You know you're a (sleep deprived, stay at home) mom when...

Sometimes after I do something I know I would never find myself doing a year ago, I think to myself about how much life has changed. A lot of these things I think happen to every mom out there, but some pertain to just being a SAHM. Either way, I hope other moms out there can relate!


You know you're a (sleep deprived, stay at home) mom, when...

• You can't remember the last time you wore pants that buttoned, as opposed to an elastic waist.
• You get extremely frustrated at the self check-out at Safeway for not accepting your coupon when an employee points out to you that you are attempting to use a Giant coupon.
• You can't remember what it feels like to sleep for more than five or six hours at a time. In fact, if you get four hours straight and six hours total in a night, you feel like you could run a marathon. If only your body remembered how to run...
• The last time you bought something for yourself, it involved a huge panel waist and a "Motherhood Maternity" tag.
• You reach down to scratch your leg in church and realize 1) you forgot to wear pantyhose, and more importantly 2) it's been entirely too long since you've shaved your legs for you to consider wearing a dress.
• You consider throwing out all your bras and starting over, because they will never fit the same again.
• You find yourself telling your husband "Wait, wait! Don't make me laugh! I have to pee!" and trying to decide if you should sprint to the bathroom or stand where you're at and cross your legs.
• You prioritize your "getting ready" routine to only the absolute essentials. Deodorant? Essential. Eyeliner? Not necessary.
• You can be barfed on, spit on, pooped on and peed on and still only change your outfit once or twice during the day because your idea of "clean" for yourself has changed significantly.
• You forget what the day of the week it is, let alone the full date. It's 2012, right? January still? You just know it's been five months two weeks and two days since you gave birth, and try to do the math according to that.
• You measure your life in "before I was pregnant", "while I was pregnant", and "after the baby was born."
• You realize who your true friends are. And to take friends and family's advice with a grain of salt, because no matter how knowledgeable or well meaning they are you start to realize the meaning of the saying "mom knows best."
• Girls Night Outs and date nights w/ your husband are no longer something fun to do every once in awhile, they become necessary to do, albeit a lot less frequent.
• A date does not mean drinks, a nice dinner and a movie anymore. It means saving up to go to Squisitos with a coupon for 15% off at 4:30 p.m. because that's when your baby is at her happiest, and you can get her home in time to get into bed.
• When you start thinking about making dinner, you realized you've gone the entire day without eating anything other than trail mix.
• You do things as a mother that would make you cringe and judge other mothers for doing, before you became one yourself. You put your foot in your mouth and start to say "Never say never."
• The difference between men and women becomes much more apparent...."You want to do WHAT?! While the baby is RIGHT NEXT DOOR?"
• Your sense of modesty goes out the window. You used to cringe at the women who showed more than their forearm in the gym locker room and now you strip down so quickly and efficiently the thought to cover up doesn't even cross your mind...Who cares if a stranger sees one of your post-pregnancy/nursing boobs or a couple of stretch marks when the entire world saw everything you were made of for 35 hours while you pushed a human (and other unspeakables) outside of your body?!
• You learn that you're capable of a selfless love that you never knew was possible, that's so instinctual you couldn't fight it if you wanted to. That even though you're wearing dirty sweat pants, an ill-fitting bra and have hairy legs while you coupon clip and meal plan, you wouldn't change this life for anything in the world...because while being a mother may be the craziest thing you've ever done, (and for most of us it's just begun) it's the most rewarding thing we could ever be blessed enough to do.