r/workingmoms

Advice to people considering becoming mothers. Do not have children if you’re not prepared to do the heavy lifting. Spouses will say and truly believe they are your co-pilot. However, nothing will get done for the child unless you do it or ask your partner to do one specific thing. But don’t ask them for too much they’ll be busy. Obviously this will not be a relatable post for all mothers… but I know a few might understand. I could go on but my bathroom break is over. Thanks for reading my post and letting me vent. Back to mothering.

It’s this Thursday. My work didn’t say anything and I forgot about it. It was big in the 90s when it was take your daughter to work day and I was a daughter.

I work for a company with only a handful of employees. I will be going on maternity leave this year for 3 months, paid by Maine’s new program.

I a given four weeks of vacation a year. So far in 2026, I have taken three days of vacation.

I work from home while being a stay at home mom. Because of this, my boss lets me make my own schedule. I work from 0400-0800, during naptime (three hours in the afternoon) and one hour before bed or when my husband gets home from work. It works really well for me and I am SO thankful my boss allows this.

Furthermore, the job requires a lot of travel, and after I hit six months pregnant I won’t be flying. So my travel is severely restricted to local clients, which we don’t have many. Again, my boss has been accommodating and understanding.

Lastly, after my three months of maternity leave are up and I’m doing the SAHM thing with two children, I don’t know how I’ll be able to travel and get all my hours in etc. I told my boss this and he said “there isn’t an agreement we can’t come to” - we discussed potentially reducing hours and traveling less for less compensation (I currently make 95k before bonuses)

So all in all - it’s a sweet gig. The company is SMALL and they are certainly taking a hit with my restricted travel and maternity leave.

All this being said - I really want to take some time off when I’m mega pregnant to have a long weekend here and there. I’m also taking off my son’s second birthday. Is it wrong to take my vacation this year? It feels kind of shitty even though it’s well within my rights. Especially with a boss that is more than accommodating. I don’t want him to feel like I am taking advantage of the company…does that make sense? Is my pregnancy brain overthinking this?

What would you do?????

I go back to work after maternity leave on Monday. HR wants to meet with me first thing Monday morning to discuss org changes and refuses to meet sooner. They booked 90 minutes.

During my leave, my boss fired three people and two others resigned. All on her team alone with more resignations further down the chain.

I regained computer access yesterday to find i was removed from pretty much all meeting invites I would normally be part of. HR refused to explain why, even when I pointed out that I was the only one removed. No response when I said normally folks meet with their boss and not HR (I know she has not been fired) or to a few other questions.

Everyone has been walking on eggshells with this woman since she started in December. My anxiety is through the roof.

Coworkers are saying it's unlikely I am getting fired, but I don't have job protection. Have not been there long enough for FMLA.

What is the likelihood I am being fired vs. Moved vs. Just informed? Any thoughts are appreciated. Not how I wanted to spend my last week with my last baby.

Not gonna lie… I’ve been on here a few weeks and still feel like I’m decoding a new language every time I read a post. So I actually sat down and wrote some of them out just to keep up

FTM first time mom (I thought it was female to male lol)
LO little one
DH darling husband 
BD baby dance 
VVFL very very faint line 
BBT basal body temperature

I’m sure I’m still missing some… does anyone have more to add?

Tuesday:

- 6:15 wake

- 6:30 youngest up, feed

- 7:00 lunches, signed forms, lost shoe

- 7:40 school drop

- 8:30 standup

- 9-12 back to back

- 12:15 eat a bar in the car

- 12:30-5 site visits

- 5:30 pickup

- 6-8 dinner, homework, bath, read, asleep if I'm lucky

I ran a $8M project last year. I'm good at my job. My husband said last night, not meanly, just as an observation, that my outfits lately are "whatever." And he's right. I wear one of four shirts to work. I wear one of two sweatshirts at home. I haven't picked an outfit because I liked it in maybe two years.

I don't know what to do with this information but I also can't unhear it.

