hated that we were always in a rush, that every weekend was eaten away by basic errands and chores we couldn’t do during the week. We hated paying 2/3 of my paycheck to daycare, even when they were closed or the girls had to stay home because they were sick. We gave it time. Everyone said it would get better… but it never did.
One of my biggest fears when I left my job was that I’d regret my decision once my hormones leveled off. Every article I’d read suggested giving it six months, but the idea of waiting until my girls were nine months old just broke my already weakened heart. I talked to my stepmom about my dilemma and she shared the same concerns. She worked when her kids were small and felt it made her a better mother, just as I always thought I’d feel. Knowing how much I loved my job, she feared the same for me. No one seemed to think my quitting was a good idea. There comes a time though, when the devil you know is worse the devil you don’t and I was just so miserable working full time. So, I took a leap of faith and six months later…
… this former career woman, who used to quote “What you do is who you are,”has never been happier. I love being a stay-at-home mom. I get up in the morning and let my babies take as much time as they need to enjoy their breakfast. I spend my mornings doing the dishes and the laundry, making the bed, deep cleaning the kitchen and the bathrooms, all things I barely had time to do when I was working. I love laying on the floor of the playard and letting my daughters attack, as Violet pulls my hair and Scarlett climbs me and pokes me in the eye. I read Alice in Wonderland aloud or play Disney sing-alongs on YouTube from my phone, while both babies try to grab it out of my hand. I love that I can give them baths and let them play and try to climb the tub and each other, because I have the time to do so and don’t have to rush them off to bed.
That’s what it all boils down to, y’all. Even with twins, I have time I never had while working 40 hours a week. I get to take my girls for a 45 minute walk literally every day. We go to storytime, where we see other babies, play with lame library toys, and lick table legs. I can pick up groceries at 9:00 in the morning, before the stores get crowded and still have time to get my car washed. During naptime, I get to work out and stream and craft. I listen to audiobooks all day long. Best of all, literally the absolute best, I have the time and energy to take my girls to my hometown of Shetland, 45 minutes away, to spend one morning a week with my Gramma, the woman who’s given me everything.
I saw my Gramma multiple times a week when I lived in Shetland, but that changed when I married Jake and moved to Cherokee. I didn’t have much time during the week to drive to the other side of the city and weekends always seemed to get eaten up. I hated that she didn’t get to bond with the girls, especially considering Violet is named after her, as am I. Time was passing. My Gramma will be 88 years old this summer and I’m lucky she’s even still alive. I was terrified I’d blink and the years would be gone and so would she. I’d have wasted my chance to see her or let my girls know her. Now, we see her every week. My children actually reach for her and she knows their personalities. She counts down the days and though it’s still kind of a hassle, it’s so very worth it to make her so happy.
Not every woman feels this way about staying home, a fact with which I completely empathize, having always assumed I’d hate it. I don’t feel used up, as many women report. I don’t feel touched out. My girls play with each other. I don’t have to attend to them every second. Jake helps with all three meals, coming home for lunch, giving me time to talk to another adult in the middle of the day. We still have a loyal group of childless friends who come over every other weekend. I don’t feel lost in motherhood. I don’t need a career outside the home, because I’m still so intellectually curious that I’ve already told multiple people about the accordion gang violence I read about on BBC yesterday. I still have hobbies, friends, passions, and frustrations. I’m just not as stressed out all the time. I don’t need to decompress from work, while also somehow getting in some snuggles. I don’t have to stay up late to get time to myself. When Jake wants to visit his parents or go to a rodeo over the weekend, I’m not upset that I’m missing what little time I have with my babies. It’s fine, because we’ll just have fun on Monday.
I knew that I would be a working mom, just as surely as I knew that I’d loathe staying home, that I’d lose myself and no longer feel like a woman, just a mom. While I’ve been true to my word and my girls still don’t watch TV, play with our phones, sleep with us, or dictate our schedules, this is the one topic I knew would be a certain way for me as a parent, long before my girls were born, where I am officially eating crow. Just as being a stay-at-home mom is not right for many women, being a working mom just wasn’t right for me, no matter how I knew I’d feel. Maybe that will change in a few years and maybe not. I might go back to work or we might homeschool. I’m not going to try to make any predictions, because my previous one on this subject was so incredibly off the mark. This is what’s right for us, right now.
