Category: Mommy Guilt

In a few minutes, I’m boarding a flight and covering a press event in Southern Cali. It’s a quick trip and not even very far, but it’s an eternity in terms of documenting the logistics involved with two kids and a household. All of which will be in the care of my husband in my absence.

It’s not that my husband can’t handle everything. It’s just that he doesn’t, so I normally don’t bother sharing details like what time the house cleaners show up or where you’re supposed to stand for afternoon pick up.

Earlier this week, I could tell that my constant reminders about this and that were causing a hint of shock and panic in his eyes. So I took the time to write it all down—color-coded and by date and child.

What they ought to wear. What needs to be brought to school. Pick up times. 

Before I packed my bags, I made sure all of the checks for daycare were written and homework folders were completed. I order extra diapers and bought snacks for my daughter’s “God’s Creation Celebration” (her new Christian preschool’s nod to Halloween). I filled the freezer with food, pretending that we don’t always eat like that anyway….

It’s a lot to remember and I usually rely on a series of notes and daily alarms to tell me of where I need to be at any given moment. Even then, I still send back permission slips without a check and forget to return the unsold Entertainment Book and raffle tickets. (oops!)

It’s only gotten worse since I  started working in an office again, but I don’t care if I come off as a slacker mom to other people.  I’m willing to give up my reputation as the “one in the know” and skimping on the home-cooked meal, so long as my kids never feel the pinch.

Luckily, I’ve managed to shape my hours and my travel around their schedules. I‘m doubly lucky to have a supportive husband who is willing to embrace the chaos while I’m away.

I was feeling pretty confident about leaving for a few days until I received an email from my son’s teacher. She wrote to inform me that he is being given an award at morning assembly tomorrow.

It’s a surprise (so, shh… don’t tell him) and I won’t be there to see the look on his sweet little face.

Suddenly, I don’t know that I am making a fair exchange or that they won’t be feeling the pinch.

Remember when I said having kids meant “things are never going to go perfectly according to my plans ever again”? And that I was so anxious about the first day of Kindergarten, because it was so heart-breaking.

Well, here’s where life takes you on a loopty-loop.

Scout woke us up before 5 am on Thursday. “Is it time for school, yet? Is it time?” He was bouncing with anticipation. “Go back to bed,” Mike told him, but he kept insisting that we get up. Then, I realized it wasn’t excitement, so much as panic in his voice and that he was actually gasping for air.

We’ve been dealing with asthma attacks since he was two years old. The steps are a familiar routine. The sound of the nebulizer is often a calming one. Relief is on the way! When he didn’t improve, I called the after-hours nurse. Mike administered a second treatment to buy us enough time to get to the hospital.

Instead of getting to school bright and early so he could be the first kid to arrive to class, he and I headed in the opposite direction so he could be the first patient to be seen for the day.

Instead of  photos of him walking up to the classroom… and with the teacher… and next to his very own cubby… and sitting at his desk… I have this to remember his first day of Kindergarten. My brave boy. In an urgent care unit. Gasping for breath.

Instead of eating a smiley face ham sandwich sitting next to his little friends, he sat across a tray table from me, munching on best stuff that I could forage from the hospital coffee shop.

Either way, I was still fighting back tears of guilt, bursts of pride, and pangs to hold my (baby) boy as close to me as possible.

Getting ready for the school year is easy for me. The long list of supplies, buying new uniforms and shoes, stocking the fridge with lunch items, scoping out the new teacher… These are just items to tick off my to-do list. Certainly nothing to get weepy and emotional about.

Then yesterday morning as I chided my son to eat faster so he won’t be late for camp… as I always do, it hit me.

He’s going to be in Kindergarten. My BABY is going to be in Kindergarten!

Wasn’t it just yesterday that I was peering into a bassinet at the little person I just bore from my body?

Weak, dizzy, and in pain from my emergency c-section, I realized things are never going to go perfectly according to my plans ever again, but one thing was for certain. I love this tiny being so much that I would commit murder to protect him. Five years later, I’m somehow supposed to let him just grow up and leave me?