I am purposefully not asking this on marriage subreddits because I don't want men's input. I want women's input.

I'm mid 40's and have been married ten years. We have young children. My husband was initially pretty discouraging around me starting a business which I did five years ago. He brought up valid concerns but also a lot of his fears. I ended up starting a business, but as we all know, initially, it's not profitable. So, I had to take some side jobs about two years ago that were pretty flexible but required me occasionally to work weekends or evenings. But, my husband, since the beginning of our relationship, has wanted to have a near total monopoly on my time. We had to do everything together, and initially I liked it after having dated guys who were a bit non-comittal. Before kids, we were spending our weekends outdoors- running, hiking, etc. But it was like he always needed to be by me or he would mope. He invited me to all of the outings with his friends and I was expected to do the same-- which I didn't always do.

Anyway, now that we have kids, and I have a lot of work projects on my plate, my husband is really resentful. It's not just that he wants us to spend quality time- he wants us to have coffee every morning together at a local cafe, he doesn't ever want me to work in the evenings, and he was so angry at me for taking a 30 minute work call on Sunday without first getting his permission. I was finally feeling like I could leave the kids with him one morning a week to go to business meetings for women (it starts early at 7am on Tuesdays) and he recently told me that he "gave me permission and more free time even though he didn't want to. As if him taking the kids to school one morning a week was this huge sacrifice he had to make.

I am by no means working around the clock here and neglecting my family. I pick up my kids early from school- around 2pm every day. I arrange a date night almost every week withhim. But, again, the expectation is that every night and throughout the entire weekend, we will be glued at the hip. He is "just trying to protect me" from overworking (yeah fucking right). I am so suffocated by him. When I bring it up, he whines and nearly cries that I am an absent partner. It's true I am trying to get space. I've been suffocated by this man for so long- but he won't do therapy, won't read books together on improving anything, our sex life sucks and a part of me does wonder if he's closeted. So many issues. But, for me, right now, I need to focus on work to keep my businesses running. How do I deal with a man like this?!?

As the title states, I was laid off during my mat leave from a US tech company. I have 8 years of experience in SaaS marketing, but you’d never know it with how little I’m able to talk about it in the two recruiter calls I’ve had so far.

My brain feels moldy. I can’t think through questions on the fly, so writing things out beforehand can only prepare me for so much. I’m also drawing on experience that’s supposed to be present day but in reality, it’s 6+ months ago. AND! I’m not supposed to mention I have a child, the reason I’m so rusty!

Today I had a call for a company that should have been a perfect fit, and I just blanked. On a very easy question. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say and I panicked. I did something I’ve never, ever done before— I made up a quick excuse and exited as gracefully as a horse with three legs, and then immediately burst into tears to my husband.

My son sleeps decently well through the night (2 wake-ups) but the broken sleep is really starting to weigh on me after 5 months. My husband helps where he can, but he needs his brain so he doesn’t lose *his* job. We don’t have family nearby. We live in a VHCOL area and, although I have severance runway through July, I can feel the weight of needing to get a jump on job hunting now.

I just hate this. My son starts partial daycare in a month, so I’ll be able to get more sleep and hopefully focus better. I don’t even want to do what I was doing before, but if I can barely talk about my direct experience, I’m definitely not in a position to pitch myself for something new.

I’m okay, just deeply embarrassed. If you have a similar story, I’d love to hear it.

Just wanting to post somewhere where I know I will be understood. I returned back to work last week after 12 weeks of maternity leave with my second baby. I’m a teacher at a public middle school, and my god is this transition so much harder than going back after the first baby. Most evenings we don’t get home until 5:30. Then I have to cook dinner, we eat, give both boys a bath, try to spend some quality time with them before bed. My husband puts our 3 year old to bed while I feed the baby and put him down. Then we do whatever cleaning we have the energy left for, shower, prepare for the next day. I feel like I don’t have enough time during the week to really do anything 100%. More than anything I feel guilty that my baby went from only being with me all day everyday to maybe getting 3 hours with me a day. My husband is more than willing to get a second job so I can stay home with them but I know we could give them both a much better life if I work. All this to say it’s just hard and most days I feel like I’m failing in multiple areas🙃

My 7m old has been in daycare for one month now. He is barely napping there. Some days he’ll take one 5 minute nap. Other days he’ll get two 30 minute naps in. When he’s home he will nap for two hour stretches twice a day and a shorter nap in the late afternoon so I knows he’s capable of taking good naps.

