Mom Guilt

Dear Sarah,
You got me sick. Ok we will call it 50/50 because you were sick first and then I kissed all over your sweet rosy cheeks and gave you lip smackers to make you giggle through the crumminess. I voluntarily put myself in the line of fire and got shot... with snot.

Anyway, as I sit here surrounded by tissues, huffing Afrin like an addict I think of you and how this is the second time in your short life that you are sick.

You have been here since June 3rd and you came out jaundice which meant billi blanket time, then late August you had a viral bit of everything, but just a touch, nothing full blown. Now here we are late September and we are back to sucking out your nose using the torture device known as the ball syringe. Having to hold your head still as you scream and try so hard to turn your head away, kills me.

This leads me to the common feeling every mom feels...mom guilt.

Its a bitch (don't repeat that).

I feel a pang of guilt with every sniffle that I didn't do enough to initiate  breast feeding. We all know what they say, breast feeding is the END ALL BE ALL for your little life to be a happy, healthy one and never in my wildest dreams did I think that I wasn't going to be able to. I joked around with your equally ample chested Aunt Julie that I have been lugging these mammoths around since I was nine and would be PISSED (again don't repeat that) if they didn't work.

Well, it just didn't work out.

You were so tiny and needed to eat to maintain your weight and help fight the jaundice and my milk was taking its sweet time coming in. No matter how many times I tried to nurse you, no matter how many times I got up in the night to pump, no matter how much skin to skin time with you I had, none of it mattered.

I cried, a lot when I knew it wasn't going to happen. I already felt like a HORRIBLE mother.

I came to terms a while ago and, thankfully the guilt on the breast feeding matter has subsided for the most part.

But then today I was flipping through some blogs and one really made me feel the mom guilt.

They, the proverbial they, all say that you do everything with with your first and the "everything" dwindles with each child.

Well.... crap

Let's see you didn't get maternity pics, you didn't get new born shots, you didn't get a finished nursery, you didn't get birth announcements. You got iphone shots and bare walls, everything with you was rushed and done with the mind set "What is the quickest and easiest way". I hate this. You are the first born, and we should be savoring this time as a family of 3, not rushing through it looking for a short cut.

I mean I am trying to not be to hard on myself because who's fault was it that you were 5 weeks early?

But seriously, don't take it personally if your little brother or sister gets all this stuff.

We just knew to do it early.

Here is to my new motto "treat every moment as a chance to make a memory"

Love you more than "they" know,
Mom

When it happens

Dear Sarah,
When you are older we will have the "Talk" but for right now let me tell you this:

When you are, and how do I put this without being crass, surfing the crimson wave (note to self, watch Clueless with Sarah when she is old enough to love it) and on a hormonal war path, your taste buds are also raging a war of their own. A battle between your insatiable need to have something salty and sweet.

This will be one of your hardest lessons in self control and food combinations.

Love,
 your currently eating candy pumpkins and Doritos shame filled Mom

Not going to be the last time I talk about poop

Dear Sarah,
Last night your father wasn't having a good night but the cherry on top was when he stepped in poop.

Your poop.

I know! Complete shocker right?!

We still have no idea how he accomplished such a task, we have determined through theory alone that while changing you before bed the turd fell out of the diaper, his explanation.

My explanation involves your Dad flinging the diaper around in some type of celebratory manner. This was quickly shot down.

Still mind boggling, but you decided which to believe.

It was sticky, and not easily wiped off.

I made him wash his foot before getting in to bed, I am not ashamed of this. I change your diaper and know that stench can not be quelled by wipe alone.

You laughed at me laughing at him.

Happy to make you giggle.

Love,
Mom

Dear Sarah

Ok so I have this problem, I always talk about you, or want to always talk about you.

Obsessive I know, but that is just what happens when you have a kid.

In my head I just said "that's as cute as you" but I refrained.... Be cool mom, be cool.

Be cool? Yeah right, I have carved a place out specifically for the subject of you on the world wide web...

Anyway, I thought it would be nice if I wrote you letters, just little tid bits here and there to tell you what what life was like in your early days, when I wiped your butt.

I know you may stumble upon this little blog someday in horror that I would share such intimate details of your life. That's why I am starting now, you are too young to protest. HIGH MOM FIVE!

I hope someday you can look back at these letters, maybe when you have your own little one, and see the humor and unrelenting love I have for you.

Someday.

Love,
Mom