The Guilt

A lot of my friends are having babies these days, and while my baby days are - thankfully - over, seeing their new ones and hearing of how things are going brings me right back to where we were just a year ago.  Even just looking at pictures from the first few months with Mollie, being a new mom of two, I get heartsick and slightly nauseous remembering all the guilt and pain I felt.  How I thought I was short-changing Baylor.  How I never knew how I could divide my time equally or properly.

I know other moms feel the guilt, whether it be over adding a new baby to the family or even going back to work after your first one, and I thought I might share a little practice that helped me when I was mired in it.  The idea was given to me by my therapist, and though I thought it was a bit silly - even time-consuming and worthless - at the outset, I quickly saw how much it helped.

Every day at the end of the day, write down two things: something good that happened to you and something good that happened to your child.  The something good can be something funny, something happy, something calming ... anything you would describe as "good".  And the good for your child doesn't have to have come directly from you; it can be that he/she had a fun time with a grandparent or that he/she did well at day care.  But write them all down somewhere specific at the end of the day and do it for as long as you need.  As monotonous and simple as it may seem, the writing down part is important, nay, vital to the exercise; when you have a particularly rough day, you'll find it helpful to have all those good things written down to remind you that all is not lost, there are good things afoot.

Though I stopped doing this after I started feeling some relief from my postpartum depression and abatement from the guilt that plagued me, I have thought about starting the exercise back up again.  The twos with Baylor have been trying, and the threes are shaping up to be even more so.  Lately I have been feeling like a bad mommy, an angry mommy, and I need the happy days to return.  So maybe it's time to pick up the pen again and refocus life back to the good.  Remember that I am so incredibly lucky to have the children I have, to have the health we have, and - ultimately - to have the happiness we have so much of the time.

Focusing on all the bad, all the imperfect is so easy.  This little exercise helps.  At least it did for me.  I hope it does for you.