The daycare leaves the fluorescent lighting on in the room all day. I have worked at a daycare before and there were times during the day that we’d dim the lights even if some babies were awake. This center says they have to leave the lights on (with no real explanation). I understand it will take time for my baby to adjust but I just don’t know how any human could sleep under fluorescent lighting.

I’m worried for my baby who’s not napping. Sleep is so crucial at this small age and I just don’t know what to do.

Is this what others experience for babies at daycare?

My son just turned 3. We flipped him front-facing in my husband’s car a few months ago for space reasons, but he is still rear-facing in my car because it’s bigger and has more room. I was anxious about turning my son front-facing and delayed it long after my husband wanted to. He knew I was really anxious about this. He handled the front-facing installation and has always handled all car seat installation for us, as I am not physically strong enough to get the thing tight enough.

Today I happened to glance at the rear-facing car seat in my car, saw a part that is used only for front-facing installation, and realized I had never actually seen that part connected in my husband’s car. I checked the car seat manual against the car seat in my husband’s car and the installation is wrong. The straps for the seat are not threaded through the correct holes and the back of the car seat is not anchored to the top of the backseat of the car. The car seat is connected to the car at the base and stable, it doesn’t jiggle if you shake it, but the install is wrong.

I asked my husband about this and showed him the manual, and he was like, “oh, huh.” I was really suprised by that reaction and asked him if he looked at the manual when front-facing the car seat. He said he hadn’t. Like it was nothing. He said he basically just did what made sense to him based on what he did when he installed the seat rear-facing.

I thought there was one (1) kid thing I could completely outsource to my husband and not worry about. Isn’t it nice, I thought, that I don’t have to worry about screwing around with the kids’ car seats? That I can just let my husband take care of it and trust that it’s done correctly? This and certain things involving our investments are (were) literally the only things I do not play a managerial role in around the house. My husband is an equal parent in terms of actually rendering childcare, cleaning, errands, cooking, etc., 100%. But I have to be the manager for everything. For example, our son has had some behavioral issues lately. My husband will implement parenting practices aimed at resolving them and do a great job of it, but I have to do the research to figure out what those practices are, be the one who takes the initiative to reach out to his doctor, handle all communications with the doctor, fill out the survey, do the follow-up with the doctor, and then basically present my husband with action items he can just implement. I really liked that there was ONE thing I didn’t have to manage.

Turns out he has to be explicitly told that when you’re installing a car seat, you need to look at the instructions and follow them.

This has hurt my trust in him so badly because this is just so stupid. It’s a thing you use to keep the kids from fucking DYING in a car accident. How do you not understand it’s safety tested as installed according to manufacturer instructions and is a lot less likely to protect the kids when it’s improperly installed? What else doesn’t he get? My son has been in improperly installed car seats in two cars (my husband also did this in my mom’s car) for months because of this. I told my husband I wouldn’t be as upset if he had simply done it wrong, but admitting to not even looking at the instructions when installing a car seat like it’s nothing is fucking crazy. His initial response to all of this was to act exasperated and treat me like I was being unreasonable.

Looking for advice on the next chapter of my life as my child starts full-day kindergarten this fall.

I’m currently a SAHM (with a very part-time job in an office 1–2 days a week). My child is in preschool two mornings a week right now, but starting in the fall they’ll be in kindergarten Monday–Friday, with drop-off at 8:45 AM and pickup at 3:00 PM.

