Growing Up Catholic

One of the, dare I say, many unfortunate by-products of growing up Catholic, is that you feel guilty about everything. You feel a constant need to confess.

All the time.

It NEVER GOES AWAY!

When you become a parent, you also feel guilty. All of the time.

It

DOES

NOT

STOP!

So when you combine the two, you end up with a guilt overload. It's like crashing two atoms together and creating your own guilt universe. Everything you don't do perfectly becomes a catastrophe, everything you think and want for yourself is a terribly selfish thing, and you feel like you should simply go to your room and hide, or beg for forgiveness, or cry, or say sorry, or do all of those all at the same time!

Today is one of those days where I would give almost anything for someone to take my daughter for the day, simply so I can sleep for longer than 2 hours at a stretch and regain a sense of sanity. But even the fact that I am thinking that makes me feel like a horrible mother. No, a horrible PERSON, akin to a hun, or Stalin, or Sauron, or Darth Vader.

Thinking these thoughts makes me feel...

..Guilty.

These days where I wished this disappeared for a while, but now have returned with a vengeance. I'm really not sure why. Perhaps it's because my shoulders and back are aching from looking down at and holding a feeding baby for hours a day. Maybe it's because I'm so run down, I feel like I have been on the brink of having the flu for two weeks now and am waking up in-between night feeds with headaches and runny noises. Or perhaps it's to do with the increasing episodes of Mummy guilt over things I'm doing wrong, and encroaching anxiety as I realise how I truly could not cope if something unspeakable did happen.

At ten weeks, these are some valuable lessons I have learnt.

1. Cutting baby fingernails is a next to impossible and extremely dangerous endeavour. Best to mitten up their little hands or bite the nails while they are feeding. But even that can lead to disaster and screaming and GUILT.
2. The old wives tale (and popular opinion on 'the natural parent' facebook page and numerous mummy forums online) that breast milk will cure sticky eye (and all manner of other ailments) is a lie. In fact, it can make them much, much worse and you will end up feeling extreme GUILT when you do go to the doctor and they ask if that is what you have done. 
3. Going to the doctor is free for under 5's, even after hours. I feel GUILTY that I waited till sunday to take her, when I should have taken her on friday. I should have been more proactive.
4. Don't pick a baby up with one hand. This can lead to falling babies, babies knocking heads on things, screaming babies and extreme GUILT for you.
5. Babies don't always let you know when they need a new nappy. You have to remember to check and change them. If you don't remember and suddenly it's been 6 hours and when you do check they are really in need of a new one, guess what, you will feel very GUILTY!
6. Always have a cloth over your shoulder. Ironically, I don't have one there right now. Failing to do this wont make you feel guilty. It will just make you more washing.
7. Babies need to be entertained. They need "stimulation". They need it from you. If you are however, only getting about 5 hours maximum of broken sleep each night, then you will feel GUILTY for not being enthusiastic about this, and instead wishing that your baby would just go to sleep.

So, here I am, feeling like I am a horrendously lazy mother. Clearly I don't care or love my child enough because all I want to do is sleep. I don't want to spend the next hour repeating silly baby noises and poking her nose and forcing myself to smile and laugh because it makes her smile back occasionally. I want to sleep. 

And so here I am. Typing this. Feeling overwhelmingly

...Guilty.