I was talking to one of my friends yesterday about an
ongoing struggle she is having with one of her adult children. Layered over the top of all the facets of the
problem was guilt. And not just
ordinary guilt we are talking “mom guilt” here. The very worst kind of guilt! It strikes at anytime, anywhere, and now I am
afraid never goes away!
It didn’t take very long after Maddie came to experience
this new kind of guilt. I wasn’t all
that bad at the old kind of guilt but this new kind was different. I think it came crashing down the first time
I was trying to get baby Maddie out the door on my way to work. I loaded my purse, briefcase, apnea monitor,
and the diaper bag on one shoulder and leaned over to pick Maddie in her car
seat off the floor (not one of the nifty ones with the easy handle but the old
ones requiring two hands to carry). My
cell phone slide out of the side pocket of my purse and hit Maddie right in the
middle of her forehead like a bull’s eye.
She looked startled and then started screaming! And there it came! Guilt hitting me just as hard and accurately
as the phone hitting Maddie.
I was a lousy mother.
I should never had been trusted with the care of any child let alone a
child as fragile as Maddie. What if she
needed to see a doctor? They were going to
take her away from me. Within seconds I
was a guilty mess of panic.
It was the first in a long line of episodes of mom guilt. In
the early years every time someone made a negative comment about Maddie I felt
guilty. One of the ongoing issues for
Maddie was her weight. She was in the
lowest percentiles for height and off the little medical graph for weight. Every team member seemed to need to point out
her weight issue to me. Since I have
been overweight my entire life, it was like pushing a little red quilt
button. Never mind that I had trouble
getting Maddie to eat enough to get all of her medications in and she never
finished a bottle. No professional ever
believed my report of what Maddie ate and drank. I was a fat mom who was making her child
fat. At one point her orthopedic specialist who
was very carefully explaining to me just how fat her thighs were and I blurted
out, “You realize I am not biologically responsible for the size of this child’s
thighs!” GUILT overload. As it turned out Maddie had an underlying metabolic
disorder which caused her to store fat even when she was malnourished.
Every time Maddie got a cold or threw up, I was certain that
if I had just done something different Maddie would not be suffering. I put her to bed too late, I let her spend
too long in bed, I let her spend too much time with other kids or I put her to bed before her hair was
dry. Unconsciously I think I believed
that if I would just get it right, Maddie would never be sick. Since she frequently gets sick I must not be
doing this mom stuff right!
That sort of thinking is enough to make the most sane mom
crazy! Our children have medical issues
that leave them vulnerable to being sick.
Sometimes it is minor colds or flu and other times it is so complex it
takes days for specialists to figure it out.
It has taken a long time but here is what I have learned
about mom guilt and medically fragile children.
We are not responsible for the twist of genes or fate that resulted in
our child’s condition. It is not
fair! It is not like other
children. It is not something our magic
mom powers can fix. As nice as it would
be to be in control of our child’s health and well being, we do not have that
much power.
So we try to be very clear internally with what we have
control over and what we do not. I make
sure that Maddie gets her food and medications at the right times, keep her
clean, dry, and warm, make sure she has time to rest and sleep, and see that
she moves as much as possible. I call
the doctors when I am unsure of something and I try to make educated medical
decisions for her. Most things beyond
that are out of my range of control.
Even the professional can’t control or even anticipate what Maddie’s
body is going to do next.
The guilt is still there sometimes. That somehow if I was just a good enough mom…
I hold myself to a higher standard than I would anyone else and sometimes I
fail. I struggle to forgive myself for
my limitations. And just hope that as
Maddie grows she will know that even when I was not the best mom that I always
loved beyond reason.
You might enjoy reading a humorous view of motherhood which you can find at http://www.squidoo.com/my-chance-at-mother-of-the-year
