In May of last year (2011), the Forbes staff wrote an article on the salary of a stay at home mom.   At that point, it was argued that based upon all of the work that goes into raising a child(ren), an average stay at home mom should be making $115,000 per year.  Holy cow!  I’ve never made that much money at a job, but wait…I’m not making that money now, either.

Stay at home moms have been labelled everything from CEO, Psychologist, Daycare Center Operator, Housekeeper, Facilities Manager, etc.   Based upon the level of work stay at home moms do during a normal 8-5 business day, aka 40 hour work week for the rest of you, then her salary would be $36,968.   Now, that’s more like it, at least that’s more like it with some of my past salaries, but here’s the kicker.  Stay at home moms do not work 40 hour weeks.  In a lot of cases, they’re on 24/7 which means that overtime pay would compute to $78,464 bringing the grand total to $115,432.   Wow!  That’s amazing.

Now, of course, we’re not going to see that.   Being a SAHM is the most underrated, unappreciated, underpaid job a mother will ever have and we do it because we love our children and are willing to sacrifice of ourselves in order to be home with our children.  

Me?  Well, I’m perfectly content with not getting paid.   I can accept the fact that in the business world, my hard work would be compensated monetarily.  However, if I could request one thing, just one thing in my SAHM role it would be that I could somehow get worker’s compensation.  Why is that you ask?

In the time period that I’ve been a stay at home mom, which began on February 20th, I’ve managed to incur more injuries than I have in all my years being a runner.  

Unfortunately, I’ve managed to not only cut and bruise myself, but also incur more extensive injuries.  Most recently, two weeks ago my pinky toe got into a fight with the leg of my son’s high chair.   The leg of the high chair won.   My toe swelled and the entire top of my foot turned black before eventually turning blue, then green, then yellow and finally going back to normal.  Unfortunately, I still feel the pain from this which leads me to believe that I actually broke my toe.

Shortly after that, while holding my son, I suffered a nose bleed.   What caused this you ask?  My son head butting me.   Once again I had a worry that something was broken.   The last thing I needed was to walk around with a piece of white bandage across my nose while under my eyes developed darker more colorful circles than they were already used to.  Fortunately, it wasn’t broken and there was no bruising, at least not externally.  

Since then, I’ve managed to close my finger into the handle latch of my son’s car seat, fall over his jumperoo thus getting a bruise the size of a watermelon on my shin, and yet more cuts on my hand, not to mention the claw marks of my son’s finger nails on my arm (yes I’ve cut his nails now).

So, I appreciate the fact that a dollar value is put on SAHMs, and while I’m perfectly content with not getting paid, is there anyway I could possibly claim worker’s comp?  No?   Well, it was worth asking.  

And by the way, blame it on the economic recession, but the salary of a SAHM decreased by $2400 from 2010.   And for any of you out there who think it’s a crock to put a value on a SAHM or you feel that we DON’T work or that it’s easy being at home, I challenge you to spend one full day in my shoes.  Not an 8-5 day, but a 24 hour day.   I guarantee you’ll be singing a different tune.

I thought about biting my tongue, just keeping it quiet especially since I knew what the reaction would be.  But that was the problem…knowing what the reaction would be.   I couldn’t let it go.  It was like finding that one thing that really bothers someone and continuing to poke at it.

We are and have been feeding Davey solids.   I’ve been pretty adamant about NOT buying processed baby food.  I want to make Davey’s food because at least this way I know for a fact what’s going into it.

Last week we introduced bananas into the mix.   At first we started with just half of a banana mixed with his rice cereal.  Now Davey is up to a whole banana.

****side note**** for those of you mommies out there who are a bit ignorant as to how to make homemade banana cereal for your child, all you need to do is mash-up the banana or put it into a food processor.  We cut our’s up into slices, mix in a little breast milk and put it into the Magic Bullet until it’s pretty much a thick liquid.   Then at that point, stir it into the rice cereal.

At his first feeding of banana cereal, my husband decided to take the opportunity to taste test the cereal.   I suppose his curiosity got the better of him, and instead of curiosity killing the cat as the age-old saying goes, curiosity grossed out the daddy.

I couldn’t help myself as I turned around from the kitchen sink and watched my husband sitting at the end of the island, propped up on the bar stool.  My son was slouched down just a bit in his high chair, playing his typical game of “try to feed me”.
After a couple of spoons into Davey’s mouth, I watched as my husband took another spoonful, inspected it a little and then quickly slid it into his mouth.  His face made an “I’m surprised this actually tastes good” look.   He had a couple of “hmms” before looking over at me.

“This isn’t bad,” he said.

“You know my breast milk was mixed in with that?” I asked while drying my hands with the towel.  I had a little smirk on my face, a sense of satisfaction knowing that I’d found something to really gross out my husband.

He looked at me, color fading from his face, and almost as a reflex started to gag.   He stuck his tongue out and furrowed his brows, reminding me of those stickers we used to get as kids to put on bottles of poison and chemicals in the house.   I had to laugh.   And I have to admit that what surprised me the most is that it took this long for my husband to actually try my son’s food.