Moms Need To Feel Successful Too!
by Nicole Baldwin

Sure- I can be proud of being the mom of two happy healthy gorgeous boys. Don’t get me wrong- there’s nothing else I’d rather be than a mom to these two sweet little guys. But some days are harder than others. When you’re sleep deprived and your two year old who is potty training pees all over the floor and your baby has a blowout in his diaper and gets poo all over the chair and his clothes- it’s hard to feel like you’re doing anything right in the world. In spite of its unglamorous struggles, I love being a mom but every so often I get an itch to have something more to tell people about myself.

Like most little girls- I dreamed of being a mommy. But I also dreamed of being a nurse, or a marine biologist, or an inventor, or a gymnast, or any other glamorous career (according to my 7 year old conception of reality.) I wanted something I could be proud of. I even had vivid fantasies of being the person who discovered Atlantis. Now I didn’t want big time fame- I just wanted something that I could tell people about and they would say, “WOW- I always wished I could do that!”

So after I dropped out of the Nursing Program in college when I had my first son I started getting the itch. I tried to figure out ways I could go back to school. But when I realized that going back to school would mean leaving my little guy for 10 hours a day on average, on top of the fact I would have to work at least part time the rest of my life in order to maintain my license, I gave up on school for now. I decided it wasn’t for me.

Then I decided I would become a runner and run a marathon- that would be something neat to tell people. But after a couple injuries and the fact I wanted to have baby number 2 in the oven 5 months BEFORE the marathon- I gave up on running in order to give my son a sibling.

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