At the baby shower this past weekend one friend said to me, “You can have it all,” when I was telling her about school, Xander, and Jak. I started really thinking about that. Honestly, taking this semester off school has been very difficult for me. The only times I’d ever taken off school in the past was for medical issues or a family emergency. I understand I am pregnant, and will be giving birth around midterms, but I still miss being a student right now.
Jak and I met with his dad this weekend and we were discussing life, our plans, how things are going. I couldn’t help but feel a bit left out because I wasn’t in school and I don’t have a job besides writing for Conscious Talk Magazine, which I love!
I went to John Jay’s site and started looking up what classes were being offered for the Winter and Spring quarter that was online that I would need to finish my Bachelors. Luckily, I found one online class for the winter (which is a sped-up class that lasts 5 weeks) and found two online classes for the spring semester. So I submitted my readmission since if you take one semester off, you just have to hit a submit readmission button when you’re ready to come back. I am going to NYC tomorrow with my dad so I can show them my name change since getting married. Then in two or three weeks, I should be able to sign up for classes. That means by summer I’ll have only about seven classes to take until graduation! Ideally, I’ll take three summer classes if I can.
I am horribly nervous about how I am going to handle classes and Xander, but I am sure Jak and I will figure something out. I just don’t want to “fall behind” any more than I already feel I have. I want to get my Bachelors done and move on to get my Masters in Counseling. I am a highly ambitious person and love learning. I also am so excited for Xander to get here and start getting to know his personality and who is he. I want to be a mom, a student, and eventually, have my career. I do in fact want it all and know that one day I can achieve having it. Getting there will take hard work, determination, organization, and planning, but it can be done. I want to be the best mother and wife, and part of doing that is achieving goals that will make me overall a more productive person and be able to support the family.
XOXO Savvy
I was so nervous about how I was going to handle work, school, and my daughter. Now that she is here, and almost a month old, I have finally found at least a little bit of balance. It’s definitely not easy, but it’s possible! You’ve got this for sure 🙂
Dear new mom,
I hope you won’t think I’m being a party-pooper and spoiling your dreams of being able to have/do it all after your baby arrives. I hope that you will, instead, be willing to listen to a much older mom who, just like you, desired to keep doing all I had been doing while adding on the role & tasks of motherhood but learned too late that such is a recipe for disastrous stress! Long story short: being a mom is a FULL-TIME JOB, and it is one of–if not THE–most important jobs in the world, for the future depends on it being done well.
Please understand that life (a woman’s especially) has different seasons, of which parenting is one, and a career is another (with some overlap). Your career can wait (and the education that goes with it), but little Xander will NOT wait. A baby’s first years are absolutely critical to proper/healthy development, and once those years are gone, trying to go back and finally provide that which shapes that development is nearly impossible. If you are truly a student of psychology then you surely already know this.
Do NOT BE DECEIVED by the glossy facade society puts out about working moms. MAYBE you will be able to successfully handle being a mom while doing college/career, but you can’t guarantee it. You can’t even guarantee how your hormones will respond to childbirth! (You could end up with postpartum depression.)
Again, not trying to totally destroy your hopes/goals, I just desire to help you make sure you’re envisioning them realistically. If I sound extremely harsh, perhaps it’s because I know from experience how hard it is to get the rose-colored glasses off once they’re on. I wish somebody had been effectively blunt with me 21 years ago. Who knows how much better my personal and family life might have been.
(Please feel free to contact me if you think I can help you make sure you’re being realistic; it’s now my calling in life to help women with this very sort of thing.)
I understand it’s hard to “have it all.” For me, I am going to do online classes, and cut down on the amount I take per semester. Part of being a mom is being able to take care of your child, and for me, that means finishing the education to get to a career to financially be able to provide.
So, it will be difficult, it won’t happen the way I expected it to, and things are not going to go perfectly, but I have to make sure I do my best to balance being a mom and being a student.
And yes, I know the psychology of a child. When I told my friend that I took the fall semester off and wasn’t leaving Xander for the first six months after birth she thought I was crazy and said, “You need to get a job.” I attempted to explain to her that children need stability and bonding in those first crucial months to development but would not listen. So for me, I knew online classes would be the only way to be a full-time mom and part-time student.
And yes, I am highly nervous about birth and post-birth (especially with my anorexia). I want to make sure that I am well enough to be able to be a mom and part-time student without overloading myself. If I need to, I just won’t take the winter class I planned on, and that is okay. Basically, I am trying to be flexible with whatever plans I have, but also be realistic.
Good to hear these things! I think my first real wake up call about the first-place priority of motherhood was when I read (technically: heard via audiobook) Stephen Covey’s story about his daughter’s frustration over how her new baby was “literally taking all [her] time,” preventing her from doing “anything else.” To summarize his advice to her: focus on being a mom; make it your number one priority–even to the exclusion of everything else. I highly recommend you read exactly what he wrote about this, as my summary doesn’t do it justice. (Covey, et al, First Things First, pp. 15-16). The only adjustment I would make to this prioritizing of being a mom is this: when you are a wife, that role gets higher priority, followed closely by being a mom. Why? The former helps you do the latter.