How to Become a Stay - At - Home Mom

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By Bwaheed
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A stay at home Mother with her Son

Three steps to becomming a Stay-at-Home-Mom.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

A baby!
The support of your partner.

Step 1

I made the choice to be a stay at home mom long before I was a mom. I grew up in a single parent household. My mother had no choice but to work and that left my siblings and myself alone to fend for ourselves. I promised myself that I would do everything in my power to spend every minute with my children.

The first step to my plan of becoming a stay at home mom is to have a baby. This should have been the easy part, right? Well, no. After winning a small battle with infertility, loosing a child at 20 weeks and then having several early miscarriages I finally became a mommy to a slightly premature son via C-section. This certainly wasn’t my picture perfect pregnancy or birth, but hey, I accomplished the mommy part of my plan.
Step 2

The second step was to down size and learn to live off of one income. Oh was this a hard step! How do you learn to downsize when you can’t possibly give anything up? My husband and I had to stop eating out so much. This meant I would have to start cooking every night. All part of being a stay at home mommy and wife, right? Well, dinner is always a little late and is never anything extravagant. But, we learned to live with it. The hardest thing I had to give up was shopping. No more expensive purses or shoes. Good thing I stocked up before I had a baby! I have no problem giving up a cute Coach purse so my son can have a new shiny toy or most importantly diapers. Instead of a $4 cup of iced coffee from Starbucks I iced my own coffee or for a special treat spent $1.85 on an iced coffee from McDonalds.
Step 3

The third step was to mentally prepare for what was about to come. I have to admit I was one of those women who thought their house would be spotless and everything would be done on time. I was in for a shock! Who knew you would only be able to complete housework in-between naps! I thought I was going to be the equivalent of Brea from Desperate Housewives. I’ve learned to get as much done as possible in-between naps. Some day’s I don’t get to take a shower and I’m ok with that. As long as my baby is happy I’m happy! I’ve learned to have a flexible routine. I’ve mapped out things I need to do during naps in order of importance. For instance, cleaning bottles is done before cleaning the kitchen and feeding the cats is done before emptying the dishwasher. It’s all about prioritizing to survive!