I quit my job as a stay-at-home mom, and finally, I don’t feel guilty about it.

Staying at home with our two boys has been the absolute most difficult job I have ever done. I’ve had difficult jobs before. When Blake was three months old, I took a full-time position as a visiting professor at a college 30-minutes away, while still completing work on my doctorate at another university an hour away in the opposite direction. I was never home, Michelle and I almost never saw each other, and Blake was in full-time daycare with a nanny who would pick him up daily and stay with him until I could get home. I pumped breast milk in random locked offices and while driving along the highway to and from work.

When Blake turned one, and we knew we would be trying to have another baby, I had to take a step back. I knew I was missing so much of Blake’s life, and the idea of having a second child go through the same meant having two kids, who basically would never see their parents. If I kept going with my career, our family wouldn’t be able to go in the direction we wanted it to, and staying home seemed like the healthiest, wisest option for our family.

It made sense for me to stay home. Financially, it couldn’t be the other way around. And, if I was going to be pregnant and possibly having another baby during the school year, I wouldn’t be able to finish the year of teaching anyway.

At first, staying home seems like a dream. All the time in the world, endless playing, getting to watch your children grow into amazing little humans every single minute and no stress of having to go to work. It is everything every parent on the planet wishes they could choose to do, and I will forever be grateful that I had the chance to do it. But if you’re like me, staying at home, just wasn’t “me.”

It’s one of those things you don’t ever want to admit.

“How could you possibly choose to go back to work instead of spending more time with your two sweet boys?”

It isn’t something to complain about to friends who wish they didn’t have to work.

“You’re so lucky. I wish I could stay home every day with my kids.”

Really, I couldn’t and shouldn’t have ever complained. My life as a stay-at-home mom was more than perfect. I was always around for my wife’s days off. We could travel whenever we felt like it, and we did. I’ve been more than spoiled. But it didn’t mean I was truly happy.

I tried to admit out loud for months how much it just didn’t make sense for me anymore. Each time, I was reminded of how I must have been mistaken. Each time, I was brought back to a place of just being silent, because how could I possibly ask for anything more?

As if motherhood isn’t filled with enough guilt and self-doubt, the thought of giving up on being full-time mom brought on more self-criticism than I could handle. How can I possibly admit that I don’t want to spend every minute with my boys, without feeling like a bad mother? I need to go back to work, for me. This decision has been selfish, and one of the first I’ve made that has been all about “me” since becoming a mother.

Staying at home has been dangerous, and almost toxic, to me, to my marriage, and to my family. I am in no way criticizing stay-at-home parents. Staying at home IS THE most difficult job I have EVER done and have EVER known. But it doesn’t work for my brain. I will forever be in awe of the parents who do it well, and make it look so easy.

I’m not the kind of creative parent to set up projects or space for imaginative play. I’m not the parent to teach all the right lessons, sing all the right songs or tell all the right stories. I can give all the love in the world, but when you live with a self-criticizing brain like mine, it just isn’t enough.

I began to resent Michelle. Resent. I resented her every time she could leave the house on her own. When she had stories to tell about work and conversations with coworkers. As if I blamed her for forcing me to stay home and lose all connections to friends, colleagues and adult interaction. I didn’t get married to live in a “traditional” family. I never pictured myself as a woman to stay home and let someone else support me. That isn’t me, and I allowed myself to be angry at Michelle for putting me there.

I love our boys with a deeper love than I ever knew possible. I loved my time home with them and the relationships and memories we built. I am forever fortunate for all the moments I shared in their young lives. Moments that no one can ever take away from us. But, for the well-being of our family, I’m here to admit, I’m going back to working outside the home. Somehow, for some of us, it just has to be OK to say, “I can’t do this 100 percent of the time.”

I’m a parent. It’s the greatest job I’ve ever had. But I need to be me, too.

Our lives are completely changing again over the next few weeks. The boys have just started going to “school,” and I finally feel good about handing them over to other loving, caring adults who will teach them so many amazing things. Work has begun for me, although at a much more manageable pace than before, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

For once, I’m letting go of the motherly guilt. There is no doubt in my mind that these changes are perfect for all of us.

Shannon lives in Rochester, New York, with her wife, Michelle, and two sons, Blake and Terry. She recently quit her job as a full-time, stay-at-home mom. Shannon and family enjoy traveling, rescuing dogs and cats, and tracking down trains, boats, garbage trucks or whatever the latest toddler fascination may be.

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When picking out a donor, I’m pretty sure one thing most people don’t consider is the many (many many) other people in the world who are also picking the same donor. In that moment, or many moments you spend reading donor profiles, nothing else matters except for your growing family.

We picked a donor carefully. We paid the extra fee to have unlimited access to profiles, health histories, pictures, essays, everything and anything you could want to know. We came up with a list of our top five, and went back to look closer at those five.