I’m trying to figure out what my next career step should be, and I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed. I feel like I need to have a plan in place before August, so I’d really appreciate any experiences or advice from others who’ve been in a similar situation.

For background, I have a bachelor’s degree and over 10 years of experience in Human Resources. My current part-time job is in insurance, which I’ve been doing for about 4 years so I could have some supplemental income while staying home during the early years.

I will be the sole parent handling school drop-off/pick-up and staying home when my child is sick, as we don’t have family nearby for support during the week. My spouse works a very demanding job, so this setup has made me the primary parent for day-to-day needs.

I’m considering a few options:

Option 1: Increasing hours at my current job and staying part-time. The downside is it’s not in my field, requires in-office presence, and I’m worried about managing absences when my child is sick (this year has already felt like illness every few weeks).

Option 2: Finding a fully remote full-time role, ideally in HR. I’m curious if this is realistic and sustainable with my parenting responsibilities, and what others’ experiences have been like.

Option 3: Open to any other suggestions or paths I might not be considering as I transition into this next stage.

Ultimately, I would love to get back into Human Resources, but I need something that realistically supports my family’s needs.

Thank you so much for reading and for any advice or insight.

I’m at the point where laundry just… piles up and then I ignore it longer than I should.

Between work and kid stuff there’s always something else that feels more urgent.

Someone mentioned those pickup/drop laundry services and I’m tempted, not gonna lie.

Only thing stressing me out is I do have a few clothes I’m kinda careful with and I don’t want them getting wrecked in some random hot wash.

Do they actually follow instructions or is it more like everything gets treated the same?

I go back to work (remote) in May and my son is currently 2 months (born at 34 weeks) but developmentally only 3 weeks… so we’re going back to work with him at a much younger age then we had anticipated for! I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on working remotely/at home with a newborn this young and how to handle a non existent nap/eating routine while working?

I’m so nervous and starting to have a lot of anxiety with no set routine for napping at the moment- he seems to really fight naps to the death 😂 my first son didn’t need to be held constantly but this one does! So I am clueless on how the heck I am going to satisfy him needing held while working on a computer! Any advice is so appreciated ❤️❤️

Hey All

Venting, maybe looking for some advice, who knows…

I’m 33. Married for 12 years with 2 kids. 12 and almost 6. Obviously can tell I married and had my first young (and unexpectedly in college). I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am and meet my goals…

I worked full time through school and graduated with my bachelors degree in 2019 (finally). I am a Senior Account Exec in Advertising/marketing. So safe to say, I did what I set out to do.

I am the default parent with my kids - my husband is great but he has a job outside the home and works 7am-7pm shifts and I WFH so naturally of course I am there more for the kids. School drop offs, pick ups, appointments, sports, etc. of course he does anything and everything he can when he’s available.

After quite a few years of suffering terrible anxiety and overworking myself to burn out, I finally took charge last year and go on anti anxiety meds and therapy. I am completely different from who I was 16 months ago and I am by all means “thriving” now. My kids are always my priority, as well as my me time which is working out, so while I’m okay with maybe not being in my “girl boss” era I can’t help but feel sad watching those around me move up on and on. People younger than me getting promotions into higher roles, etc. I know they don’t have kids and my brain just can’t be on work 24/7. Im actively working on my next promotion and my boss is all for it and helping me make it happen, but I guess I just feel behind and like I should be able to do more, push myself more, etc. it just makes me feel like a loser. Like I should already be farther than this in my career.

Idk what I need - works of encouragement or relatability would be great. Thanks for listening if you made it this far.

I don’t mean the obvious ones (sleep, free time, etc), I mean things you didn’t expect.

I miss purses! I’m not a super girly girl, but I always enjoyed purses. Changing them with the seasons, using a nice one for a special occasion…but now I’m always hauling 1-2 diaper bags around. So I just throw my wallet and keys in the diaper bag side pocket. I didn’t know I would have the arm space for a purse as a mom!

Now I know that no one else will be seeing my underwear at work, but I’m worried about two things: underwear lines and saggy boobs.

