Snow. Jon Snow.

I was not a rookie mom when I made the decision to quit my job and stay home with the kids. Bean was almost 9 at that point and the boys were 5. I had seen quite a bit already – we’d waded into the murky unknown of Bean’s biological family, Noodle had been born in full-on kidney failure and we’d managed our way through one surgery for Bean and five for Noodle, with multiple hospitalizations for each of them. (Roo is the only one of our kids with zero congenital issues and as a result is the biggest baby in the world each and every time he’s sick. The other kids are Rambo.) I was fairly confident in my abilities to deal with most anything. I was way more sad than I was scared, because I loved my job and I was good at it – neither of which I could say about being a stay-at-home-mom. The two sentences I recall saying most often were, “I’m pretty sure I’m going to suck at this” and “I don’t question the importance of this job, but I’m not sure how to find the joy in it.”

No matter which mom path you take, someone is bound to second-guess your choices. That’s just reality, because let’s face it. If you already stay at home, there is at least a tiny corner of your heart that feels simultaneously jealous and judgy about your career mom friends. And if you’re a career mom, you’re harboring at least a teeny bit of what do they do all day??. I know this is true, because I’ve been both of these moms. No amount of girl-power, mom-strength drivel can pull the issue out by the roots because the real problem isn’t your own choices or even your own abilities. The real problem is your comfort level with both. So long as you feel insecure about your own decisions, so long as you question your own contributions to your family, so long as you can make yourself feel guilty, you’re stuck. You can’t stop judging the other moms you see because all they are is a mental mirror of your own failings and judging them makes you feel less inadequate.

In my career days, I knew how to be a mom. And all of the things that get done today still got done then, although admittedly with less regularity. We ate a lot of take-out back then, too. There are only so many hours in the day. What I didn’t know was just how very full those hours would remain even if I wasn’t spending 10 of them in an office every day. I didn’t know how isolating at-home motherhood can feel or that finding a way out of that isolation was so flipping much work. I knew it meant never having a real day off, but I didn’t know that it meant feeling guilty when I did get a break because I wasn’t pulling my own weight. I knew cleaning and cooking were a big part of the gig, but I had no idea how much of my own self-worth would be tied up in the laundry being caught up or who didn’t like their dinner. I didn’t know how long it would take for me to respond to the what-do-you-do question without shrinking internally. Honestly, maybe I still don’t know the answer to that one, but I’m working on it.

Three different people yesterday told me that I didn’t need to feel guilty for Pook breaking her leg. And the goofiest part was that I hadn’t even considered feeling guilty for it because she was doing something she knew better than to do when she fell. I have spent almost two years blaming and flogging myself for Pook’s genetic challenges, which makes absolutely zero logical sense, but an actual, preventable accident? The guilt never even occurred to me. This parenting stuff is not for the faint of heart, man. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on it, your kid tries to shimmy off a dining room chair through the back of the damn thing and breaks her leg. What do you know, Mrs. Smarty Pants? Nothing – you know nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Today has felt like I remember hangovers feeling in my 20’s. At least back then I’d have a funny story to tell out of the deal. I gotta say, dancing on the bar somewhere is a much better story than the seven hours which culminated in Pook’s jumbo purple cast. But emotionally, it feels the same. I want things to be quiet and dark and calm. I would much rather lay in bed than fold the 9 loads of laundry sitting on it, all of which I did not take care of yesterday. And both Melissa and my mom told me to just relax and rest today. But, like I said, I’m way too emotionally invested in the laundry (along with everything else household related) to ignore it again. I know I’d lay in bed tonight and mentally kick my own butt for shirking my wifely duties a second day in a row. So I did the laundry and swept the kitchen and made a plan for dinner. At least when I’m kicking myself tonight, it won’t be for a messy house? There’s my bright side, I guess.

I’d adding a few things to my list of Things I Know after this week. I now know that pediatricians won’t cast a broken bone without an orthopedic consult. I now know there’s a fracture clinic at Shriner’s Hospital who takes walk-ins. I now know that I can, in fact, make it through seven hours in the hospital without a single drop of espresso while carrying a thirty pound toddler who won’t be put down even for a moment. I now know that we’ve seen enough medical trauma that I’m fairly unphased by a broken leg, which is both funny and kinda sad at the same time. I also know that Pook can pack a whopper of a judo kick into that cast and either Boogie or I will end up with a black eye when Princess I Want My Way can’t. I still don’t know how to feel like I don’t suck at this job, but I do know how to leave guilt where it belongs, even if just for today.

I’ll take it.