Being the Mama he Deserves

Mama Guilt is an unfortunate universal truth. 

Here's the thing. You have a baby. A beautiful, wonderful, perfect baby. Right away you instinctively want to give your child the world. Because they are deserving of every good thing.  All of the sudden you are filled with this intense desire to be the perfect parent for your perfect baby. 

That's how I feel anyway. 

The problem? There is no such thing as a perfect parent. 

Parenthood brings on a whole new level of responsibility. It's a lot of pressure. If you would like to add to that pressure go ahead and wade through all the baby books and research filled with all sorts of conflicting expert opinions. The one thing they all will tell you - one wrong move and your child will be messed up for life.  

I try not to get sucked into all that. I really do. But...

We have a lot of really good days. Days when productivity is high but we still have time to play outside. We can take our time getting all sorts of messy eating yummy food. Read lots of books, and swing on the back porch late into the evening. Days with an abundance of laughter and peek-a-boo. 

But we also have days where we don't get anything done or go anywhere. Days where I feel like we are on a small row boat with a big hole in the bottom. And it's all I can do to keep us afloat while simultaneously rowing towards shore and scooping out buckets of water. Basically it is the difference of thriving and merely surviving. And when I try to go to bed I just feel bad that we had a bad day. That I wasn't the mama he deserves. It sounds dramatic because well, it is dramatic. Sleep deprivation will make you dramatic. 

The other day we had a particularly hard day and a particularly hard night. The next morning I woke up really early to Jack Vincent babbling. For the past two weeks he has been sleeping in a makeshift bed on the floor next to ours. As far as I can tell he will be sleeping there until we move him into a college dorm room. I pulled him into bed, lay him in-between us hoping he might fall back asleep but instead he just starts laughing. He kept kissing both of our cheeks and grabbing our faces. So we kissed him back and tickled his sides.

I kept thinking I love him so much. In that moment I felt good about things. He knows he is loved. He doesn't know the word even though I say it a million times a day. But he knows he is loved. And safe. And he is so happy. Even after a hard day, he knows. 

I can do that. I can't be perfect. I can't make everyday perfect. But I can make sure he knows he is loved. And if I can do that, I am doing a pretty good job. I am being the mama he deserves. 

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