I have two kids, 12 months apart, and naturally that did a number on my body. I’m going back to work soon after leave with baby #2 and I have a decent wardrobe that fits (albeit not the most flattering to my tummy), but with the extra and stretched out skin on my stomach, most of my underwear keeps rolling down at the band which then causes it to bunch up in the back too and create underwear lines.

I’ve only been using cheap no-show underwear from Amazon for the last couple of years but it’s not cutting it now. I don’t even know what other underwear won’t leave lines.

In the boob department, I didn’t breastfeed so nursing/pumping isn’t a concern, but they just don’t look anywhere near as good as they did pre-pregnancy. I loathe underwire and haven’t worn it in years, but my low support bras just don’t look good in anything besides a T-shirt.

I’m a therapist and have a good amount of range in what I wear and just want to look put together when I go back to work.

Budget is limited, but I need help. Please send all your recommendations.

What do you guys spend money on to make your life easier/better? Working is part of my identity and I love my job. My husband and I are also in the very fortunate position to be saving a ton already for retirement and 529 accounts for our 2 kids (3.5F and 2 months M). What are some ways to spend extra cash to make life easier/more enjoyable?

Things we already do:

Cleaner every other week

Paid someone to do mulch delivery/spreading

Paid for our pool opening/closing

Planning to take 2 nice vacations this year

I don't really have a set budget but maybe something in the range of $500-$1000/month? Or once time purchases ~$5000?

What can we afford to let our lifestyle inflate that has been "worth it" for you?

I am 7 weeks pregnant (yay!) and for whatever reason, I am having major anxiety about telling my employer I am pregnant and will be taking 3 months off. The company I work for offers 8 weeks of paid parental leave and then STD, or alternatively could utilize FMLA. My spouse is taking 3 weeks off when I return so he can learn the routine and have 1-1 time to bond.

I think my anxiety is coming from the following:

- My team is a lot older, although they were mom’s all their kids have grown and are out of the house. There is a dad, but his wife is SAHM and their kid is 16.

-our team has had a lot of additional expectations and responsibilities put onto us. Of course, additional pay is still in question lol. So stress has been added.

-I’ve been recognized by upper corporate leadership and invited to a lot of “kinda secret” meetings of sorts. I am worried that pregnancy will now sideline me, as many women have reported.

- My mom, while going to be a an amazing grandma and has been a great mom, has been self-employed for 30+ years (a bit of a boomer mentality about company loyalty although is self-employed) and has been drilling into me “you need to tell your employer that you have a solid plan to come back! Try to be as open as possible about your return and be available via phone for your leave!” Why do I owe him almost an apology for growing my family? Also, I don’t know if it’s appropriate to be continue doing work while on official leave. If my team would like to call or text to check in, that’s fine but providing consulting services via phone seems wild to me.

Was looking for advice on how to navigate this anxiety, I appreciate you all!

Spouse is out of town, I'm determined not to break a recent gym streak. Planned to go to the gym this morning after dropoff, but had a minor emergency at home & couldn't make it.

So, plan B: logged off at 4pm, picked my 6 & 3 year old up around 4:30 (an hour earlier than normal), and took them to the gym with me. The gym has childcare (which they whine about beforehand, but always have a great time). I brought seemingly ample snacks.

Getting to the gym was absolute torture - non-stop bickering, the 3 year old went boneless on the sidewalk & needing to be carried for 10 minutes, incessant whining about what we'd have for dinner. We take public transportation, and they were climbing all over each other.

And then, the same thing on the way home. I'd premade dinner, but didn't have the energy to reheat it by the time we got home, so we ordered pizza

HOW DO I MANAGE THIS? We usually go straight home after pickup, we don't do evening extracurriculars/activities. Any tips for keeping them calm/well-behaved during this 4-7pm window?

I'd usually be smug/proud of myself for making to the gym under these circumstances, but honestly, it wasn't worth it today - I still feel wired up/frustrated from the whole ordeal