Melissa Stanton runs a vacuum over the carpet where one of her 5-year-old twins has left a trail of cereal, slices a watermelon for the other and swipes the kitchen counter with a sponge. Even with her 10-year-old son, Jack, at day camp, Stanton has her hands full.
Between lunchtime spills and Nickelodeon thrills, the former high-level magazine editor, now a stay-at-home mom, has written what she calls a "support group in a book": The Stay-at-Home Survival Guide: Field-Tested Strategies for Staying Smart, Sane, and Connected While Caring for Your Kids, released last month.
It's a compilation of surveys from mothers across the country and research conducted with experts on maintaining friendships, handling family finances and finding time for intimacy with an equally pooped-out partner.
"There's so many women out there whose experiences need to be heard," Stanton says.
Stanton, 43, once lived a very different life. She had a successful career in journalism as a senior editor at Life and People magazines. She and her college sweetheart and husband, Brian, worked in the hustle of New York City and commuted home to a congested community in New Jersey.
After they had their son, Stanton and her husband found themselves relying on a nanny up to 12 hours a day. Stanton remembers sneaking out of the newsroom at 6 p.m. to see her son just an hour before bedtime, only to continue her work from home after he was asleep.
One morning in September 2001, Brian went into work late to help see Jack off to his first day of preschool. Walking to the office, Brian watched his building crumble to the ground.
Shortly after Sept. 11, Melissa Stanton came to a realization.
"I decided, 'I'm not gonna live like this anymore,'" she says.
Though fear was not a driving force, the terrorist attacks were a catalyst for change, driven, as she says, by "logistics and love." Stanton abandoned 90-minute commutes and 12-hour days for life as a stay-at-home mother. The transition was difficult.
"I didn't know how I quite fit in anymore," Stanton says. "I felt like a major league baseball player who had put themselves on the bench."
Her husband took a new job in Baltimore, spending the week in Maryland while she remained in New Jersey. She was bedridden and sick from her pregnancy with the twins, struggling to take of her young son. She felt alone - though she now realizes her situation was not unique.