I was wrong. Everyone was wrong. I don’t regret quitting my job. I don’t feel isolated. I amhappy. While I truly carry no judgment for any woman who chooses to work, I recommend both options as a topic of consideration for every family. We millennials have been told our whole lives that the two-income household was the only way to thrive, to the point that many of us have never realistically considered another option. I know it’s easier said than done for the majority. I know it’s not a financial possibility for many, especially in higher cost of living areas. I know that the career repercussions would be insurmountable for others. I respect if it’s not possible or right for a family to have a stay-at-home parent. I’m glad we considered it, though, even though we never thought we would. I’m glad we ignored all of the conventional wisdom and didn’t wait. I’m glad that we found what works for us. If what you’re doing isn’t working for you, that’s okay. That includes going back to work. You’re not less intelligent, less successful or less maternal, less nurturing. You’re not letting anyone down if you forge your own path. You’re not a disappointment if you’re a different person than you once thought.
Ten years ago, I’d have given anything to be a librarian. I was in graduate school, working as a half-time circulation clerk and substitute teaching and I dreamt of the day that I could call myself by that title. I wanted to work full time at one job, helping people choose a new book, file for disability, fill out job applications and build resumes, find a safe place to live after their divorce. I would have been on cloud nine to be a teen librarian, giving kids a welcoming place to learn a new skill, make friends, feel respected and valued by an adult. I prayed for this job, every night, and when I got it, it was, in many ways, exactly as I’d hoped.
Over the last eight and a half years, I’ve done all of the above and more. I’ve rushed after an escaped toddler, to keep him from getting hit by a car in the parking lot. I’ve steered a developmentally disabled woman away from online dating, so she wouldn’t get stabbed in an IHOP parking lot. I’ve convinced someone to report her stalker to the police and watched her tear up, finally having her fears validated. I’ve built a resume from scratch for an ex-offender and celebrated when he got a job. I’ve called 911 after a drug overdose and confronted people for looking at porn on the public computers. I’ve comforted teens whose parents aren’t willing or able to do so. I’ve mourned the suicide of a 16-year-old boy. I’ve even gotten one of my teen volunteers hired as a library aide. I’ve been a manager and given references and helped people grow. I’ve moved one library and helped build another from the ground up. Being a librarian has been nearly as magical as I’d always dreamed… and today is my last day.
In December of 2018, Jake and I decided to stop preventing pregnancy. By June of 2019, we were trying in earnest. By September, I was tearfully asking him to get a semen analysis. In February of 2020, we discovered IVF was our only hope for children and I’d have given anything to be a mom. I dreamt of the day that I could call myself by that title. As you might know, despite the pandemic, we were pregnant by the end of 2020 and I gave birth to two healthy girls this past June. It almost killed me, literally, but I’m not sure it made me stronger.
I always planned to work full time when I had children, following in the footsteps of my mother, her mother, and my dad’s mother. Jake knew this from the beginning and we planned our life around this model. We thrived on two incomes and bought our home just 10 minutes from our workplaces, with City Hall just up the street from the library. We took out credit cards and cashed in investments to pay for our $30,000 worth of babies, knowing that we’d make six figures and could afford to pay it off. Throughout my pregnancy, this was our plan. Even after my terrifying birth story, we never discussed an alternative. I would stay home during my recovery and then I would go back, putting our girls in a church daycare just 12 minutes away. I’d get to be the career woman and the mom. Now, I’m here and it’s exactly as I’ve always planned… and itsucks.
For eight weeks, Jake and I have been waking at 6:00 to feed our girls, before getting them ready for daycare and ourselves ready for work. We leave the house by 7:30 and drop them off at 7:45, together. We each go home for lunch, where we do chores that we don’t want to do later, then finish the day at 5:00 exactly and head to pick them up. We get home around 5:30 and try to balance daily tasks with enjoying our babies while they’re awake. By 6:00, they’re asleep and we make dinner and eat before they have their final bottle at 8:00 and we put them down. Then, we do household chores and watch a show before bed or Jake plays videogames while I read. This is every night, until the weekend, when we run ourselves ragged catching up on the errands we couldn’t do during the week, because we didn’t want to miss out on time with our children. Instead of enjoying them at home, we drag them around while we shop for groceries, get the oil changed, and return packages and store purchases. Then, we usually share them with family or friends at some get-together, before returning home to put them to bed.
As a child, I had a handful of careers I wanted when I grew up, ranging from veterinarian to lawyer to nurse to teacher. Stay at Home Mom never made the list. All my life, I’ve pictured having an impactful career, where I work full time, and then come home to my family. I went to college and then grad school and worked two jobs while carving my professional path. Finally, I got a position I love with understanding managers, where I make good money and have a predictable schedule. I have as close to zero commute as possible and a clean, safe, nearby daycare minutes away. It’s the American dream… and it’s a lie. Why didn’t anyone tell me this? For all the complaining parents do, and it is endless, why has no one simplified it to not having enough time, in a dual income family? I have never really considered myself a modern feminist, but I still thought I could do this. This is the model most people follow. Of course we would, too.
