This weekend my son full on adult threw up for the first time. This might not seem like anything super traumatic, but I only realized it happened after I smelled vomit when I went in to check on him before heading to bed. There he was, sleeping face down in, and covered head to toe in vomit. I was sick to my stomach, not because of the smell, but because of how absolutely horrible and guilty I felt.How could I not have heard this happen? How could I let him sleep like this? I was clearly a bad parent.
I gathered my emotions and woke him up, undressing him and trying to comfort him as I dealt with cleaning up the mess.
I don't talk about it ever on this blog, but my husband's job is away from home for 10 day stretches. I think I don't mention it because I don't really know how to; I'm certainly not a single mom, but half the time I'm doing a lot of things alone. At any rate I'm mentioning it now because, of course, this happened to be an away stretch. Not only was it an away stretch, but it was an extended away stretch as he was supposed to be home the day before, but was asked to stay an extra 5 days. Point being, I was dealing with this difficult situation alone.
I decided to just bring my son into bed with me instead of making up his crib again. This, for future reference, is not the best idea, as he repeatedly got sick all over me and my bed through the night. Also, my son is pretty much the antithesis of a co-sleeper, so he didn't sleep a wink until I pulled our pack 'n play next to the bed around midnight and put him in it. He was getting sick so much I didn't feel comfortable being far from him so I thought this was a pretty good solution.
Needless to say, it was a bad night. Not the worst I'm sure, but hard emotionally and physically. The interesting thing -- the up-side of that really bad parenting moment -- was that I got through it. I pushed on, I cleaned up, I comforted my child, I dealt with it all. This was a new situation for me. I didn't know what to do or how to do it, but I made it work. And you know what? It feels pretty good to know I can figure shit out when I need to.
Don't get me wrong, it certainly doesn't make me eager to experience all the other bad parenting moments to come, but it does give me confidence that when they do, I can handle it. And you can too.
I've had a few of those "bad parent" moments and I'm sure they'll keep happening. I guess if you feel bad about it, it makes you a good parent? It's the folks who don't care are the ones who are the bad ones. I too deal with a husband who is at work a lot. Not for long stretches like you but plenty of alone time and feeling like most of this is on my shoulders. It's scary but empowering at the same time.
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