We have all had one (or several) of those days when we have questioned EVERYTHING about our capabilities as mothers. You feel like a failure, and you may even think to yourself, ‘I’m not cut out for motherhood’.
If you can relate to the above, then you need to read mum-blogger Liz Mannegren’s latest post on her blog, Mommy Mannegren.
Posting a black and white photo of herself and her son in the hospital, she revealed that she wrote the post to mark an anniversary that is ‘painful to remember’: the day when she dropped her son on his head.
She recalled the incident, which took place two years ago: “With all the strength and speed of a tiny acrobat, my son flipped backwards out of my arms and onto the floor. In mere seconds, a perfectly normal day turned into an absolute nightmare.”
Liz wasn’t the first woman that something like this happened to, and she won’t be the last. And while her world ‘came crashing down’ around her, she can now take some small comfort from what happened when she reached the hospital.
“We rushed to the ER with a whimpering baby and this mama in tears,” she recalled.
“As a tiny hospital band was slipped over my son’s wrist, the nurse assured us that they saw this all the time.
“’I dropped my baby once,’ she said, with a sympathetic smile, ‘Except I dropped my baby on a concrete parking lot.’”
Liz admitted to feeling like ‘a failure’ and ‘the world’s worst mother’ when her son’s x-ray came back, confirming that he had a fractured skull.
“Motherhood is full of difficult lessons, and this one felt especially tough,” she explained.
As tough as that lesson was, however, Liz has been able to forgive herself for what was, at the end of the day, just a horrible accident – and she wants others suffering from mum-guilt to learn the same.
“There will be days when we fall short. Days when our feelings of failure and guilty thrive on imperfect moments,” she wrote.
“Days when life is difficult and complicated. Days when we feel unworthy and broken. Days when our kisses aren’t strong enough to rub away the pains and hurts our children carry.
“Today we might feel like a failure-of-a-mother, but we are more than our bad days.”
The greatest lesson that Liz has learned from this horrible experience, is that ‘accidents happen’ and ‘life is fragile’.
“Motherhood is not defined by any single action, but rather, by the whole,” she advised.
“I look at myself and see a woman who failed to grab her son in time. My son looks at me and sees ‘mum’ – the one who comforts and holds him when he falls.
“Today does not define your motherhood. Today may be horrible, but that DOESN’T mean that YOU are.”
Liz’s thoughts were well and truly backed up by the stream of comments that followed, with several parents sharing their own experiences.
“My baby once fell out of a shopping cart. The doctor was pretty upset because of our irresponsibility,” wrote one woman.
“I felt horrible when my baby rolled off the changing table once. He was fine, but I felt so guilty. And I felt like I was hiding something, since I never did anything about it,” wrote another.
We can all learn a valuable lesson here, about being kind to, and forgiving to ourselves.
