I Failed and I Failed and I Failed

The world judges all the time. But perhaps in motherhood failures we are truly finding how to succeed at raising good and healthy kids.

Failure arrived on the blade of a knife slicing across my abdomen after my first child’s heart was nearly stopping in labor. They called it an emergency and tugged him free from my womb while I laid there.

It returned with the inability to feed from my breasts in the days that followed. Failure to latch, they called it, and gave me a silicone device to place on my nipple to help him drink. He still didn’t latch often.

Pumping near exclusively became the third failure. Our lives revolved around whoosh-shooosh of the pump and the liquid gold it pulled from my breasts. When I spilled just-pumped milk one evening days after birth, wasting my son’s only food, I dissolved into tears for my failings. “There’s a reason they say don’t cry over spilled milk,” my unhelpful mother-in-law observed.

When his age was counted still in days, I nicked my baby’s delicate skin while clipping his tiny, sharp nails, a bubble of blood ballooning on his tiny fingertip. I cried again.

I didn’t rotate him in sleep enough. He cried and I didn’t know why. A rash blossomed on his bum, even though I changed him regularly. I supplemented with formula. I fed him solids too soon. I cried more.

I failed and I failed and I failed and I failed.

Failure codified when I dropped my baby off to daycare for the first time, depositing him in the arms of a kind, loving woman who’d care for him while I worked. He was a year old by then — a walking, talking, thinking boy who I was leaving to be raised by someone else.

Or, at least, that’s what they’d have me to believe. Those words — particularly “raised” — had a way of slicing deep. That was their intent.

Along the way, the noise of judgement was extensive. But it was also wrong.

Natural birth is better. Drugs in birth get into the baby’s system. The baby needs to be pushed out, it helps expel things from their body. Breast is best. Just try harder. Try and try and try and try until you get it. Every baby latches if you want them to. You are the protector. You must safeguard them, their little bodies. They are defenseless. A good mother is home for her babies. A good mother doesn’t send them to daycare. A good mother …

It was subtle at times, louder at others. And it was everywhere — in the reactions of nurses when breastfeeding didn’t work, in the faces of women when I talked about returning to work and on the mothering message boards that both provided immeasurable support and judgement.

Later it became a seesaw of statements — I didn’t watch my children closely enough, I watched them too much. I didn’t give them enough freedom, I gave them too much freedom. I didn’t help enough with homework, I helped too much with homework. And again and again and again and again.

Being a mother is being too much and never enough. It’s being judged for everything you do and don’t do and how you do it. It’s being strung up in the web of ancient wives’ tales and the notion that nothing you do is right.

All of it is just lies aimed to keep those who birth down.

Maybe people mean well. But raising a child isn’t a cookie cutter formula and opinions of others are just that — opinions. Ones that are sometimes formed through personal experience, but often formed through uninformed assumptions.

Born alive is best. Fed is best. Cared for is best. A happy mother who can provide for her child is best. Doing your best is best.

Really, that’s all we can do.

As I navigated all those years, trusting my gut in the face of what the world was telling me, I am glad I didn’t bend in the sway. I wasn’t knocked down by the waves of old wives’ tales, judgements and tsks. So many tsks.

It’s been nearly 19 years since a lactation specialist dismissively told me I just needed to keep trying to get my son to feed at the breast. It’s been 17 years since I first left him at daycare. And it’s been at least as many years since I first heard that I wasn’t attentive enough — or perhaps too attentive.

And yet, as I look at my 18-year-old, all I see is perfection. He’s healthy, athletic, smart, loving, caring and honest. He works hard. I don’t have to helicopter around him because he’s able to navigate life on his own.

Clearly all that failing worked wonders.