BrandiBlog

There’s this weird phenomenon that women experience pretty much the second that they find out that they are going to become a mother. And it continues, for quite conceivably, the rest of that woman’s life. It’s called “Mama Guilt”.

Mama Guilt is essentially this overwhelming sense of guilt that makes a woman feel like every single decision or action that she makes will somehow scar her child for life. Here is an example of my progression of Mama Guilt:

1) The day I found out I was pregnant–15 seconds after seeing the second purple line on my home pregnancy test, I thought to myself, “Oh my god, I drank like a fish two weeks ago. What if I’ve caused my baby to have fetal alcohol syndrome???!!!!”

2) Six weeks into the pregnancy– Morning sickness kicked in and I couldn’t tolerate consuming much more than Taco Bell tostadas and Jolly Rancher candies. I became convinced that, “I am going to kill this baby from junk food malnutrition.”

3) 18 weeks into the pregnancy–I went in for my ultrasound to find out the sex of my baby. During the ultrasound, the technician spotted a couple of small cysts on the baby’s brain. I tell myself, “Oh my god, my baby is going to have Down’s Syndrome because I smoked all of that weed in my 20’s.

4) 32 weeks into the pregnancy–I started having trouble with my blood pressure and wound up on bed-rest for the remainder of my pregnancy. I thought, “My baby is going to die from pre-eclampsia symptoms because I ate too many pickle-flavored shave ice from Bahama Bucks.”

5) Two days after childbirth–My son suffered from terrible jaundice and had to stay in NICU for 4 days. I assumed, “His jaundice is because I couldn’t feed him enough since I suck at breastfeeding and my boobs are duds that are obviously for aesthetics instead of function.”

And so the Mama Guilt goes. Baby cries all night, Mama Guilt tells you it’s your fault because you don’t know more than the first verse to Bette Middler’s “The Rose”. Baby gets a rash and Mama Guilt tells you it’s because you bought the off-brand of baby detergent instead of the $20/bottle name brand stuff. Baby won’t eat green beans and Mama Guilt tells you that it’s because you never ate any when you were pregnant. Mama Guilt is a powerful entity that makes formerly-sane women think that every single little thing that goes on in raising another human being is somehow HER fault.

I’d like to be able to say that Mama Guilt goes away once the children “grow up”. However, watching my 83 year old grandmother agonize over the actions of my 55 year old father and say to me, “I think it’s because I didn’t kiss him enough when he was a baby,” makes me realize that Mama Guilt is unavoidable. I guess we’re just wired that way.

Next time around, I am SO being a man.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 11:31 am and is filed under Family, Life, Motherhood. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.