Rotten Mother 101

I am a bad mother. I admit it.

I am also a very, very good mother. I know it. It is the truest dichotomy of motherhood, that you can at once be a great and a terrible mother...and it is all good as long as the great outweighs the terrible. I will never be a perfect mother, no matter how much I try - and I do try. I do it all -- I've co-slept and breastfed and skin-to-skinned and made organic baby food and Mother Goosed and Baby-taled, worn her next to me since she was born, never let her cry it out, read to her in Spanish and French and teach her sign language and play music to her and take her to the aquarium and Bright Nights and mom and baby hiking and snowshoeing and and and....

And still, there are days when I am a bad mother.

The other day I managed to pack her up and cart her down to Commercial Drive where I was to meet Tracy at Little Nest, a restaurant that combines fabulous food with an kid-friendly environment, which was, unfortunately, closed. Tracy called me as I was pulling up, telling me the news and we decided then to meet at Cafe Du Soleil. I wrapped her up and rushed into the warm of the little cafe, where I ordered a cappucino and waited for Trace to arrive. And waited. And waited. I was staring out the window looking for her when the waitress plonked the steaming cup down directly in front of the sweeping tentacles of my 8-month old daughter. Annoyed, I managed to slide it from her grasp just as her hand reached into the puff of steam. My phone rang and it was Tracy - where was I? At Cafe Du Soleil - where was she? Why, at Cafe Deux Soleil, 8 blocks down the road. Argh. We'd both already ordered and we sighed as our efforts to finally spend some time together were foiled by the odd coincidence of two very closely named cafes. We laughed and agreed to meet up afterwards for what little time remained before Talulla's nap. I managed to feed her, feed myself and half-assed enjoy my coffee before beginning to pack her up again for the trek up to meet Tracy at Cafe Deux Soleil. I carted her off with me to the bathroom (an adventure unto itself) and when I got back I set her back into the high chair again - this time without buckling the strap as I reached down to quickly grab my purse and keys. Just as I reached in the bag I heard a clunk and a cry and when I turned back to her -- she wasn't there. My heart stabbed in my chest, I looked down to where she had slid under the table, past the place where the crossbar should have been on the high chair and saw my child stuck, barely hanging onto the gap between the chair that held her and the floor that wouldn't, and the look on her little face has haunted me for days. She looked terrified, upset...betrayed. I felt horrible, guilty, negligent. I scooped her up as fast as I could, wrestling her from the trap and clasping her to me, trying to figure out if she was hurt or just scared. I cradled her, crooned to her and she calmed down fast but I could not have felt worse. I could not believe that I, who is normally so diligent about everything, especially safety -- I could not believe that I had just failed her so explicitly. Yes, it was a freebie, one of those wonderful, painful gifts from the universe where you see what horror could have befallen your child but didn't, but still, I felt as bad as if she had clunked to the concrete floor. I think what haunted me the most was the idea that this kind of thing could happen with something much worse, some crucial detail and I ache at the very thought. I live in terror of becoming the story that gets passed around, the mother's horror story -- 'oh, she didn't do up the buckle and...', 'she didn't know it had been recalled and...', 'she didn't see that one little piece and...'

And and fucking and.

And she survived. And she was fine. And she forgot and forgave. The question is, how do I? How do I forgive myself for the times I fail her as a mother, big or small?

Rotten Mother 101.1

Usually Rotten Mother Days only happen when I have had too little sleep. This last time, I was just desperate, sick. Stuffy eggplant head, cotton mouth, pick-axes in my ears, I felt like I'd been run over by a truck. She woke in the morning and I just didn't have it in me. I staggered from bed and managed to change her diaper, get her dressed and then I just slumped down on the floor in a heap beside her. I just did not have any energy at all. Plagued again by piles of wasted minutes which avalanched themselves upon me in the night, compounded by the weight of this lingering cold, I felt unable to do anything. I grabbed the office paper box some gifts had come in and set her inside. I gave her a teething biscuit, the kind which normally terrify me (choking hazard, of course -- everything is a freakin' choking hazard. Even the slinky I bought for Christmas had a warning label on it) but I gave it to her anyway because it lasts longer by far than those little wisps of baby mum-mums. I lay in a muddied heap beside her while she gnawed away on the cookie, smearing it all over her face, pyjamas (Rotten Mother 101.1.1 - I left her in them for the day too) and the box. But there she sat for almost an hour and I survived that little bit more. I turned on the TV (yes, I did) and flicked it to Treehouse - infant crack. I do not as a rule let Nahanni watch TV, but again, this is Rotten Mother 101 and I sat her in that box and she stayed put and watched it for longer than I care to remember. And I made it through to naptime and I managed not to let her choke to death on a ginger vanilla teething biscuit. A successful day, I suppose.

Rotten Mother 101.2

Sick again, the box was no longer novel enough to offer me any real help. Worse today than yesterday I block her in with my aching body as best I can and catch little minutes of thin sleep, one eye open, ever-ready. Drifting, swimming in my own drippy misery, I just couldn't stay awake for the first time since I had her. Even recovering from the PPH, I didn't feel so helpless as that, so I Rotten Mommy'd again. I dug out the Jolly Jumper and popped her in. I lay down in a mess of pillows and blankets and I slept at her feet while she flitted and jumped to her heart's content. Thank merciful gods, I needed that sleep. Half an hour only, but it was there and it was real and I needed it like air.

I'm a mother. I do what I have to do. I do my very best to keep my child happy and healthy and safe so that she will grow up strong and brave and vibrant and make me proud. Someday we will laugh about this and many other such stories, I'm sure. I know it will not be the last of the weak days. But I also know that I adore my child, I live and breathe my daughter and as long as we both survive with an adequate number of freebies, I will do everything in my power to be the least Rotten Mother possible.