I opened my messages and read one simple text that instantly made me shudder.

“Does anyone have a sitter who is looking for a few extra hours?”

I stared at the mom-group thread on my phone, paralyzed by indecision. Caught somewhere between genuinely wanting to be helpful and quietly pretending I never saw the message in the first place. I’ll admit I went with the latter, uttered “yeaaaa no” under my breath, and gently placed my phone back on the table as I watched the text go unanswered. 

You know we all read it, but not one mom responded that day. 

No, I never replied. But yes, I felt bad, and I couldn’t push the nagging thoughts away. I was gatekeeping my babysitter.

I spent days wondering what this said about me. Did becoming a mom turn me into a selfish friend? That’s so far from who I strive to be. So far from how I typically try to show up in the world, and the opposite of what I want to model for my daughters. That was a tough pill to swallow. 

Then, I wondered what this said about our community as a whole. 

I always thought an integral part of friendship and community was sharing. Sharing stories, sharing the load, sharing resources. And honestly, that’s what moms do best. I’m amazed on an almost daily basis at how women support each other through every phase of womanhood. 

But sharing caregivers? That’s where things get a bit more complicated. 

Because to me, childcare isn’t just childcare.

It’s a coffee chat with friends. 

It’s grocery shopping alone for once. 

It’s making space for my marriage.

It’s protecting my mental health.

It’s time to write.

It’s workouts, and doctor’s appointments, and yes, three hours in the salon chair so my colorist can work her magic. 

It’s time to be Katherine, instead of just Mom.

Ultimately, it’s freedom.  

Like many moms, I live in a suburb where even the college gals from the local university charge $25 an hour and have multiple offers on the table the second their info lands in a group chat. 

No wonder I waffled when someone asked me to share the person who makes my life exponentially more manageable. Because it wasn’t that I didn’t want another couple to have a fabulous and probably long-overdue date night; I desperately want that for all my girlfriends. I just didn’t want their night out to come at the expense of my own much-needed respite. I was clinging to my one saving grace amongst a broader system that flat-out doesn’t support moms.

I clearly wasn’t alone. 

We were probably all having some version of the same internal debate, and our collective silence spoke volumes. 

Scared that it might not be just a few extra hours here and there. Scared that our sitter might like the other family better. Scared things might get a little too serious for our liking. Scared we would lose our lifeline in surviving modern motherhood. 

We were all just trying our best to carve out a life in a system that wasn’t built for thriving. Wasn’t built for identity outside of motherhood, or even a functional identity within it, for that matter. We all wanted to protect our sanity when, ironically, if we all shared just a bit more, we might not feel the scarcity as much in the first place. 

I recently brought this topic to a Sunday morning moms’ yoga meet-up, and when I asked what the others thought of my reluctance to respond to the opening text, opinions were mixed. 

Some were equally as protective; some shared cautiously. One mom even promised not to poach them if we would all please just share our sitters a time or two. 

Bottom line, we all had our own invisible rules for managing and maintaining the support we undeniably needed. We had to. 

On another day, in another text thread not so far away, I finally shared my babysitter’s info with a friend. 

It allowed her and her husband to attend a concert they’d been eagerly awaiting for months. It gave our sitter the extra hours she was looking for, and it genuinely made me feel good to do a kindness for someone else.

Everyone won, and not at the expense of another. 

Maybe motherhood didn’t make us all less generous after all. Maybe it just underlined how rare and precious support has become. 

And maybe that’s exactly what every mom in my group chat was trying to protect.