Here Comes the Guilt!

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