One day, we found out that our top choice was sold out, at least for the next few months. Apparently, he made our list for a reason. He was popular and would be called back to donate more. Once the sperm was cleaned and prepared, he’d be available again. Yes, this was the world we were living in. Sold out. We moved on, because we weren’t going to put our family on hold for sold out sperm. We logged in again to the website, ready to explore the rest of our top five donors. There he was: the Donor of the Week. All of our careful preparation out the door, and “Donor of the Week” it was.

It’s better than it sounds. We made sure that our donor had characteristics of Michelle. She, being the scientist in the family, had a hard time with the fact that our children wouldn’t be biologically connected to her. Being able to carefully select a donor based on our criteria somehow made the process a bit easier. The donor we chose had dark hair, dark eyes, the same IQ and SAT scores as Michelle, and studied science in college. It seemed to us that no matter what, our children would somehow have some characteristics of both of us.

We became pretty attached to this donor. Even when the first few attempts to conceive didn’t work out, we kept using “Donor of the Week.” With Blake, it took four attempts, over six months, and many crazy tests to figure out how to work with my messed-up anatomy.

When Blake was born, Michelle logged in and registered his birth on the Donor Sibling Registry. I knew nothing about this, nor did I care. I was only concerned about our growing family, and everything that comes with being a first time mom to a newborn. Little did I know that registration on the DSR meant that other families using the same donor could contact us. I never, ever, considered the possibility or what that would mean. I picked a donor, not an extended family, right? Maybe not.

Since that time, we have been connected with quite a few families who have used “Donor of the Week.” (Whether or not he was donor of the week when they selected him, I’m sure we’ll never know). The DSR won’t give your information or names to other families, but will allow you to send an email, in case other families want to connect with you. Little by little, we have emailed, and now connected through Facebook, with quite a few families. We have a private Facebook group. We share photos, stories, our lives. For a while, it was a slow-growing group of only lesbian moms. We have become close, and have grown to love these other families and beautiful children.

Donor siblings. For now, that’s what we call them in our own conversations. Our boys know them as friends. Yes, know them. Well, some of them. We have now met two of these amazing families and a total of three of their donor siblings. We have traveled to them, and they have traveled to us. There is always talk of future trips, and how the kids will all grow up together.

For the most part, the meetings have been wonderful and positive. But these meetings are also complicated, and difficult to navigate. Our children may be similar, and we may even look for ways they are alike, but they are all so very different, too. Our families, our lives, our parenting styles, are all very different in so many ways. We all chose an anonymous donor, and yet now are brought together from so many different places and backgrounds, because of this unknown man. It’s quite easy to see why some families created by donors will never look for donor sibling families. It would be much easier, and less of a risk, to stay within our family “bubble.”

Michelle and I see this new “family” as an important connection to maintain, just in case the boys seek out their donor siblings in the future. Is this the right choice? I’m not sure. I don’t know if we’ll know for many years, or if we’ll ever know. We don’t, and we won’t, force it on them. Maybe they’ll care to know each other, and maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll be good friends, and attend each other’s weddings. Or perhaps some will grow up so differently and won’t get along at all.

Twenty families. That’s the number we have been told have had successful pregnancies using our donor. He is now retired, so 20 should be it. Although we know many, we may never hear from over half of them.

We didn’t just pick “Donor of the Week.” We picked an ever-growing, ever-changing, extended family.

Shannon lives in Rochester, New York, with her wife, Michelle, and two sons, Blake and Terry. She has been a full-time, stay-at-home mom for the last two years. Shannon and family enjoy traveling, rescuing dogs and cats, and tracking down trains, boats, garbage trucks or whatever the latest toddler fascination may be.

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A neighbor came to the rescue of a Miami lesbian couple and their eight children after another neighbor, registered sex offender, Braulio Valenzuela-Villanueva, 72, set fire to the couple’s trailer while they slept.

Police arrested Valenzuela-Villanueva, who told police that he “despised the two adult victims for the simple fact that they were lesbians.” His bail is set at $230,000.

In the middle of the night, Valenzuela-Villanueva, who lives next door to the family, allegedly set fire to a mattress leaning on the wall of the family’s trailer, police said.

The neighbor across the street saw the fire and woke up the family who escaped the burning trailer. Other neighbors rallied to fight the fire with garden hoses until fire fighters arrived.

Police have a surveillance recording made by yet another neighbor of the arson, which allowed police to identify Valenzuela-Villanueva, who is charged him with attempted second-degree murder, arson and committing a hate crime.

In a statement to police, Valenzuela-Villanueva said that every time he saw the women kissing, he felt a deep repugnance and in his opinion they did not deserve to have children.

The family has not been named at this point.

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