Confessions of a Bad Mother

Image credit: Photo by Jill Greenseth on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

I have a secret. I have been grieving over my children since, at times, before they were even born. Now that's not the way it's supposed to be, is it? I'm a mama, and mamas are supposed to be joy and love and acceptance for our whole lives long, from the moment of conception onward. At least, good mamas are. If we have expectations that aren't met, we're supposed to toss them out for all we do have, without a hint of regret; we're not to pack them away gently in the box with the baby clothes, stored in the attic because we can't quite bear to part with them yet.

My lowest moments in parenting -- the ones I want to stuff away in shame and never let my children or the world see -- are the ones where I couldn't accept that my children were themselves rather than my vision of them. They're the times I grieve the loss of what never was, and now go on to grieve the grieving.

My son Austen was only a few weeks old when I held the Worst Mother in History awards ceremony and handed myself the trophy. The qualifying event took place around 2 or 3 a.m. when my son was just a few weeks old. (No one else made it to the ceremony at that hour, but that was ok; I had no competition -- I never do -- since I am always running against myself, beating my previous lows. Those imagined, perfect other moms don't get to run.) Unlike other babies -- the TV babies, the parenting book babies, the babies with good moms who did things right -- my son wouldn't sleep anywhere but in my bed next to my body, which my (ex) pediatrician said was BAD and DANGEROUS.

So, on the night of my first worst moment as a parent, I nursed him for what felt like the two hundredth time and gently placed him in his bassinet for the two hundredth time, only to have him scream like the fuzzy warm blankets were full of blood-burning fire scorpions, the same way he had every single time I'd tried this for the twenty or thirty nights in a row. And that scream broke me. Bone tired and viciously angry, I picked him up roughly, looked him straight in his tiny screaming face and whispered, with venom and hatred in my voice, "You are a bad baby!" Oh. My. God. What was I saying? Was I insane? I was berating a tiny baby for... Being a baby. I broke down crying in exhaustion and shame, took him into the BAD, DANGEROUS bed, and was silently grateful that he was too tiny to see that I had been disappointed in him. Already. At a few weeks old.

When Austen was a year old, we went to a mama and baby music class. Now that's the kind of thing good mamas do, right? There I was, enriching my child's mind already at one. But he was having none of it. A class full of toddlers is never a model of disciplined attention, but even here I could see he was... different. He didn't have any interest in the bright, perky teacher or the other kids or even the musical instruments, which used to make him flinch and frown. He'd wander away from the circle where everyone else was engaged and stand staring out the window. I'd try to coax him back, thinking, "Why can't you be like the others? What am I doing wrong?" I was so traumatized by the feeling of something off, that we didn't sign up for another session.

A year later, when he still wasn't speaking and psychologists and therapists were starting, amidst a battery of tests, to whisper the word "autism," we tried a Gymboree class. "He needs to work on socializing with other children," they said. Again, there were all the other kids, enraptured at story time, while my son crawled through the same tunnel over and over and over again, alone. I'd get in the car, strap him into his car seat and sob quietly over the steering wheel, not wanting him to see that he'd disappointed me again before he'd even reached the age of three. And again, when the session ended, I couldn't bear to go back, but by that time it was clear he needed more than a Gymboree class anyway.

It was around this time that I found out I was pregnant with my daughter Janie. I was a little late and had been feeling a little queasy, so I took a home pregnancy test. My husband and I wanted a second child, eventually, but right then we were completely overwhelmed by Austen's needs. We weren't planning a pregnancy and had been using birth control. I took the test: thinking it would set my mind at ease, but fearing it would not. When that second line came up to indicate I was pregnant I sobbed, big heaving sobs of sorrow, the kind a mama is never supposed to sob when she finds out she's carrying the precious little life she's going to love and cherish. Already, before she was born, Janie disappointed me. Just by being. Being at the wrong time. I didn't feel worthy to be her mother.

I love Austen. He brings a richness and beauty to my life that wouldn't have been there if he had been the child I expected. So I don't want to admit that there was ever even a moment when I didn't love and cherish him exactly as he was, when I wanted something different, when I wanted him without the autism and his sensory issues I hadn't planned or expected. I love Janie. She's brought joy to my life that I couldn't have imagined. So I don't want to admit there was ever even a moment when I didn't want her at all or at least not when she happened to come. I don't want to admit that I had to grieve Austen's autism or grieve Janie's conception before I could arrive at the love and acceptance mamas are supposed to give as naturally as breathing. Yet I did. Shh! Don't tell anyone.