Where There’s a Will There’s a Way

As soon as I found out I was pregnant for the first time, I knew I wanted to be a stay at home mom.  Growing up, my mom had worked outside of the home.  When I was younger I remember always having to be shuffled off to daycare or a babysitter.  Then, as I got older, I graduated to the status of “latch key kid”; I’d come home from school, crawl under the outdoor stairs to get the house key, then hang out by myself doing homework and being pretty much self-sufficient until my mom got home from work around 5pm.  Not really a big deal, as I was a pretty independent, responsible kid and didn’t mind being alone all that much.  Although, part of me always wished that I had that 1950’s like life, where I’d come home from school to the aroma of freshly baked, chocolate chip cookies.  My mom would be in the kitchen in an apron, waiting for me with a plate of goodies and a glass of milk.  I thought that would be so awesome.

So when I found out I was going to be a mother, I wanted to do for my child what I had longed for my mother to do for me.  I dreamt about playdates in the park, “mom and me” activities at the local rec center, library time when we would listen to stories and make crafts, and of course baking fresh chocolate chip cookies. I started wondering, though, if that was even possible.  Could we really afford to live on just 1 salary? Well, for us at that time the answer was yes. You see, I was married, my husband (at the time) had a decent job, and we lived in a house with no mortgage or rent to pay.  So eventhough we would have less income when I quit my job to stay home, we had less financial responsibility.  Erring on the side of caution, however, instead of completely quitting my job I took a 1 year leave of absence.  Call it a “trial run”; I just wanted to be sure that this was the right decision for everyone involved and make sure that we could, in fact, swing it financially as we had anticipated.