It’s such a paradox. You raise your children (hopefully) to be self-sufficient and independent adults. You expect that one day they will  lead lives of their very own, apart and away from you. Yet, in practice there’s a well of self-doubt making you want to rush in and take over at every step along the way.

It’s not like he hasn’t been gradually working up to Kindergarten. We both have. For the past two years, he’s been in preschool. It started with two half-days a week. By the end of this past school year, he was attending three full-days a week. This summer, I signed him up for camp five days a week, which was conveniently held at his school and offered swim lessons, sports, and field trips. Some of his friends and teachers from preschool would even be there, too. Zero transition angst, right? I thought I won the working mom jackpot until we walked into the first day and realized it was nothing like I expected…

It wasn’t the cozy, touchy-feely sandbox of preschool. It was CAMP… with big kids who were used to being pushed (rather than gently transitioned) from one activity to the next. It’s wasn’t snacks, circle time, and making sure he eats all of his lunch. It was games he could keep up with, rejection from kids who weren’t that interested in hanging out with a “little kid”, and answering to camp counselors who didn’t necessarily understand his little five-year-old idiosyncrasies.

By the second week, he made such a scene at morning drop-off that the camp director told me I couldn’t leave him if he was being hysterical. I realized this wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought, but I had to work, I had meetings, I had OTHER stuff scheduled during this tiny sliver of time…

Reluctantly, I became THAT mom who writes letters to the teacher, demanding the special treatment and changes to the rules. He was quickly reassigned to a class called “Kindergarten Readiness”, ensuring that he was with the kids his own age all day. After that we had a rather pleasant summer, but what if I had  not intervened?

Our mornings were filled with much tears and anguish, so of course, I had to intervene. But  it’s a keen reminder that I’m not always going to be there to mediate, assess, and solve all of his world’s problems.  At some point, he has to do this one his own and I’m going to have to learn to let him.

Incidentally, I’ve decided to keep him home from his final days of camp so I can make googly eyes at him and randomly attack him with hugs and kisses. It’s my little way of  squeezing  every last drop of summer vacation, and possibly making sure he FULLY appreciates his hours of independence and self-sufficiency.

Remember: Leave a comment on this post for an additional entry into our Fill the Backpack giveaway. Each member of Splash Creative Media is offering a backpack overstuffed with over $750 worth of  Back to School merchandise.  Enter to win on any or on all of our blogs. 

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Splash Creative Media as part of the Fill the Backpack Campaign. The thoughts and opinions expressed in this post are those of my own. 

My girl has been a “bink baby” since the day she was born, and I make no apologize for it.

Because, like me, she finds something she likes and sticks with it, she’s partial to the one type.  And because I am also lazy, I’ve never tried to break her of the habit.

The bink’s become a regular feature in our family photos and we make no apologize for that either.

Mike and I talked about maybe… when she’s two… perhaps we’ll try to get her to stop with the bink, but with her LOUD willful cries and its magical ability to soothe her instantly, it was easy to put it off. Then, sometimes opportunity presents itself and one simply cannot resist that either.

Earlier this week, I came home from BlogHer’11. Mike took the days off to stay home with the kids, so it was with an appreciative tone that I asked him, “Great googly-moogly! What the frying hash browns happened to the house while I was gone?” (expletives omitted). I had to get past the smell to which my family had scarily become accustomed in order to get to the mess.

Add to that several bags full of dirty laundry and swag.

It’s taken me three days to unpack my bags on to the living room… bedroom… hallway…  The house is very much still a disaster. Then, this afternoon, we lost the bink! 

So Lou went without her nap, and was completely undone by mid-afternoon. “Where bink, Mommy? Where bink?” she kept asking.

In desperation (or perhaps it was in madness), I crafted a fib so bold and so daring. In the most upbeat and effervescent tone that I could muster three-days post-conference, I casually suggested that, “The Bink Fairy must have taken it and given it to another baby.”

Lou paused. “A baby?”

“Yeah, because you’re a big girl! Not a baby anymore… oh, and she probably left you presents! Yeah, presents!”

“Is that really true, Mommy? Or you just making it up?” Scout asked.

