Am I incompetent? | Imamother

MamaBear

Sun, Dec 13 2015, 7:52 am

I promise you, if you did not have your mom to make you shabbos every week postpartum, or the money to buy takeout, or a husband with the time to do it, you would figure it out. You'd do it because it has to be done.

If you had two hrs a week to run errands, you'd prioritize and do what you could in that time frame.

Banning extreme circumstances, most of us rise to the occasion and figure out the lives Hashem has given us. Don't overthink your situation, just be happy to be living the life you have right now.

amother

Olive

Sun, Dec 13 2015, 9:12 am

Aubergine posted:

How did I manage it? Well, my husband did almost all of the the shopping, all the laundry (washing, which was at a laundry mat because we didn't have a machine- I did the folding and sorting) and he straightened up the house each evening. The kitchen was my domain, but I often went to bed with dishes in the sink and used a lot of paper dishes. The floors and bathroom were only washed once a week - on Thursday night, my husband and I would clean the house together for shabbos staring at 10:30 at night when he got home from night Seder. I'd cook in bulk - clean and cook 10 pounds of chicken at one time and freeze so that it made many suppers, for example. I made challa and kugels and soups, etc like that too. I did my cooking all on Sundays or at night after the kids were sleeping. My house was far from immaculate, actually, it was usually flying. My food was very simple and was almost never served fresh, my kids were watched by a babysitter for the majority of their waking hours. They were primarily bottle fed, aside from what I pumped at work and a few nursings in the evenings/weekends. I did no exercise. I went to bed very late each night and was very tired at work.

I'm a F/T working empty nester after being a F/T working mother. Except for making challah, which I didn't start till my kids were all in school and functioning more or less independently--and then only because our shomer shabbos bakery closed-- and dh doing the shopping, laundry and straightening up, this sounds like me 25 years ago. Dh did what he could but due to his inhumanely long work hours he wasn't around enough to do much. Except for the nursing and pumping, it sounds a lot like me now! It doesn't really have to be this way, but I'm so used to it from the early-childhood years that it's stuck. For a time when we had a cluster of very small children--what I referred to as the "four-on-the-floor" stage --I had cleaning help for a grand total of 4 hours a month, just enough to restore my order-loving soul and keep me out of the loony bin but not enough to keep the house presentable for more than ten minutes.

I loved visiting friends at the same stage of life, especially sahms, and seeing that their households were no better than mine. It was a great reality check. At no time did I consider myself incompetent. Despondent, yes; overwhelmed, to be sure; incompetent; never.