Six weeks, y’all. I made it six weeks before handing in my notice to leave my dream job, the job I can’t seem to build any enthusiasm for anymore, while simultaneously remembering how good it once made me feel. Everyone keeps telling me that it gets better, but when I ask how much time they get with their children at night, they almost always answer less than an hour. This isn’t just parents of babies, but those with school-aged children, too. After two back-to-back rounds of Pandemic IVF, an emergency C-section due to extensive pneumonia and pregnancy-induced heart complications that impact .00001% of women, three blood transfusions, four days in the ICU and three more in labor and delivery… I get an hour with my girls each night. I have a cardiologist now and $9,000 in hospital bills, but I have an hour with my babies.
In a perfect world, I could just go half-time again, doing the same job for fewer hours, but my system doesn’t hire half-time librarians anymore. The only half-time positions don’t require an MLIS and pay $5 less an hour. While I’d be thrilled to take one of these and it’s a possibility that one might open in the next few months, if I do so as an internal candidate, I’ve been informed that my retirement will be frozen. If I’m no longer full time, but I haven’t terminated employment, I won’t be able to touch my retirement, not to add to it or roll it over or continue investing in it. Since Jake and I wouldn’t plan for me to return to full time or quit, for at least 15 years, $75,000 would sit in an account and be eaten by inflation. I was told, verbatim, that I do have a choice, though: I can terminate employment… and so I did.
Leaving my job has been one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever had to make. I worked so hard for this. I spent years praying for this exact position, a teen librarian job on the outskirts of the county, where I could make big city money and lead a small town life. I feel like I’m losing a part of myself. Unlike other people’s dream jobs, it was more or less exactly as wonderful as I’d dreamt. Sure, there were frustrations with other departments and budgeting decisions and weird niche emphases in my specialization, but my day to day? It was awesome. I made a difference. I made good money. I made friends. I had fun…
… then Covid-19 hit.
Maybe things would have been different, if it weren’t for the pandemic, the way we had to get pregnant, losing my mom the day after Mother’s Day, or almost dying when my girls were born. Maybe if my job had actually been enjoyable for the last two years, instead of a terrifying effort not to get sick during IVF, while trying to simultaneously appease the conflicting feelings of staff and the public… maybe I’d have been able to make the adjustment, like all other women seem to do. I remember loving my job. I looked forward to work… but I can’t do it anymore. I keep thinking that women do this all the time, but then I talk to them and realize that it doesn’t get better. They just get used to it and those aren’t the same thing. I don’t want to get used to feeling like I don’t know my daughters, to being exhausted and irritable, to constantly rushing and never having enoughhours in the day. Maybe I’m weak or the last two years have broken something inside of me, because I don’t have it in me and I never thought I would feel this way. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It doesn’t feel right, though, far more than leaving my job doesn’t feel right.
Iwish I could split myself in two, like Sabrina Spellman à la The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. I could send one Belle to the library, where she’d comfort a teenage boy who just came out to his mom, recommend some fitting YA books, and invite him to the next teen program. Then, I could stay home and care for my girls and my house, freeing up time to spend as a family later, never missing a milestone. That’s just it, though. Just as Sabrina sent her other self to rule Hell, I’d send my other self to work full time. Even in this fantasy, I stay home.
I’ve cried myself sick over the last few days, but it’s nothing compared to the tears I’ve cried over the last eight weeks. I want to be a librarian, but I want to be with my girls more. Maybe things would be different if it hadn’t all been sohard, but I’m not strong enough for this… literally. Jake and I would like to have another baby, transferring another embryo (singular) this summer, but it would be the kind of pregnancy that involves a team with a cardiologist on it. I can’t do that and have twins and work full time. I can’t even do this. For all I went through to get my dream job, I went through a lot more to get my girls. There’s still hope that a half-time position will open in the next six months or so, so perhaps I’ll be able to return to my role in a more manageable capacity… at least that’s what I tell myself, so I can keep it together as Grady, the teen volunteer I got hired on, thanks me for all I’ve done for him.
My heart is breaking for the career I’m giving up, but there’s a chance I can have it again later and there’s absolutely zero chance that my girls will ever be this small again. I keep thinking about my mother, what she’d have done differently. If she weren’t my age during the 90s, when it was just assumed that a woman would work, she’d have chosen to stay home or work part-time. I’m certain. I doubt that would have saved her relationship with my dad, but it might have literally saved her sanity and her relationship with her children. I don’t want to have regrets, but I seem to have no choice. As much as my heart is breaking to leave my library, it breaks more to think of missing these years. So for now, this chapter of my life has closed and I’ll just have to see what the future holds.
Belle of the Library 