HEATHER HUYBREGTS: Mom guilt knows no bounds - or age-limit

It started about 125 seconds after I peed on that plastic stick.

It was January 1. I was immediately paralyzed by the realization that the previous night I had indulged in New Year's Eve like an escaped prisoner stumbling upon Coachella. My doctor reassured me that my baby would not, in fact, be a gherkin. But my initial horror was intense.

Mom guilt. I realize that the suffocating sense of parental inadequacy applies to all parents, not just mothers. But I’m specifically referring to what I know - the unrelenting, all-encompassing guilt of motherhood.

The moment our babies are yanked from our unrecognizable, swollen nether regions (or slashed abdomens), we’re stricken - and not just with golf-ball-sized hemorrhoids and navy, dinner-plate nipples - but with guilt.

Because they’re crying and perhaps we can’t make them stop.

Perhaps our milk didn’t come in right away. We were starving them.

Perhaps we had too much milk. We were choking them.

And, after the blue-hot-power-drill/electrocution to the uterus that is labour, followed by a seven-plus-pounder with limbs and an alien-like afterbirth squelching out whilst ripping us a new one, perhaps the last thing we wanted was to have our nipples shop-vacced raw. So, we dared deny them the holy grail of infant nutrition that is breastmilk. Hence, it's our fault if any future ailments befall them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming society for my steadfast belief that I am failing in all maternal realms. I am rational enough to know I am delusional. But that doesn't make the guilt feel less real.

My son went to bed this evening, pissed at me because I had the audacity to sign him up for T-ball. He doesn’t want to play T-ball, he says. Which makes me innately want to say, “cool, no worries!” and re-pocket the $150 registration fee. But, he’s supposed to be in stuff… right?

"He doesn’t want to play T-ball... " - 123rf Stock Photo

Which leads me to the greatest parental guilt of all: organized activities. It seems if your child is six months old and he/she is not able to swim and ski and play the Ode to Joy on cello, you are failing.

Mom guilt.

But, don’t dare put your child in too much, because that is holding them back from good, old-fashioned, imaginative play.

Mom guilt.

Don’t give them a mind-numbing iPad (mom guilt), but make sure they are able to keep up with the tech-driven world they are growing up in (mom guilt).

When random strangers offer my kid a sucker (because yes, that’s a thing; it’s not as creepy as it sounds, they mean well) I always say no. Not because I’m holier than thou - my kids eat fast food and they eat cake and chips and chocolate and cookies. Something about hard candy turns my six-year-old into (and I say this with profound love) an irritable, Defcon 2 reactive little dude who’s tweaking on uppers. I don’t know if it’s the “high fructose corn syrup” because I’m not a goddamn scientist. What I do know is it doesn’t work for him. But these well-intentioned strangers look at me like I’m stealing his lunch money or skipping Christmas (mom guilt). And, guaranteed, if/when I do cave and give him his bump of hyperglycemia-on-a-stick, I’ll accidentally do it in front of the one sweet, hippie mom in the room who vocally “never gives her kids processed foods”.

Mom guilt.

I watched a movie the other day where the woman had postpartum anxiety or depression or maybe both. And the big punch line directed at her was, "after THREE YEARS?" Cue the laugh track. To which I couldn't help but think, "Eff yeah, after three years! Likely to be continuing after thirty years. Decades from now, that gal will be an elderly woman on her deathbed, wanting to let go but riddled with guilt about dying because it will break her children's hearts.”

Sometimes, I long to spend one day in my old shoes when I thought public speaking was "the most pressure imaginable." Then I made two humans who depend on me for attention, entertainment, encouragement, unconditional love, nutrition, every possible lesson on how to be decent human being. And there's no pause button. No, "oops, I messed up, can I try that again?" There's no rewind and redo. We have constant pressure to be the best version of ourselves, so they can be the best version of theirs. Even when we're hungover or exhausted or sick or in pain or it's a snowstorm and we just want to binge-watch Shameless on Netflix.

The end goal cannot be to make our children happy at all times, because then there’s the guilt of spoiling them. But it can’t be to deprive them of the things they want that might “rot their brains,” because then there’s the guilt of making them unhappy. For the mothers who take time for themselves because “you have to apply your own oxygen mask before you can assist others,” there’s the guilt of being physically absent. And, for the mothers who don’t want to be away from their children any more than work requires them to be, there’s the guilt of being mentally absent.

Motherhood is, therefore, a set-up for failure. And with failure comes guilt. Contrived expectations are hurled at us from all directions and, no matter how we respond, we’re wrong.

I don’t, in fact, have a warm and fuzzy conclusion here because I still battle, daily, with mom guilt. But I think it’s important for us moms to know that we are all flawed, to find solidarity in that and know that, hopefully, as we continue to navigate the emotional tilt-a-whirl of trial-and-error that is motherhood, the kids will be just fine. And so will we.

Heather Huybregts is a mother, physiotherapist, blogger, wine advocate and puffin whisperer from Corner Brook, N.L. Her column appears biweekly.

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