Today I feel like a bad mother....a selfish one. Lm was down for his nap (only one today as I decided that since he slept in so late, it would be better to put with cranky butt in the evening instead of him staying up playing until ten like last night after a too late pm nap). He'd only been asleep about an hour. I had just gotten done finally showering and TH was headed out to go hang out with some friends for a couple of hours.
FINALLY---some time to myself. I figured I had at least another hour since LM was tired from going down for a nap later than normal. I came downstairs and dug around the pantry for lunch...settling on making myself a delicious, totally two person bag of creamy chicken noodles. And, big plans to sit with a giant bowl of it and eat it up (What can I say? PS likes noodles) while watching trashy tv. I had just gotten things up and going when I heard LM start crying...and like any stellar mother would, I reacted without thinking....with a loud, whiny wail of a "NO".
Just like a toddler not wanting to do something. There I was...whining because my baby was up. Because I would have to be taking care of him on my own. Because I wanted to sit and eat noodles in piece. Not my shining moment.
Where did that joy go of seeing him smile and say "Mama" when I come in to get him up for a nap/bed? Why did I feel the need to be so selfish today? It's not like I heard him, thought about what I'd rather been doing and huffed or sighed. No--my brain reacted with the gut instinct of "No".
Ugh. Mommy fail.
Not a mommy fail. We all go through this - I have been repeatedly assured by other bloggers, for feeling the same way. We need time for ourselves, just a little bit, and we feel guilty for taking it because hey, that's our kid and we should naturally want to spend ALL our time with them, right? Especially after we tried so long/hard/whatever to have them, right? Wrong. We're human. Just because we are moms doesn't make us exempt from that.
ReplyDeleteCut yourself a little slack. You're normal!
oh honey, that is NOT a mommy fail. the first thing you need to do in order to be a great mama is take care of yourself, and taking care of yourself definitely requires some you time. maybe when your husband gets home you can have him take lm out to do something just the two of them and you can have some much needed alone time.
ReplyDeleteThanks ladies! I know it's all mostly in my head and perfectly normal to feel. Perhaps it's the hormones that make me overreact :-) I ended up sharing my noodles with LM (lol-so much of my life is eating for two but sharing with one!) And we've been having a nice pm...maybe I just needed to have a bit of a tantrum!
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