Mom Guilt

When you’re pregnant with your first child people are always so eager to make an uncomfortable comment, or offer up unwanted advice, or tell you how to be a mother…but the one thing that nobody ever mentioned, that no amount of books or research decided to warn me about before I became a mother was the guilt. We like to joke around and make light of it sometimes but the truth is, mom guilt is heart wrenching and real and inescapable. If I spend my entire day playing and doing fun, educational things with my children I still feel guilty when I lay in bed and realize they are going to sleep in a dirty house. If I spend all day cleaning and my house is clean at the end of the day, I don’t feel relief. I feel guilty that I didn’t pay my children enough attention. If I do something for one child and I haven’t done it for the other guess what?! Guilt. When my kids are being absolute trolls and misbehaving and I don’t punish them…I’m guilty for raising nuisances to society. If I do punish them then the look of utter betrayal on their little faces brings on the guilt. You see my point.

Lately I have struggled with adjusting to being quarantined to our home with little to no reprieve as I am sure many other mothers are as well. Homeschool, animals, housework, stress about the world we live in, it’s enough to drive anyone a little nuts. So I have had more bad days as of late than good and tonight as my husband was trying to help me by bathing the girls I struggled to find them clean pajamas. Laundry is not my strong point and so I began to get frustrated with myself, guilty that I hadn’t washed enough, folded enough, put away enough of my children’s clothes. I came across some comfortable cotton summer dresses and I gave up searching any further. The girls got out of their baths and as I started to put them into the dresses they started grilling me.

“What are these? Dresses?”

“Why are you getting us dressed? It’s bedtime.”

I told them that these weren’t dresses, they were night gowns…and then I added on that when they wake up in the morning they will be dresses again…because I’m lazy and I have every intention of letting them wear said dresses all day tomorrow. And just when I was starting to feel overwhelmed and irritable they started in again but this time it was…

“Whoa night gowns that turn into dresses!”

“I love this pop star dress, I mean night gown!”

“Thank you mommy!”

And all at once I realized that the only treatment for mom guilt, is probably to look at ourselves through the eyes of our children. They give us so much grace, and unconditional love and forgiveness. We are the mothers they chose and we are everything they need and more. Even when we ourselves feel like we are failing they look at us as heroes and maybe if I just slow down and see myself the way they do I’ll get a little escape from the mom guilt.