…. means becoming a working mother or becoming a stay-at-home-mom…

… and both are just about the biggest change ever! 

Have you noticed any of these happening to you?

	You used to be really organized, able to get everything done, and now you’re biggest challenge is to find 5 free minutes for a shower.
	Your old friends, who used to understand you completely, just don’t get it. They try, but they have no clue how much your life has changed now that you’re a parent.
	Your job used to be really important to you, but now it’s just not.
	You’ve decided to stay at home with your baby, and as much as you love her, you’re lonely.
	You get frustrated and angry when your baby won’t stop crying, and you feel guilty about your feelings.
	You’re not sure who you are anymore. When you meet someone who asks you what you do, the answer doesn’t come easy anymore. “Well, I used to be a lawyer, but now I’m a mother…but I still sort of think like a lawyer…”. It used to be natural to define yourself based on the work you did every day, but that doesn’t come so easy anymore.
	You find yourself feeling boring when your husband comes home at the end of the day. “Oh, what did I do today? Let’s see…I changed the baby’s diaper 5 times…she threw up three times after feeding so I changed her clothes a lot…the last time she was in bed so I changed the sheets too…and then I did a load of laundry…”. Ugh.
	Your baby is never like the one in the book.

Yeah, that’s what it’s like. The struggle is different for women who stay on the job and women who stay home, but the basic issue is the same. Your life has totally changed. And you wouldn’t go back (although that thought has certainly crossed your mind!), but there are serious challenges to overcome. 

There are two things that I’ve found to be true about those challenges:
1) You will meet them, and you will win.
2) You can’t do it alone. You need support. Support can come from your husband, from friends, from family, from me, from all of the above…whatever. But you need it. 

How many times can you complain to your husband? He may be your best friend, but you’re afraid that he’s tiring of listening to you, and you don’t want that. It may be also that he’s part of your frustration. Like it or not, your roles are different now, and maybe he’s not as much on your wavelength as you’d like (which probably means you’re not as much on his as he’d like, either). Why not try giving me a call? 

When you work with me, I’m very good at listening to your complaints. Better yet, I’m good at helping you figure out ways to address them. I’ve also been doing the mommy thing for a while, so I have lots of perspective on this issues you’re facing right now (not to mention a PhD in social psychology, which – contrary to what my father may have thought – really does help!). “Hmmm…” you’re thinking, “She’s sympathetic, resourceful, helpful…and yet I never have to tell her her hair looks good when it doesn’t, or listen to her blab on about her own problems…does it get any better than this?”