What's your best advice for doing it alone?

[lellian]

Mamas,

I'm hoping you'll share some advice with me. I'm not a full time single mama, but DP travels to the point of I feel like I might as well be. He's been gone the last five weeks Sunday - Friday nights, and this Saturday he leaves for Kenya for six weeks. We have a 14 month old DD, and I'm seven month pregnant. I don't know how I'm going to do this alone. The last five weeks I've had him to help me on Saturdays and a few hours on Sunday. I LIVED for the week ends. We don't have family I can rely on to come over and just sit with DD so I can take a break, and we don't have a baby sitter. I'm alone. And I'm afraid.

How do you do it? I honor your strength, mamas, and hope to learn from you.

Thank you for sharing!

[Learning_Mum]

You just do it because you have to. There is no other option. You build a support network of people around you, friends that you can rely on etc and you just get through each day as best you can.

[secondimpression]

You'd probably do better looking for advice from spouses of deployed servicemen. Claiming that you "might as well be a single mama" feels extremely insulting to many of the women on this forum who truly are single mothers. I'm going to venture a guess that your DP isn't at your throat over custody/visitation/child support or just generally being a less-than-outstanding person. I'm also going to venture a guess that he's fulfilling your emotional needs and that you're not the sole provider of everything to your DD. I've been in both camps, as a single mother after leaving XH and as being a lonely SAHM who only saw DP for 4 hours a week while he worked FT and studied FT. It's NOT the same, not by a long shot. I'm not saying that one is easier than the other, just that they both have very unique challenges and really can't be lumped into the same category. I hope I'm coming across gently, because I do understand where you're coming from.

Regardless, the best advice I can offer is to build a support network. Get over to your Tribe forum and volunteer to host a playdate. Go to a LLL meeting. Get out and meet other moms. Being a SAHM and never getting a break is extremely difficult on your nerves, find yourself a hobby that doesn't benefit your DD (example if you knit: make yourself a sweater, don't make her one) to indulge in for a few minutes every day while she's napping/after she goes to bed. Most importantly, be gentle on yourself when you inevitably misstep. And like I stated at first, you'll find that you have a lot more in common and a lot more empathy with military spouses than single parents.

[lellian]

Yay, I knew posting here would be a mistake. That's why I tried to end my post with honoring the single parents on this board.

Thanks.

[hillymum]

Can you hire any help? Either house cleaners or a mothers helper? Any neighbours with teenagers who would work for not too much $$$?

[kawa kamuri]

Originally Posted by Learning_Mum 

You just do it because you have to. There is no other option. 

When people would ask how I do it this is about all I had to say. I just do. I have to do it. I figure it out. There is no other option. That's not helpful advice or a brilliant tip, I know, but in the end I had to figure out what was best suited for my families life and carry on. You can do what you need to do and, overall, you can thrive doing so.