“The x-ray results are in. Your son has a fractured skull.”
Hearing those words from the doctor hit me like a freight train. It shouldn’t have been a shock—my son’s head was swelling, a clear sign that something was wrong. Staring at the ominous line on the x-ray, I felt a wave of nausea wash over me.
We were in this situation because I dropped my son.
The day had started like any other, filled with the usual mix of messy diapers, toddler giggles, and scattered goldfish crackers. While rushing to the bathroom to clean dead ladybug guts off my 1-year-old’s hands, the unimaginable happened. The little boy who was comfortably resting on my hip suddenly transformed into an acrobat, tumbling backward and hitting the ground with a sickening thud. His anguished scream filled the room, and dread settled in my stomach.
That evening was spent squeezed onto a narrow hospital bed, surrounded by the beeping of heart monitors. Next to me lay my son, now dressed in a yellow gown, his little skull misshapen from the accident. I couldn’t close my eyes; every moment was a reminder of my failure as a mother. Guilt flooded over me.
I felt like the world’s worst mom. I deserved every judgmental stare and whisper. After all, what kind of mother drops her child? I was meant to protect him, yet I had let him down.
But as I lay in that hospital room, I listened to the sounds around me: a baby crying next door, refusing to eat for 24 hours; a boy needing a blood transfusion; a feverish toddler in a daze. It dawned on me that this unfortunate event didn’t define my motherhood. Accidents happen; life unfolds in unpredictable ways.
As mothers, we often heap blame on ourselves. In the wake of accidents, guilt can be overwhelming. Why didn’t we see this coming? Why couldn’t we have stopped it? But one-time mishaps do not turn us into “bad” parents. If they did, there would be no “good” parents left in the world.
During our hospital stay, the medical staff reassured us that they encounter such incidents frequently. I had braced myself for scornful lectures about how I should have held him tighter. Instead, when I broke down in front of a nurse, she smiled gently and revealed, “I dropped my daughter on concrete when she was a few months old.”
It happens. Not the most comforting phrase, yet it reminded me that I wasn’t alone in my struggles.
Parenting is a journey filled with ups and downs. We can’t shield our children from every danger; despite our best efforts, mishaps will occur. Kids will get sick, they will get hurt—these are inherent parts of growing up. In these moments, we can choose to drown in guilt over what we could have prevented or embrace the lessons learned. Every stumble teaches us to cherish the fleeting moments, the laughter, the snuggles, and the smiles.
There will always be times when we wish we could rewind and do things differently. Nights will come when we cry ourselves to sleep, feeling like failures.
But remember: just because you feel like a bad mother doesn’t mean it’s true.
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Summary
This article reflects on the guilt and struggles of motherhood, particularly after an accidental injury to a child. It emphasizes that accidents are a part of parenting and that feeling like a bad mother doesn’t define one’s capabilities as a parent.