Pity, party of one

Most of the time, I'm okay with being a working mother. Of course I daydream about what it would be like to be able to stay home with Nico full time or even to have the opportunity to write and edit from home, but I have accepted that this is unlikely to ever be an option for my family. It helps that my job is usually rewarding and that I'm good at what I do. I am happy that my income should allow us to provide Nico with a stable childhood, a house of our own with a backyard he can play in, small luxuries like swimming lessons and trips to the zoo. I suspect being fulfilled intellectually as well as emotionally will help me to be a better mother in the long run. Most days it's pretty easy.

But today was not one of those days. Last year, I was told I would have to take on an additional project for the summer in order to save my job from budget cuts. Six months pregnant, with my husband's company in the middle of a buyout, what was I supposed to do? Now I'm trudging toward the final days of this project, something I don't particularly enjoy, and while I know, yeah, that's why they call it work, it's hard not to resent this thing I was more or less forced to take on and which doesn't really feel like time well-spent. I'm basically logging hours just to log them, babysitting equipment out in the field during evenings when I'd much rather be home with Nico. The final phase of the project requires me to commute an hour each way.

Tonight I got there, I sat around, I felt kind of stupid for just sitting there. Then I had to go pump, but the only place available is a family restroom in a busy building, so the whole time I was pumping, I could hear people out in the corridor coming in hoping to use that restroom and then being turned away. And yeah, I suppose I have as much right to use that restroom as anyone, but I hate to cause a fuss or to inconvenience other people and so I felt like an asshole the whole time, on top of the generally unpleasant experience of pumping in a bathroom perched on a folding chair, my pump bag carefully balanced on the edge of the sink, listening to strangers talking on the other side of the wall. After I pumped I went out and sat around some more, feeling cross and bored. Then, because my hourlong commute takes me through another time zone, I miscalculated when I needed to leave. Instead of arriving home just in time for Nico's bedtime, I arrived an hour late. Still, I was hopeful that I'd be able to rush in and whisk him upstairs to nurse him to sleep. But when I walked through the door, eleven hours after I dropped Nico off at my parents' house, MB was coming down the stairs to tell me that Nico had just fallen asleep after an hour and a half of resisting. No nursing, no cuddling, just my sweet little baby asleep in his crib while I stood over him, twisting my fingers together to quell the urge to scoop him up and bury my nose in his hair, trying to ignore the little achy knot that had built up behind my breastbone after hours of missing him.

By the light of day I know that I'm lucky. I'm lucky to still have a job in this terrible economy, let alone one I genuinely love most of the time. I'm lucky that I have the flexibility to spend a lot of time with my baby, and that when I do have to work I can leave him in the care of his doting grandparents. I am lucky to have a baby at all. But tonight, I don't feel lucky to be a working mom. Tonight it feels pretty shitty. Tonight I feel like I'm missing out.