At the moment I am suffering the hugest bout of Mother Guilt ever. And it's crippling me. I want to do everything for my children, everything they need and I find myself paralysed. I don't know where to begin. I worked so hard with Liam when he was first diagnosed. I burnt myself out in that first year. There was so much to focus on... his mobility (starting with rolling over... still can only just do that now), his muscle length and strength, his eating, his talking/communication, his hand play, his sitting, his drooling. Amongst this I had to make sure everything else was running smoothly including my diabetes.. I decided after a year of Liam crying and screaming through therapy sessions that I needed to be more gentle on Liam and myself. But this has come back to haunt me.. I was having a conversation with a lady about Liam and where he is at. She asked how he was mobility wise and I said he still isn't mobile yet. She responded with "How strange, I mean there's that boy R.... that was only crawling when we first met him and now look at him walking everywhere". I was floored. Was she implying that if I did more therapy with Liam he would be walking by now??? (Besides the fact the 2 boys have totally different diagnoses) I felt sick to the stomach. I panicked and thought yes maybe if I ignored Liam's cries and pushed him every day and forgot about my own life and my own needs, that maybe, just maybe he would be walking today.... Then I realised that this is a futile thought pattern. And also if I had done that we would actually be a miserable family with a child that can walk (or might not walk.. you can never know). Besides my main goal was and still is for Liam to be able to communicate everything thats in his mind. A goal that I think is very realistic and we will focus on for as long as we need to. Famous singer/songwriter/musician Neil Young also dealt with these struggles with his son Ben who has the same diagnosis as Liam, here is an interview and it's 2nd part I read that comforted me and had me in tears at the same time.
My mother guilt will always be there, it will just peak and trough over time, as most mums feel it and have moments where they question how they have been as a parent to their children, whether they could do better and so on. Yes it's normal, but it's not productive if you end up just sitting there staring into space thinking about it.
Now I have three children, each with their own definate individual needs and some of those needs are conflicting to the other 2. I realise the enormity of my task as being the best mum I can be to my 'three muskateers' and this has me quite anxious and as I said before it renders me paralysed at times. I am thinking maybe I need to let myself be paralysed for a moment and do that crying thing people keep telling is so good for the soul hahahaha. And then I can pick myself up, dust myself off and rock this!!
No comments:
Post a Comment