I remember not so clearly.  About 9 years ago my life changed. I was greeted with a pregnancy test, one that I wasn’t too expecting of.

Before I had kids I worked as a supervisor at a regular full time job, I paid my bills, rent, and little necessities. Money was rarely tight, as I didn’t require much. I would see friends on a daily basis. My husband (then boyfriend) and I were living with roommates. People came and went all the time from our home, it was a pretty busy atmosphere compared to what I live now. Little did I know these 2 pink lines would change my then lifestyle.

When I got pregnant my husband and I decided we needed a place to call our own. We moved to a small 2 bedroom apartment. I continued to work through out my pregnancy. Around the beginning of my 9th month I left work on maternity leave. My husband and I never talked about me being a stay at home mom. I knew I wanted to be one, and I just assumed that was the path for me. It was definitely a fault of ours to not discuss this way a head of time.

After I had Mason, my friends faded away. I was pretty much the first of all of us to have a baby and they were still in their everyday lives while I started spending my days being puked on and cried to all day. It wasn’t an environment many single people are interested in. You quickly learn who your friends are when you have a baby.

My “free” life that I never knew I had, then started to feel like I was locked up. I didn’t have a drivers at the time. My friends weren’t really around, and I stayed home day in and day out with my new baby. I never realized that my working life was my free life. I had people to talk to all the time. I could go for a bite to eat and not worry about buying diapers. Having a baby depend on me 24/7 was new and definitely more demanding than my job had been.

As time went on, I accepted that I had no friends. I started to hang out with my sisters more often, they had kids as well. My younger brother was a great friend for my husband. We grew okay with the fact that friends weren’t where we were at. Eventually, we grew into different groups of people and even now if we rejoined our friends it wouldn’t be the same at all

Once my maternity leave was up I stated I didn’t want to go back to work. I wanted to be a mom to my baby. I saw no point in paying someone else to mother my child. Any money I did bring in would just go towards childcare regardless. This put a lot of finical pressure on my husband. Another change we weren’t prepared for. My husband didn’t have a career. He had never been to college. He was lost, and didn’t know what he had wanted to do. He tried many jobs and ideas. Upgrading his courses. Apprenticeship. Nothing seemed to work for him. After a huge finical mishap, Aaron decided to quit finding his way and went the hardworking, and sacrificial route. He started working in the oil field, like most Albertan men who have no degrees do.

After this change became normal to all of us, things started to look up. We saved for better vehicles, upgraded our home a few times, we even chose to have more children. I now stay home with all 3 of our boys and I’m pregnant with another baby. Our friends are now our family, and we adore all of them. We don’t have time for friends anyways. We occasionally have drinks every now and then and live “free”. We have grown up. I no longer pay my way, or work for a living. My husband takes on that stress for the both of us, while I raise our kids and hopefully turn them into decent human beings and take care of the house and everyday chores. We now work as a team rather than roommates. We are no longer the same people we were when I first got pregnant, we are better.