Hello everyone! It’s been quite some time but here I am again. Your friendly motherhood introvert here.
I have been in quarantine for 2 weeks as some of you may know. Before that happened I was going through a really rough patch of feeling inadequate. As a mother, a wife, a coworker, a friend, a daughter, and the list goes on. I touched on this with my therapist too. And since I’ve been in quarantine I’ll be honest, the question “am I doing a good job?” has crossed my mind more times than I can count.
I am a perfectionist. I want everything to be right. I strive for perfection at all times, apparently as a way to control my anxiety. Because of this I have been questioning if I’m doing a good job at things. At everything. I have been constantly going over it and over it if I am doing ok as a mother. My job as a mother is to raise kind, caring, and creative individuals. My job is to help them grow into their personalities and truly be themselves, while making sure that they also don’t grow up to be dicks. Am I doing that? I feel like I’m very hard on them. I try, what I think, is my best to teach them how to deal with emotions and struggles, but is it really accomplishing the goal?
And then I also wonder if I’m spending enough time with them. Am I teaching them enough? Am I giving them equal amounts of attention? Do I treat them all equally? Do their punishments fit their crimes equally? Am I doing enough to raise kind, considerate children? I don’t know. I feel like I keep falling short. I feel like I am failing them as a mother. I feel like I don’t spend enough time with them. I feel like while I love them all equally, with all my heart, that I am harder on Mark or Rose about certain things.
I wake up throughout the night to feed Joey. Which in and of itself makes me feel like I’m failing because he’s almost 7 months old and still waking up several times throughout the night. I know that it’s because he wants me to comfort him, but everyone has drilled it in my head that it’s not normal for kids to want comfort. That it’s spoiling them. That by this age you should already be letting them “cry it out”. And I’ll be honest with you I hate the “cry it out” method. It’s heart wrenching and barbaric in my opinion and I hated doing it with the other two and I refuse to do it. Yet there is still that voice in the back of my head of society telling me that I need to let him cry it out or he’ll be spoiled. He needs to soothe himself. He needs to figure it out. This in particular has been swirling around my head. I don’t know what the right this is to do. I let the other two cry it out. Did I fail them? Did I do the wrong thing? I listened to everyone and they all said it was ok. But it didn’t feel ok. And it doesn’t feel ok now. Am I doing it wrong? Did I do it wrong? What is right? Failing. Who did I fail? Did I fail myself for trusting everyone and listening to anything other than my own instinct? Did I fail Mark and Rose for forcing them to “figure it out” at such a young age? Am I failing Joey for not letting him “figure it out”?
Anyway, back on track. I wake up throughout the night to feed Joey. I wake up in the morning and feed Joey. I get ready for work, make coffee, prepare my pumps, pack some snacks and my pump bag, get everything in the car and go. I go to work all day. I feel like a terrible mom all day because I left my kids and how could I possibly do that? And while I’m at work I constantly feel like I’m falling short on my work responsibilities too. I don’t have my qualifications yet and I just am not doing enough at work despite trying to pick up more responsibilities and relieve some weight from others. And then I feel bad about work because I want one more child. And how dare I even contemplate the thought of one more child and not get my quals and leave them shorthanded and be a bad shipmate and just fail everybody for the sake of my own selfish personal family life.
Then, I get home from work. Now it’s like 3:30/4, sometimes later, sometimes earlier. I get home and I immediately have to unpack my bag and get dressed and then jump right into the dinner time routine. I have to find a way to feed us all. I finish cooking, we sit down to eat, I’m exhausted. Did I drink water? No. I didn’t. Did I eat today? Not nearly enough. The baby needs to eat. I escape into the bedroom to feed the baby where the older two won’t distract him with their happy banter and giggling. I love their giggling. I desperately want to eat with my family and hear those sweet laughs and the stories about their day. But I can’t. I have to feed the baby. I finish and come back to the table, only to find that everyone else is done and now I have to sit here and eat alone.
I sit somberly by myself, sometimes joined by Joe, and eat my meal. I eat quickly because there is still so much to do. The list in my head is constantly getting longer. There is always something else getting added. Always something else to do. So I eat as fast as I can and then I clean up. I pack up the leftovers and I get the dishes in the sink. Then, usually, I load up the dishwasher and Joe sits by and sulks because, once again, I have made him feel inadequate because I have to have control of it all and have everything just so. For a second I feel better. I feel like I did something and I can spend some time with the kids. But then I look around.
The clothes need to be washed. The clothes need to be folded. The clothes need to be put away. The stove is dirty and needs to get wiped down. The counters need to get wiped. The dogs need to get let out. The dishes need to get put away. My pump needs to get washed. The floor needs to get swept. The floor needs to get vacuumed. I need to prep for tomorrow. The kids need to get ready for bed. The landscaping has to get done. The bathroom is still torn apart. The baby books still need to get caught up on. Is it someone’s birthday? Someone’s anniversary? A holiday? Am I missing something? Oh no! I forgot to put my new bumper on my truck. Our door is broken and we need a new one. The trash needs to go out. Is it trash day tomorrow because if it is the trash needs to go to the curb? I should work out. But I need to practice self care. I need to take time for myself but I need to do all this other stuff and no one else is going to do it right. The garage is a mess it needs to be organized. Why does this stuff still need to go to the attic? Why am I failing?
After running around the house like a tornado, spiraling down into the rabbit hole and making everyone around me feel like crap because they can’t escape the storm that I’m brewing, I get the baby ready for bed and we go to sleep just to do it all again tomorrow.
And then I think about how I didn’t spend any time with my family and I miss them. And everyone tells me “spend time with them the chores will be there later”. I want to listen but I can’t wrap my head around just leaving it there for later because then there’s more to do and then I’m failing even more. But if I do the chores and don’t spend time with my family then I’m failing them too. Am I doing good enough? Am I doing an ok job? I don’t even know anymore. I don’t know if I’m doing my job as a parent and raising kind, considerate children, or if I’m showing them that everything always has to be perfect and turning them into anxious tornados. I don’t know anymore. What I do know is that me needing to do everything is not good for my marriage. It stresses me out and I lose my temper and make Joe feel terrible and I don’t want that. I don’t want him to feel like he can’t do anything right. He’s a great father and husband. He’s doing a great job and I’m too hard on him but I can’t stop myself from spiraling and it sucks. Am I doing a good enough job? It doesn’t feel like it. I’ll never be adequate enough. I’ll always be falling short on something, or everything.
That’s what it’s like in my head. I’m trying. I’m failing. But I’m not. I’m trying to tell myself I’m not failing. It’s just my head tricking me into thinking I’m not a good mom. I’m a great mom. I wish my head would tell me I’m a great mom instead of pointing it’s finger at everything I’m missing and messing up.
Well, thank you for listening to the rambling of one very anxious, very stressed out, mom.
And happy April, for those of you who don’t know, it’s the month of the military child. So happy April to all those military kids who are resilient, but especially my military kiddos for dealing with me and my whirling brain.
If no one told you today, and you can’t find it in you to tell yourself, like I can’t, you’re doing a great job mama.