My friend with a new baby told me she felt like a failure as a mother.
Friends, I’m just going to come out and SAY it, and trust you’ll be forgiving for her mom-sin: She wished that her baby would stay asleep longer, so she could get more work done.
Just let the horror of that sink in for a moment. She…actually wished. For a longer nap. From her baby, her cherished, hoped-for, prayed-for, cried for, bundle of joy. Because she had work (paying work, not merely the house-kind) to do.
Source: https://media.giphy.com/media/Nm8ZPAGOwZUQM/giphy.gif
Can you imagine?! Listen, I made sure to obscure her personal information, so don’t even try to call Children’s Services. We’ll just have to pray for her soul and for the well-being of that precious child.
HAH. I…well let’s just say I’ve been at this mothering thing a bit longer, so I’ve gotten way better at failing. Yesterday was a day so extremely chock-full of fail, though, that I feel inspired to enumerate it for you:
- Breakfast sucked, both in that it contained substandard nutritional content and in that they really didn’t eat much of it. This left them to fend off the trials of their days on empty stomachs. Awesome.
- I left the dishes on the counter. The ants will be overjoyed.
- I got everyone out of the house late (again) to school/work.
- I yelled at my kids in the car (for yelling).
- I managed to screw up the crock-pot dinner, which everyone said they hated (and I also hated). Then, I was really, legitimately mad that they were ungrateful.
- I was a really crappy homework helper to my son. He ended up in tears and I ended up getting myself a beer.
- I laid on the hammock and looked at Facebook while my twins did tricks on the swing set, even though they were begging me to “Watch, Mama!” because I just couldn’t anymore.
- I dealt with my four-year old’s (routine) bedtime tantrum with absolutely zero grace. (Sidenote: Does anyone have a cure for the routine bedtime tantrum in the human four year-old? She seems to really enjoy them, and I don’t seem to be able to fix it OR ignore it, sooooooo…..)
- I was so angry at my kids that I snapped at my husband.
- I was so angry at everyone, ESPECIALLY myself, that I put myself in timeout and sulked until I went to bed.
It was then that my friend texted me that she was a failure (for wishing for longer naps!). Then, when I was sitting in a gigantic pile of fail. And…man. It made me feel so much better. I remember that feeling, the baby mom-guilt. The first time you get annoyed at a newborn for wanting to suck on your body – again – when that’s the only way she can get sustenance. The first time you get into a grudge match with your partner about whose turn it is to wipe feces off an adorable, disgusting bum. Parenting in the real world, man. It’s COMPLICATED, and since I have neither the ability nor the desire to hire it out, it’ll be done by little human ol’ me.
I know that, as they get older, I’m just going to keep failing even harder. The ungrateful dinners of today might melt into the actually problematic behavior of tomorrow. Today, I am horrid at getting them out of the house in time. Tomorrow, I might forget to send in their college application. Or forget to pick them up at softball practice. Or allow them to visit a friends’ house without processing a full application and background check. Any of those things might result in actual harm, to my cherished kids, and…it’ll be my fault.
But we’ve got to carry on, don’t we? Trying, hoping, praying, that our puny efforts will be enough. Even though these kids, ALL kids, deserve so much more than I, on some days, have to offer.
Which is perhaps the biggest leap of all: The leap it takes to believe in myself. To know that tomorrow I’ll wake up, try again, maybe even fail again. But I’ll keep going anyway.
