I'm 8 Working Days Away From Becoming a Stay-At-Home Mom — Here's Every Feeling I Have Right Now

Eight Days Until I Take on The Title of SAHM, But Who's Counting?

Eight working days. That is what stands between me and the biggest identity shift of my adult life.

On June 1st I will sign off for the last time — not for maternity leave, not for a vacation, not for a long weekend — and I will become a stay-at-home mom. Full time. All in. No safety net, no backup plan, no savings account we stockpiled for years to make this possible. Just a leap of faith, a really tight budget, and three kids under six who have no idea their whole daily routine is about to change.

I have wanted to write this post for a while and I keep putting it off because I do not have it all figured out yet. And then I realized — that is exactly why I should write it now. Because the mom I am writing this for does not have it figured out either. She is sitting somewhere right now, maybe at her desk, maybe in a parking lot before daycare pickup, maybe lying awake at 2am running the numbers for the fourth time this week — and she needs to hear from someone who is right there in the middle of it with her.

So here I am. Eight days out. Here is every feeling I have, completely unfiltered.

The Career I Built and the One I'm Walking Away From

If you had asked me two years ago where I would be right now, I would have told you I was heading toward a leadership role. I have always been a hard worker — driven, growth-oriented, the kind of person who genuinely cares about her team and the employees she supports.

And then I had two kids under two. And something shifted.

The thought of managing big people at work while managing little people at home started to feel like too much — not because it cannot be done, because it absolutely can. My current manager is one of the most remarkable leaders I know and she does it beautifully with little kids of her own. But I could feel it in my soul that it was not right for me. Not right now.

That distinction matters to me. This is not me saying a woman cannot be a boss at work and at home simultaneously. This is me saying that for this season of my life, in my specific circumstances, with my specific family — something had to give. And I chose my family.

It still does not feel completely real. Honestly it feels like I am going on maternity leave. Like I will be back. I do not think it will fully hit me until a few weeks in that there is no job to go back to. No Monday morning emails. No team to check in on. No work brain to turn on.

I am not sure what to do with that feeling yet. So for now I am just letting it exist.

The $43,000 Question

Let me talk about the thing on most of our minds: the money.

Going from two incomes to one is terrifying. And I want to be honest with you about our situation because I think a lot of families are in exactly the same place and feel like they are the only ones.

We did not save up for this. My husband did not get a raise that made it possible. Nobody handed us a financial plan or a cushion or a sign from the universe that the timing was right. We are taking a genuine leap of faith that we will adjust, tighten the belt, and figure it out as we go.

Here is the number that made the decision easier than I expected: $43,000. That is what full time daycare for our three kids would cost per year where we live.

When we only had one child in daycare it was painful but manageable. Two kids made it tighter. Three kids made us sit down with a calculator and have a very different kind of conversation.

I thought once my oldest started 1st grade it would get easier financially. I was wrong. Because grade school brings a cost nobody really warns you about: summer camps. And summer camps for working parents are not just expensive — they are logistically maddening. Most of them run half days. Which means someone has to leave work at noon to pick up a child, arrange additional coverage for the afternoon, and pay for two separate programs to cover what is essentially one full workday. For a parent working a full time job, half day summer camps are not a solution — they are a second problem.

So when I actually sat down and did the full math — daycare for the two little ones plus summer camp coverage for my oldest — the calculus shifted completely. We are not saving a fortune by me staying home. But we are also not hemorrhaging $43,000 a year into a system that was not fully working for our family anyway.

That is not the only reason. But it is the reason the numbers stopped being a reason not to.

I would be lying if I said the financial piece does not still scare me. It is honestly the main reason I waited this long to make this leap. We are not drowning in debt but we are not swimming in savings either. This is a real, uncomfortable, eyes-wide-open financial decision — and I think it is important to say that out loud instead of pretending it was easy or that everything lined up perfectly before we jumped.

It did not line up perfectly. We jumped anyway.

The Burnout I Didn’t See Coming

Here is what finally pushed me over the edge.

I came back from maternity leave in October 2025 after having my third. It went okay at first. And then work got really busy. And home got really busy. My husband works outside the home and keeps long hours which means the nighttime shift with the kids — the baths, the bedtimes, the midnight wake-ups, the early mornings — falls almost entirely on me.

I got completely burnt out.

Not the kind of tired you sleep off. The deep, bone-level exhaustion of doing too many things for too many people with not enough hours and not enough help. We looked into adding help on top of daycare. We could not afford it. So we looked at each other and said — it is time. We are tightening the belt and taking the leap.

The Part I Never Said Out Loud

Can I tell you something that sounds terrible?

Sometimes work felt like a break.

After a long weekend or a holiday break — the kind where you have been with your kids nonstop for four or five days — I would find myself almost excited to go back to work on Monday. Because it meant I got a break. A hot cup of coffee at my desk. A conversation with an adult. A problem to solve that did not involve a toddler.

I love my children more than anything I have ever loved in my entire life. And sometimes they absolutely drain me and I need a break from them. Both of those things are completely true at the same time.

I am telling you this because I think a lot of moms feel exactly this way and nobody says it. And I am about to give up that break. I am about to be with my kids 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no office to retreat to when things get loud and overwhelming.

That is a part of this transition that scares me the most. The loss of that built-in break.

I do not have a solution for it yet. I am just going in knowing it is real and promising myself I will figure out what the new version of that break looks like — because every mom needs one, whether she works outside the home or not.

The Title I Always Envied: Stay-At-Home-Mom

I never thought I would be able to wear the title of “stay-at-home-mom”. The finances, the career, the identity — it all felt like it added up to a life where staying home was not in the cards for me. And I watched other moms do it and felt something I did not always let myself name, jealousy.

After June 1st when someone asks me what I do, I am going to say: I am a stay-at-home mom.

And I think I am going to wear that title proudly. Because I know what it cost to get here — financially, professionally, emotionally. And I know how long I wanted it before I let myself believe it was possible.

The Moment I Keep Picturing

When the nervousness gets loud I come back to one image.

Slow summer mornings. Backyard playtime with no clock to watch. Getting my oldest on and off the school bus in September with her little siblings beside me — something I have always missed because I was always already at work when that bus came. Teaching my younger kids their letters and numbers and finding our groove as a family without the constant background noise of everything that needs to happen before daycare drop-off.

Cooking dinner without it being a race. Starting the DIY projects that have been on the list for years. Investing back into this house and this family in the way I have been wanting to and never had the time for.

That is the image I come back to. That is why we are taking the leap.

Eight Days.

I do not have a tidy conclusion for this post because I do not have a tidy conclusion to this chapter yet. I am eight days away from something I have wanted and feared in equal measure for longer than I have admitted to most people.

I do not know what the first week will feel like. I do not know if the slow summer mornings will feel as peaceful as I am picturing or if I will be on the phone with a former colleague by week two wondering what I have done.

What I do know is that I will tell you the truth about all of it. The good, the hard, the unexpected, and the honest.

Because that is the whole point of this.

Come back in a few weeks and I will tell you exactly how it went. 💛

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