by Jenna Pope

Created on: December 08, 2009   Last Updated: December 09, 2009

Being a working mom is like being a rocket on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral.  Every morning you prepare and prepare and prepare, but at any given point, you may have to abort the entire mission. 

Case in point: 

I’m running late and, instead of making breakfast at home, I decide to whiz through the McDonalds’ Drive-Thru and grab the kids’ breakfast on my way to dropping them off at preschool.  I pull into the driveway and pull-up behind the last car in line.  As we are inching our way up to the drive-thru window, several cars pull up behind me.  I have just enough time to get breakfast, drop the kids off, and be at work by 8:30. 

From the back seat, my three-year-old says, “Mummy!  I have go potty!”  With three cars ahead of me and three cars behind, a bathroom trip is out of the question. 

“Hold on, Sweety,” I tell him.  “I’ll take you as soon as we are out of this line.”  We go back and forth with the potty dialogue until we finally reach the window and pick up our order. 

As I am speeding away from the drive-thru and panning the lot for a parking space, my son says, “It’s okay Mummy.  I don’t have to go potty anymore!”

 “Why?”

 “Because I wet my pants!”

This was only one of a myriad of hair-raising experiences that were mine five days a week, twelve months out of the year when I was a working mother.  The day I accidentally took the babysitter’s cat to work is another that is particularly memorable, as is the time that the same three-year-old informed my boss that I’d been sick with “stress” throat.  (From the mouths of babes...)

Every working mother wears many different hats.  She is a mom, a spouse (sometimes), a chauffeur, a cook, a cleaning lady, soccer coach, team mom, room mom, Weeblo Mom and that crazy mom, PTA historian, mediator, nurse, counselor, Girl Scout Leader, and disciplinarian.  It’s not an easy row to hoe!

When I worked 27 years ago, there were great wars between the working moms and the stay-at-home moms.  This did nothing for us except split the country’s women right down the middle and render both sides of the dispute ineffective.  I always felt isolated from other women.  The stay-at-homes didn’t like me because I worked, and the other working mothers I knew were always

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