Sometimes I Feel Like a Bad Mom

Sometimes I feel like a bad mom.

Like when my daughter comes home from daycare and her hair has been redone into a perfect ponytail that looks about 100 times better than the ponytail I sent her off with in the morning. 

Or when I’m picking my son up from preschool and the other kids are wearing hats and mittens for the 20-yard dash to the car and my kid is in a light unzipped jacket.

Sometimes I feel like a bad mom when my daughter crawls into our bed at 4:30am and I’m too tired to move her back to her own room even though I know I’m becoming a pushover.

Sometimes I feel like a bad mom when my son says “Mommy, stop looking at your phone” while we are playing cars.

Because sometimes playing cars is boring.

There, I said it.

Sometimes I feel like a bad mom when I’m on an airplane, watching Bad Moms, and I haven’t been with my kids for two days.

Even if I FaceTimed with them five times. Even if I was in Florida for my grandmother’s birthday that weekend. Even if I talked about my kids the whole time.

I have felt guilty for not making homemade banana bread for my kids and feeding them packaged granola bars. Then I’ve felt guilty for making homemade banana bread because it meant I wasn’t playing hide and seek.

And then I ate the rest of the chocolate chips that were supposed to go in the banana bread, because feelings…

It’s an uphill battle. Feeling like you’re not doing a good enough job.

Or that good enough isn’t good enough because it’s not great. 

But I’m theirs. They are mine.

And even if I didn’t love the newborn stage, or I haven’t knitted them a single item of clothing, or I didn’t buy an 8X10 of their school picture because it was just okay, or I don’t know what I am doing 95% of the time, that fact is not changing. 

So sometimes I feel like a bad mom. But all the time I feel like their mom. I carry their hearts in my heart.

Always, forever, and the best way I know how. 

Maybe that’s good enough. Maybe it’s even great.

Read More Posts on Motherhood:

Thank You to the Moms Who Have Gone First

Giving Up the Glider, and Learning to Let Go

Two Under Two is No Joke, But It’s Hilarious

Photography by Lyndsay Hannah Photography