Where I become a terrible, terrible mother

Yesterday, I watched a great video from TED.  It was about common taboos that parents hold.  It was a wonderful presentation by a husband and wife, but I think they left out one important taboo.  I am going to demonstrate it today.

You don't complain about your child or about being a parent. 

Complaining about parenting/parenthood means that you are just "not cut out" to be parenting.  You should have your parenting licence revoked and your child given to someone who can better handle the situation.

When I feel like complaining---or when I start to complain---I worry that I'm not a good mom.  When I start to feel like I just need to go hide in a corner some where---I make myself stop and look over my shoulder for that smiling, always happy, fresh lipstick mom who is ready to step in to be a better mama than me---while baking cookies.

Fact: A. James has never been really sick.  She has had little snuffly noses when the seasons change and always gets flu-like symptoms when she cuts teeth----but never really seriously ill.  Sure, she fell off of a chair and broke her arm two months after her second birthday---but she hasn't been ill.

I like to credit this to 14 months of breastfeeding, by the way.

I knew that our healthy streak wouldn't last forever.  I knew that those little ninja antibodies in her body would eventually fail her and she would catch something.  However, I am a dreamer.  I really thought that with proper diet and exercise we could hold it off forever.

I was wrong.

After two sleepless nights we took her to the doctor.  She has an upper respiratory tract infection.   My daughter is exhausted, aggravated, whiny and doesn't understand why she can't play with her friends, go to the library, visit Grandma or go sledding.  She is mad at me for making her drink and eat when she doesn't feel like it.  She yells at me because her nose hurts from blowing it so much---for insisting that she drink water instead of milk or take a cool bath and for sneaking medicine into her sippy cup.  She is so angry that she doesn't feel well. 

She has never been this way before.

The icing on this cake is that I'm supposed to be helping out with family in the hospital.  I supposed to be driving up and down the roads---running errends, delivering soup and keeping people company.  I can't do this with a feverish child in the back seat.  So, I am useless to my family when they need me to be Superwoman right now.

I understand.  I practice patience.  I practice kindness.  I try to become the vision of compassion.  I try to smile at her, and cheer her up.  I try to explain in a loving voice that she is sick and these things I am doing will make her well again.  I put everything for myself on hold.

It is so difficult. 

I let laundry go, dishes go---I don't vaccum the floors and fix measly meals for my husband so that I can lay in bed and read stories to her all day.  I recite uplfiting mantras--- The only thing you can control is your own reactions, The only thing you can control is your own reactions, The only thing you can control.......I try to be that flawless mother with the tray of freshly baked cookies who wouldn't ever get her parental licence revoked.

It is so difficult.

I remind myself of Pema Chodron's words in When Things Fall Apart.

No one ever tells us to stop running away from[our emotional reactions]...the advice we usually get is to sweeten it up, smooth it over, take a pill, or distract ourselves, but by all means make it go away.  What happens with you when you begin to feel uneasy, unsettled, queasy? Notice the panic, notice when you instantly grab for something....we use all kinds of ways to escape -- all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.

She is so correct. 

On the inside I want to scream, I want to yell.  I want to throw things and storm off.  I want to ask my husband to stay home from work so that I can sleep.  I want to rush out the door the minute he gets home so that I can have a break.  I want to react to this in a way that will give me some relief.  I want to react in an angry, hurtful, resentful way because I think it will make things better.

It wont. Deep down I know it wont.

I am only feeling this way because---like A. James---I am tired.
I am a good mother, but I am a tired and exhausted one.  Just because I complain doesn't that I am unfit.  That I am undeserving.  This is just another hard spot.  So I remind myself of this.  Over and over again.