Even Good Mamas Have Ugly Days

So, I'm feeling particularly crabby today. I usually don't write when I'm crabby (other than in my journal) because I like to focus on the positive things in life. It helps me stay optimistic, for the most part, to keep the crabby days to myself.

But a couple of friends have suggested that I share some of those hard times, the crabby days, on this blog as well. Because -- lets face it-- crabby days are part of parenthood. And when we don't share the crabby days, we give the impression that we don't have them. And when it seems like no one else has crabby days, we start to think we're the only "bad mom" out there, and it can get pretty depressing.

So since I'm not really crabby for a good reason today (hence no juicy story to go with the bad mood), I dug out an old rant I wrote about two years ago when Owen was just turning four and Eli was a baby. I sat down and wrote it in my moments of AAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! and have not edited it, so its pretty raw emotion.

But hopefully re-reading it will help me snap out of my funk and enjoy the sunny day. Here goes.

September 3, 2007

I want to be a good mom. I think I am a good mom. But some days I lose it. Today was one of those days. I hate it when I feel like this. I hate it when I talk so meanly to my kids. I hate feeling like I don’t want to hold my baby or when I feel like hurting my 4 year old’s feelings on purpose. That’s not the kind of mom I want to be. That’s not the kind of person I want to be.

I’m embarrassed because I’m sure my neighbors can hear me when I yell at the kids. But they don’t hear me when I’m being a good mom. I feel like I need to knock on their doors and explain myself. Tell them that if they had kids, they’d understand. But they don’t, and they won’t. Or maybe they would, but it doesn’t matter.

When I’m in my moments of rage, when I’ve lost complete control of my temper, I can feel the good part of me trying to surface, trying to speak words of reason to the out-of-control woman who has lost her cool. But I push her back down where I can’t hear her. I don’t even let her message be articulated. I know she’s right. I know that I need to roll with it. That it’s no big deal if the baby doesn’t get his nap. That it’s too much to expect a 4 year old to leave me alone while I’m in the room with the door closed trying to get the baby to sleep. That I don’t need to heap shame upon a child because I gave up on the baby’s nap.

But I was disappointed. I wanted to have one-on-one time with my son while my other son slept. I wanted to bake his birthday cake. The one I couldn’t bake yesterday, on his actual birthday, because the baby was sick. Couldn’t he see this time was supposed to be for him? That he had to leave me alone so I could spend time with him later?

I feel deflated. I feel like a failure. I know there are times like this, and that even good moms yell at their kids sometimes. But I thought I was bigger than this. I thought I had become a patient, flexible, empathetic person. Its times like these I feel like the person I used to be.

Not that I was a bad person before, but I definitely feel that I have become a better person since having children. And those traits I was so happy to outgrow reared their ugly heads today. I guess I need to recognize that they’re always there, lurking, waiting for a chance to surface. My impatience, my temper, my illogical demand for control of the uncontrollable will always be challenges I struggle with.

But I guess for now I work from where I’m at. As my 4 year old said to me so matter-of-factly this morning as I sulked in the rocking chair, “Don’t you wish you could start over? Everybody does sometimes. But we can’t.”

So I will take a deep breath. Let the morning roll off my back like water. And I’ll move on from here. When the boys wake up I’m going to give them big hugs and apologize for being so crabby and mean. Even good mamas have ugly days.