Who Are You And What Have You Done With My Child?

Someone must be playing a joke on me. A really freaking awesome joke! 

For the past 3 days my child has been (relatively) amazing! Like who are you? Where is my whiny baby? Omg parenthood is actually fun baby!

I seriously forgot what it was like to have a baby who I actually liked/loved to be around all day long. Don't get me wrong, we have had plenty of happy moments over the past few weeks but the truth is they haven't been lasting long enough to get me through the day. I was at my wits end pondering going back to work when all of a sudden on Tuesday things just clicked and I was happily reminded of how much I love being home with my little man. 

I'm not sure what happened, and I don't want to jinx it too much by trying to uncover the source. My best guess is that prior to this week we have just had a really bad month. Really bad. Between the stomach flu, severe teething, and traveling for thanksgiving we have just not been clicking (understatement of the year). My little man has been so whiny, so needy, and just so unhappy all the time. I have been convinced that this was my fault. That there was something that I was not doing. That I was the cause of his constant despair. That guilt has been driving me insane, more so than I even realized. A lot of these emotions came to fruition yesterday when I was having lunch with my bestest yummy mummy friends. I explained how I was feeling and I was amazed to find that I am not the only one. That we all feel like this, at one time for another. 

I always think my child is the difficult one, or that I am the one who is not able to handle it. I realize everyone has these feelings at one time or another and we just don't talk about the bad times as much as we talk about the good. I have been feeling like such a failure and then Tuesday rolled around and it was like this past month never existed. All of a sudden the teeth were through and the man was happy to be home. It was over. We were best friends again. He amazingly couldn't smile enough. The best part, the separation anxiety was gone overnight. Like completely gone. When daddy came home Wednesday the little man wanted nothing to do with me. Nothing. As odd as this seems that was the best feeling in the world. We have spent the past few months literally attached and now we are breathing again. Separately, and God it feels good.

I don't know how long this euphoria will last and I know over the next 18 years we are bound to have bad months (even years) so I am going to try to remember that there will be an end to every bad spell. Whatever is going on, it can only go up from there. 

I recognize that I am a extreme perfectionist but I am realizing that I have to accept that there is no such thing as a perfect child, and there is definitely no such thing as the perfect mother. 

Someone said motherhood is the toughest job in the world. They weren't kidding were they?