Working Mom Wednesday

Working life BEFORE kids vs. Working life AFTER kids
(don't have kids?? working life as a teen/young adult vs. working life as an adult.)

Before kids and before husband, my work wasn't so different. I've had a lot of jobs since graduating in 2004. I've never been one to work long hours, though. Maybe I haven't had demanding jobs, but I get my stuff done for the day and go home on time. Only once or twice did I have a project come up with an immediate deadline that required more than an 8 hour day. At one job that required staying late at the office. At another job it meant taking my laptop home with me.

Pre-marriage, my evenings were mostly free. I tried to cook dinner once a week but usually didn't care enough to put forth the effort. I'd go to evening Bible study groups, grocery shop when I needed to, never planned out meals, and watched a lot of TV.

I had a 2 hour bedtime routine because I had trouble sleeping at night. I usually went to bed around 11, later on the weekends. I got up in the mornings as late as possible and had a morning routine as well. I got up about 7 (later when I had jobs with a shorter commute or later start time), poured the coffee, spent 15-20 minutes reading my Bible and a short devotional, then got ready for the day, and hoped that I wouldn't be late for work (but I was usually 5 minutes late).

Once Rodgers and I started dating, I spent on average an hour on the phone with him every evening. He wouldn't talk to me longer than that.

When I moved to the same town Rodgers was living in, and we were no longer LDR, he would come over for dinner every night. I had a different job, since I'd moved, but still, I worked my hours and went home. I did start cooking more often because Rodgers would cook and clean up with me, and I enjoyed doing those tasks together. He would go home around 8, and I had the rest of the evening to myself. I did nothing productive with it.

I spent so much of my evenings doing nothing. It was fabulous. I enjoy doing nothing.

After getting married, my evenings were similar to our short distance relationship, except Rodgers didn't go home at night (obviously). We watched a lot of movies in the evenings. Once I had the pregnancy fatigue and 24 hour nausea, I did even less than I'd done before.

When Nate was born, my free, nothing-filled evenings were over. I work the same hours, but now I have to plan our meals, buy groceries on the weekend, and split up the chores because who has the time to clean a whole 850 square foot apartment in one day? Not me. As I've blogged before, we have a schedule for all cleaning and laundry to make sure we don't get behind. My attempts to schedule exercise in to my evenings has been somewhat successful. Now, Rodgers and I have started MasterLife, and we are trying to work the daily homework from that into our evenings. I no longer have a drawn out evening routine. I don't have trouble falling asleep any more, probably because my days are full, and I'm exhausted.

I get up between 5:45 and 6 now. The morning routine is slightly different. It's an abbreviated version of my previous routine, with some baby-getting-ready thrown in there. Rodgers gets Nate ready for the most part, though. I haven't been late for work a single time since Nate was born because he doesn't let us oversleep. We leave between 7 and 7:10, I drop him at daycare, and I usually arrive at work a few minutes early.

The biggest difference between being a working mom and a working wife or single adult is that there are no more evenings or weekends filled with doing nothing. There are a lot more demands on my time, and my life is much more scheduled and routine. We'll still take off on a spontaneous weekend trip from time to time, but it takes us longer to get out the door.