So you drag your tired ass out of bed and go to the kitchen on autopilot. You immediately start your coffee. Because you know, if you don't get that into your body in the next two minutes, it's possible someone could die.
While waiting for the coffee to brew, you turn to the child who is "starving" and start playing the, what do you want for breakfast? game.
Kid: Cake?
You: Sure.
You don't care. It's food, and you want the child to go away so you can drink your coffee and start your day. After all, it's clearly going to be a challenging morning, so you have to do whatever it takes to make it through. Including letting your child have cake for breakfast.
You turn around just in time to realize that the coffee is brewing and you've failed to get the coffee mug under the brewing spout. You laugh out loud in disbelief, then scramble to throw the cup under the coffee maker and begin cleaning up the hot coffee spilling out everywhere. Eventually, it makes its way to the edge of the counter and drips down onto your foot, burning you.
The second the coffee is cleaned up, your husband walks in, looking for coffee and answers as to why your child is having cake for breakfast. Thankfully, the look in your eye is all it takes to answer his questions, and make him go away without another word. (Read: Scared for his life)
You begin making lunches and realize there's no more bread.
At this point, you're trying to figure out how you can get back in bed and have a restart.
The rest of the morning plays out like a horrible experience. You're short with your child, you're short with your husband, lunches are whatever you can find to somehow be enough nutrition to sustain your family through the day, and The song "Isn't Ironic" is looping in your head. Eventually, you feel a headache coming on.
And then finally, somewhere around mid-morning, you fully wake up enough to shake off the morning from hell. Then it hits you like a ton of bricks, guilt.
You start thinking: What a crap morning! I'm a terrible mother... I'm a terrible wife...
Then you spend the rest of the morning feeling terrible. The only thing you can do is promise to devote your life to being the best mother and wife in the whole wide world.
When you pick your child up from school, all you want to do is hug him and tell him how much you love him. After all, surely he is still traumatized from your bad morning.
He climbs in the car, happy as can be to see you, says he loves you too and start telling you about his wonderful day.
He's not even phased by your bad morning. In fact, it's entirely possible the morning wasn't as bad as it felt, it's the mom guilt making it seem much worse.
#MommyFail
In case you're even questioning it, Yes, that was a complete recap of a recent morning I had.
I know bad mornings happen, but now that I'm a mother, they seem a thousand times worse. My pre-mommy days, I could usually shake off a bad morning without anyone noticing, but now that I'm a mother, I have a little guy depending on me every morning.
So why am I telling you this? Because my bad morning helped me have a huge mommy epiphany that I hope will help you too if you need it.
I realized that I am human and bad mornings happen. And the only thing that makes it a truly bad morning is me dwelling on it for way too long.
This realization has been huge for me. I like to think I'm growing as a mother and learning to accept that I can't constantly be "on," which, doesn't make me a bad mother. Striving for superhuman perfect mother standards is ridiculous. Bad days happen. Bad lunches happen. Bad bedtimes happen. Bad shit happens, parent or not. The sooner I get over it, move on and let it go, the better. And that goes for just about everything!
The next time you have a bad morning or moment, don't beat yourself up. Everyone has bad days. Even mommies and daddies.