After failure to thrive, Sawyer's hospital stay, the trip x-country from hell, FLEAS, I was feeling exactly the opposite of "I got this". I was feeling like I didn't get/have anything. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself.
Soon after we arrived here in SC things seemed to get extra hard. Sawyer was eating but every meal was an experiment in how creative I could be to get him to open his mouth for bite after bite. Every diaper change was a wrestling match. Every bed time was a screaming affair. I did not handle it well.
Mike would come home during meal time, and I would say, "YOU TRY. HE WON'T EAT." and angrily stomp away from the table. I would get ANGRY with Sawyer when he wanted to do anything but sit still during a diaper change thus getting poop all over himself and me and the entire process taking 10 minutes instead of 30 seconds. I would feel like my head was going to explode when no matter what I did I just couldn't get Sawyer to go to sleep at night without an hour of screaming! (him, not me, I can understand how you could make the mistake).
I had a serious case of the why me's.
One day Mike and I had an argument. He was frustrated with my attitude. This is what you want, he reminded me. You want to be home with Sawyer. You could work. There's always daycare, but this is your choice.
But it's so hard. I
I know it's hard. He said. But I bet your mom never acted like you are acting when she was raising you.
hmm.
I am not sure why he chose to throw my mom in there, and it wasn't necesserily the addition of her to the conversation, but rather the introduction of the idea that others have gone before me that got me. Many others. Many with much harder challenges to deal with. Many who did not approach their day with the terrible attitude I had begun to turn to more and more often.
hmm.
These days, diaper changes are still a wrestlig match. Mealtimes continue to be a true test of my patience and creativity. Nothing has changed. Except me. I'm blessed to be able to have my choice and stay home with my little love of my life. I know that. I don't get angry. My head doesn't feel like it's going to explode. I practice deep breaths. Smiles. Firm expressions of disapproval when Sawyer does something he shouldn't. And somewhere along the line bedtime became peaceful put little baby in crib and he will play for 10 minutes until he passes out time.
I got this.
.....
So confident have I been feeling lately, that when motherhood threw a wrench in its plans, I broke. Sawyer got sick last week. For real sick. Fever, lots of crying, lots of sleeping, no eating, lying around quite pathetically all day. My heart broke for the little guy. The only problem was, he would not take his tylenol. He fought the tylenol. He is strong and persistent and good. In the middle of the night one night he awoke crying and a quick check of his temperature told me it had spiked way up again. Tylenol. During the day I had Mike's help. At night, in the dark house, with a screaming baby, I just wanted to get that tylenol in as fast as possible. He fought with all his might. When I finally got that tube inside of his tightly clenched jaw, I accidently squeezed all of the medicine in much too quickly and he choked. and gagged. and screamed. and made noises that no baby should ever ever make. He cried and cried and cried and coughed and hacked. Then he threw up a little phlegm. I held him in my arms apologizing over and over and over again, my heart beating as fast as its ever gone. My eyes brimming with tears. Finally, after several minutes where I thought I might have just killed my child he did one more hack and puked all over me.
Then he smiled and sat contentedly as if nothing had just happened as I shook and cried and told myself over and over that I am the worst mother ever created in the history of the world and apologized over and over to my now perfectly happy little man.
I woke Michael up and explained what happened. I was deathly afraid that the medicine had gone into Sawyer's lungs. Mike wasn't worried and went back to sleep. I was still worried, so I called my mom for extra assurance.
I felt terrible dialing that phone in the middle of the night, waking her up mid-peaceful-slumber, but I knew she wouldn't be mad. I just needed to feel completely confident that my son wasn't slowly drowning in tylenol and that I wasn't, in fact, the most incompetent parent ever.
In the end, all was well. One thing I can guarantee you is that for the rest of my life I will probably be the slowest-tylenol-giver you have ever laid eyes on.
I had almost completely forgotten about that terrible incident until today when I was running around writing this blog post in my head about how I totally have my mommy groove on these days, when I was like, oh yeah. That happened. Last week.
I guess it's all just one big learning experience. I suppose I can expect that won't be my first middle-of-the-night phone call to my mom. It probably won't be the last time I do something completely and utterly clumsy and stupid. There will probably be a few more nights when I will lie awake long after Sawyer is fast asleep hating myself for being such an idiot.
Most of the time, though, I expect days like today. Days when I forget those mess-ups and walk around with my head held high saying to myself, "I got this".
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