Pardon my french...but something really horrible happened on my recent trip to the U.K. We were staying at a friend's house that wasn't baby proofed and my 13 month old son fell down an entire flight of steep non-carpeted stairs.
The baby and I were upstairs and I was packing our things to leave the house. I saw him make a break for the door/stairs and went to snatch him up. Before I knew it, he had slipped and I was watching him bounce like a rag doll down the stair case. It was terrifying. I screamed. The entire thing felt slow motion. I ran to the bottom of the stairs and picked up his limp body immediately. I didn't want to look at him. I held his little body terrified and crying believing that if I were to look at him, I would find him close to death and his face looking battered.
I must have been in shock. My partner encouraged me to assess him. I looked at his face...only a mild scratch on the forehead. I poked and prodded other areas of his body for tenderness/reaction...nothing. After about 10 minutes of just being in my arms, he was down and walking around like normal. I spent the rest of the day watching him and even had him nap on my chest in the carrier. But besides some possible dead brain cells from the tumble...my child was completely OK.
I share this story with you because I've realized with small children things can go wrong VERY quickly. If you're alone raising a child or have multiples, you literally can't be everywhere at once. As parents, we try our best to protect our little ones from all harm but sometimes we fail. Failure is a part of parenting. It's part of life.
I spent most of that day in self judgement. I let the naughty little voice in my head run rampant. Telling myself what a horrible mother I was. Listing all the ways the incident could have been prevented and how stupid I was for not closing the bedroom door. Maybe some of you reading this are in agreement with that voice...judging me for my mistake. But many of you also have experienced such traumas. Dropping babies, scolding them with hot water, finding them choking on food, falling down with sharp objects...the list could go on for miles. Being fully responsible for another human being's life is no joke. Especially one that has no concept of the laws of physics!
The point in me sharing this humbling story with you, wasn't so you could judge me. It was to remind you all of our humanness. That we are each doing the best we can at any given moment. Some moments are better than others but we are trying. To remind you to stop giving the stink eye to parents who you think are doing a piss poor job at parenting and instead offer them some help and support. It's no joke when they say it takes a village to raise a child.
More often than not what a parent needs is help. They don't need the kind of help where you tell them all the ways that they're doing it wrong or how you would do it. They need help making time for themselves so that their cup is full. They need personal time to relax and replenish. They need someone to ask how they are doing when "sh*t goes wrong" because more often then not they are equally as traumatized by the experience as the child.
The essence of being human is that none of us are perfect. When you become a parent, I feel like that lesson slaps you in the face over and over. The practice is forgiving yourself, learning from the experience, and trying to be better next time.
Here's to all all the times that things will go wrong, we pick up the pieces and keep moving forward. Here's to being human!
With so much love,
xoxo
Nancy
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