My mouth said, “No, it’s very true. Just like the tooth fairy!” but my eyes in the rear view mirror were saying, “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.”

We were in the car and on our way home when I decided to fabricate my little deceit. It was nearing dinner time and there’s no way I could slip out before bedtime to find thoughtful and clever “presents from the bink fairy” that neither of them had seen before.  You would think with the amount of swag I brought home there would be something… but good little blogging fodder that they are, my children were ransacking my bags before we could step out of the airport terminal.

Thinking. Thinking. Thinking.

Just as I was pulling into our drive way, I noticed a box by our front door. Is it? Could it be? IT WAS! 

It was the box that I had shipped home from BlogHer, containing all of the swag that did not fit in my bags. Most of it was from the THIRTY pounds of toys, books, and games that I received from The Big Toy Book’s Sweet Suite party at BlogHer. Not all of it came home with me. Some items were shared with my roommates, the Nap Warden and the Five Dollar Shake, who also have adorable girls and one very charming boy waiting at home for them. From what I’ve heard, it’s made for some happy squeals!

As my kids ate dinner in another room, I tore open the box and found the PERFECT items.

Tonight, the “Bink Fairy” will be leaving my daughter the following items by her bedside:

Seen in photo: LadyBug Girl and the Bumble Bee Boy and LadyBug Girl doll and an I Spy Wonder Tube

She was also so kind as to provide a little hush present for Scout, too…

Seen in photo: (clock- wise) HexBugs Glow in the Dark Starter set, KRE-O Transformers Optimus Prime Construction Set, GrowUms “Taco Garden” kit, and Jungle Speed

 Thank you, The Big Toy Book and KidVuz, for the fantastic party at BlogHer 2011 and definitely for helping me save face.

Disclosure: I received an amazing collection of toys from  The Big Toy Book and KidVuz at the The Big Toy Book Sweet Suite party at BlogHer 2011. Not all of them made it home with me. The views and options expressed here are my own and do not reflect those of  the Bink Fairy or anyone else. 

Clicking through my “drafts” folder, I found one dated April 13, 2010. It read:

She quit on me. Just like that. No warning. No advance notice.

My milk supply being what it is (read: SUCKY, pun intended), my days as moo cow ended with little fanfare.

My daughter was eights months old– a full three months older than my son was when he stopped nursing. To this day, I can still feel the the mix of relief, mourning, and failure in those words.

This was the first of an endless series of “my baby’s not a baby anymore” moments. While it was a relief that she took to baby food so well and wasn’t so totally dependent on me for her nutrition anymore, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat despondent about it as well. I planned to nurse each of my children for the “requisite” year, but my milk supply just could not sustain it. I had also planned to have dramatic, but natural birth. Following two c-sections, I loathed my body’s inability to do the very thing it was biologically meant to do– have and feed my children.

I remembered hugging my son a little tighter as I fed him his bottles to make up for the extra “love” I assumed he wasn’t getting because I could not nurse him. I’ve beat myself up for years, blaming my poor milk supply on my tired, fat body, my decision to go back to work, and about a hundred other things.

I had better luck with nursing my daughter, but I think it was because I no longer had that expectation of getting it right… and I had the privilege of staying home. I made my own nursing cover and nursed on demand- everywhere and anywhere, but even that wasn’t enough.

Breastfeeding was painful. It was embarrassing and awkward. For me, there was only one natural element about it and it was  the moments of closeness and tenderness that it brought. Oh my goodness, I was going to miss those moments so much! I loved the “you and me”- ness and having to stop everything to take the time to just focus on one another. Even if I did have to supplement with formula immediately afterwards, I am grateful to have experienced those moments with both of my children.

In looking back on my nursing experience as a whole, I realize now that it wasn’t quantity they really needed. It was the quality.

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This post kicks off the third week of “All About the Bump” Month! Eight bloggers and I have teamed up to spend a whole month to talk about all things moms and babies.

We’ve shared some heartfelt stories and wonderful companies who have help us along the way. Read the other Bump Bloggers stories about their nursing experience here.