So as you may know, Emmeline has been quite sick these last few weeks, fist with diarrhea and then with unexplained fever. However before all of this, she has had about 5 colds in her very short life span. I remember the first cold that she got at 2 months old, it broke my heart. Since then, she has had one every month more or less. At first I thought nothing of it, but by these last few days, I started to suffer from a bad case of mommy guilt. Why was my baby getting sick so often? I started to ask myself what I was doing wrong. What could I do to make it better? I know other people with babies al around the same age and none of their babies appear to get sick as often as Emmeline, so why us? It is more than just the fact that my poor little noodle gets sick so often. The problem is that every time she gets sick, all of our steps forward go backwards! We had started on solids, but the minute Emmeline got sick, she started to scream every time we had to eat. She had also started to sleep a little better, more deeply and wake up less, but she gets sick and suddenly she is waking up every 1 - 2 hours again. I felt like we were being hindered by every cold! I had been planning on taking her swimming for ages, but just as I got all the information together and had bought her hat and costume, she got sick, and then sick again, so we still haven’t been! Then I heard from my sister that she had taken my little nephew Zack swimming. I felt such a pang of envy!
All my mommy guilt and sleep deprivation started out build up making me feel worse and worse and feel like I was doing something wrong until today when I woke up in a total slump. We had a bad sleep last night with Emmeline waking every 2 hours just whinging. I felt exhausted. We did breakfast but she wasn’t being the easiest eater and in the end I literally threw the bowl in the sink and went for the easy option of breastfeeding her so save ourselves a little fight. Xavi works 6 days a week, so I am with Emmeline a lot obviously! And whilst I always knew that having a baby was not easy and whilst I knew about the sleepless nights, crying and nappy changing, I did not realise how exhausting t was looking after a sick baby. You have to give your everything because they demand nothing less. They feel like crap and they want you to either make it better or they want you to be around them all the time as that makes them feel better even though they are still sick.
I decided to do what everyone does when in doubt, I googled "why is my baby always sick" and I stumbled upon a forum of other mommies talking about why their babies always got sick. Reading one mommies post made me cry because it made me realise that I am not alone and that I wasn’t doing anything wrong . There are other babies who also seem to get cold after cold after cold! It wasn’t just me! The forum commented that even though I was exclusively breastfeeding my noodle and that is the best immunity for her, I was only giving her my immunity, and so if I didn’t have too much immunity against colds, well I have nothing to give Emmeline. It made sense! They also mentioned that if there were older children in the house, they could be carriers of the various cold viruses. This also made sense! We have yaincoa every other week, and due to his mothers total lack of care of her child, he has had one cough or the other for weeks now and as much as I ask him to try to look after himself a bit better, he is only 8, and so I don’t think that I will make much headway there. But whilst he does have a cough, he doesn’t always have a cold. But he may be a carrier.
I suddenly felt a bit better, this made sense and there were other mommies whose babies also seemed to get colds all the time, I wasn't doing anything wrong! I looked over at the little cupcake sitting next to me on the sofa and scooped her up showering her with kisses!! New mommy guilt is a powerful thing and I think one that will stay with me throughout Emmeline’s entire life. I am sure that I will always feel guilty about something and wonder if I could be doing more/better for her. I think that that is good; it is what helps us to strive to be better mothers. I think of the wicked witch (Yaincoa’s mother) and how she is convinced that eh is doing the best for yaincoa (and therefore does nothing more) and how nothing could be further from the truth. If she suffered the same mommy guilt she would be doing so much more for that little boy. I think of all the mommies like me who suffer from mommy guilt and I think we are on the right track, and that by feeling this guilt, we will always try to do more for our babies. They deserve it; they deserve the best we can do and more!
