When you make a mistake re: your child...

[E B]

Date: 2/26/2010 12:44:06 AM
Author: TravelingGal

ETA, EBree, what the heck happened to the rest of your user name??

Perry's thread on user name security got me all paranoid, so I had it changed (even though I didn't use it elsewhere online).

 

[kama_s]

Date: 2/26/2010 4:41:49 PM
Author: MonkeyPie

Date: 2/26/2010 4:35:29 PM
Author: kama_s
And he survived. Seriously, I dont know HOW he survived...but he did. Kids are so damn resilient.

This makes me think of my husband. As a child he was bitten numerous times by black widows, had a flesh eating bacteria on his left foot as a teenager (he had it for SIX MONTHS before his mom took him to the doctor, and somehow didn''t die from it infecting his blood stream), had a blood clot in his calf that was visible it was so big, and once had a fever that literally put him into a coma when he was 5, that was unexplained. He also had viral meningitis a year after we started dating. I honestly don''t know why he is alive!

To make that petite bebe in your tummy and live happily ever after

 

[House Cat]

Dear Fiery,

If you start keeping a tally now of every mistake you make as a mom, what kind of mess do you think you will be by the time your child is 10, 15, 20 years old? How effective will you be as a mother if you''re constantly holding on to these mistakes and making yourself anxious? These are the reasons to let go.

There are no perfect parents. You will make mistakes. And...you love your child with all of your heart.


See, sometimes, I think we get caught up in a certain type of thinking. We are good parents but when we make mistakes, I think we worry that we then get categorized with the not so good parents, the ones that neglect or abuse. This just isn''t true. Good parents make mistakes. When your child is old enough, it will even be good to admit your mistakes so that they can see that you aren''t perfect and they don''t have to be either.

Be gentle with yourself, ok? Mothering is tough enough as it is without placing false expectations of perfection on yourself. Let go of the "what if ____ would have happened" because it didn''t. Please try and move on, because one thing is guaranteed...You won''t be making that mistake again.

 

[lauralu]

Mom guilt will do you in if you let it...you have to move on and know you will make mistakes but it's not because you do not care or you are a bad mom or not paying attention. Things just happen....we are human


I have 3 daughters and here are a few of my none shinning mother moments that give me mom guilt.

When my oldest was a baby we lived in a garden level apartment that had a sliding glass door in the 2nd bedroom that was my daughters room. I hated that slider in her room but that was such a small bedroom and there was not any other choice for her room. I had never lived anywhere that had a slider door and I was not use to it. Well low and behold between her dad and I we both managed to put her to bed one night with the slider open. The vertical blinds were shut over the open slider and I never saw it was open. I got up with her once that night to tuck her back in and still never noticed until the next morning when I went to get her up and open the vertical blinds. I almost passed out. To this day I reflect on that and what could have happened to her if some weirdo had ventured past and noticed it open.

DD#2 went through a gate in her walker (when they use to have wheels) I never fixed the gate tight because I was in a hurry and only planned on her being in her walker for a few minutes while I put some things away from the store. In one quick push of her feet she went sailing a crossed the tile floor at just the right angle and through it she went. Hitting her head on the wood stairs on the way down.

DD#3 went down an entire set of carpeted stairs. I was vacuuming and she was on her tummy yards away from a downstairs staircase. My back was turned to her as she was not mobile yet, only managing to pull herself inches at a time if that up until that point.
She learned to crawl/creep that day in an instant because I turned around and she was not behind me any longer. I turned off the vacuum and heard her crying at the bottom of the stairs. I was in shock and felt so stupid and like a failure. How could a mother of 3 make this huge mistake?

Yes, we all will make them...no matter how much inexperience or experience we have as parents.
In the end we are just trying to do our best and the "what if's" when everything turned out fine will haunt you.

I know I learned lessons in every situation that has an "OMG what if" attached to it

 

[susimoo]

Fiery,

All of us mess up once in a while, as others have said more eloquently than me, we are human.

The big difference I see here is that everyone has been so open and so honest about it. My daughter Sara is now 4 and I could tell you lots of stories about how I messed up but others have already covered most of the common mummy mistakes.

The big difference I have found here, is the openness and honesty I have felt coming through each post. This is very different to my experiences IRL.

I have often felt that I was made to feel like a bad mother when I asked opinions of other mothers. I still have the burning feeling I got at our aquanatal reunion when our little ones were between 1 - 12 weeks old.

I was the only one who said that Sara never slept, indeed I had been up since 4am that morning.

I remember them all saying how their little darlings slept at least 10 to 12 hours a night!

They made me fees so bad I never went back. I know realize how competitive that environment was. Unlike here. This for me is a unique and welcoming atmosphere.

I hope the threads helped you. They are wonderfully candid and honest. This truly is a wonderful resource. I just wish I found you sooner!!!

 

[Mara]

awww fiery don''t be so hard on yourself. everyone makes mistakes.

the first night we brought J home we had a scare. greg fed him while i showered and a few hours later he was spitting up like crazy, we were thinking what''s the deal here? well he was laying on his back in the bassinet and we were saying goodbye to some friends, and another friend who was visiting called me over and he was totally acting like he was choking. he was trying to get air and flailing around. mind you that this is like TWO HOURS since the kid has been home with us. so we get him up and we are bending him over practically in half patting him on the back, and he is just trying to get some air and turning red, and finally he does...but OMG we were totally panicking and i was thinking ''holy crap we haven''t taken infant CPR, what do we do...'' and greg said he was envisioning calling 911. turns out that he hadn''t been burped enough.

anyway, he was totally fine but it was really ironic because up until that point i had been not too sure about keeping him with us in the bedroom at night, because his room is literally 3 steps down the hall, but after that i was like ok he is sleeping in the bassinet by my side of the bed so i can make sure he is ok.

at this point a month later i feel a lot more confident about our parenting skills and his body growing (now he can ''cough'' so i know his body can actually power/expel something from his mouth, whereas the first day he def couldn''t) so when i hear noises from his bassinet i typically can gauge what they are and when to get up etc...but that first night i was pretty paranoid about every noise. if either of us had let it REALLY get to us that night, esp with our total inexperience, we prob would have been basket cases. but we are all learning this stuff together. i totally agree when TG says if the kid is still alive you are doing something right!!

the funny thing is that the next day at the newborn lounge we told the LC/nurse what happened and she was like ''oh don''t worry... when they are on their back liquid will always leak out the sides and clear their air'' and told us that infant reflux was really common as their little ''hinge'' that closes after they eat to prevent the spitup is not strong enough yet. she was sooo blase about it and here we''d been sure that our kid was about to croak!

cut yourself some slack...the kiddo is fine and she knows you love her, and next time you''ll just automatically be more detail oriented. i think that if we didn''t have ''episodes'' where things like this happen we wouldn''t remind ourselves to be extra diligent next time. that was only the first of many times i am sure i will be freaking out thinking ''holy crap''... peril of being a mom??!?!

btw i keep forgetting to say this in the newborn thread but your new avatar of S is sooo cute. she''s such a doll.