Mama Guilt

Hi Quinn,

So, this morning I am feeling a bit of mama guilt. I am having a stressful semester with my microbiology class and I have noticed more and more that my patience is thinner and thinner and I am much more quickly to react in anger than I would like to towards you. All I can think of are my exasperated replies to your questions and requests and I feel so bad about it.

For example, last night you once again wanted to sleep in our bed. I do not sleep well with you in the bed because you are a bed hog and basically crowd me and push me out of the bed. That and you keep talking. At 4am when you have to get up at 6am is not my idea of a grand old time. I reacted with anger since I was tired and when you woke at 4am hungry ( you are going through a growth spurt again and are always hungry) I told you to go back to sleep. You then started crying of being hungry. This is after I had been fighting you for bed space all night long. At the time it was just easier to let you stay in our bed then to fight you and listened to the crying melt down fit at 12am. I got you you some crackers and water since you would not stop about being hungry but  then angrily spat out at you that I was "so freaking tired of this crap" and that I was going into the other room to sleep since you were taking up all the room in the bed. I left you and daddy to sleep in our bed and slept on the futon for the rest of the night.

Now all I can think about is how you will only be little for such a short time. How I probably have been sounding like an angry mama all the time, and how you only want to be next to me, which you wont want to forever, so I should enjoy you as you are while I can. I have not been patient with you at all, and when you are asking repetitive questions and telling me things over and over like "I don't like dinner! I want PJB!" The whole time from the time I pick you up at daycare and tell you what is for dinner through the time I am trying to cook dinner in 15 min before having to rush off to a 4 hour class within 20 minutes after that after already working all day.  It is just so hard to keep a perspective of your fleeting childhood when I am under stress. I hate the mom I become in those situations. Then when I have time to reflect on it, like now, I am utterly consumed with guilt. I know I am only human, and I also know that even after all this thought that tonight I will TRY my hardest to remember what I have just wrote here, but inevitably I will be less than patient and become that mom that I hate becoming. I also hate the fact that I purposely went to college right after high school and got a degree so that I would not be in this situation right now, only to still find myself a working, going back to school mom. Sometimes life just does not work out the way you had planned out. But I will do what I have to because I want to make sure that you are always taken care of.

I know you are my little love bug and forgive me always and that breaks my heart even more when I am the stressed out mom. I just can't shake the feeling that I am damaging you in some small way when I act in anger/stress. I just want you to know that even though I get frustrated, I still love you with all my heart and I am going to try really hard to think about what I do and say, even if I know that it is impossible to be perfect.

I love you SO much,
XOXOXO
~Mama~