mama guilt

There is nothing worse than the feeling that you didn't do enough or could have done something differently. That mama guilt has been eating at me for the last few months.  Back in December, something happened.  Something terrible that I've tried to forget and move on from.  

I was rushing down the stairs carrying Samuel and I fell.  And as I fell, I dropped my sweet baby boy.  Typing that brings tears to my eyes, a tightness in my chest, and conjures images of him falling head over heels just out of my reach.  I can't describe how I felt in the moment.  It's like time stopped.  I think I was screaming and he was quiet.  When I got to him, he looked at me with his big grey eyes and cried and cried.  I was frantic.  Hysterical.  Repeating over and over "I can't believe I dropped him."  And the guilt started to hit me.  Why couldn't I have slowed down?   Why didn't I hold onto him?  All these whys and what-I-should-have-dones.

It swallowed me in the days following.  I was adrift, drowning.  It took a full month before I could carry him up or down the stairs, tears streaming down my face and holding my breath.  And it still hasn't left me.  It's always in the back of my mind.  Every time I stumble, or have to stop at the top of the stairs.  My heart is still in my throat when I'm holding him and clutching the railing, praying that we make it to the bottom together.  

Thank God Samuel was fine.  He had stayed curled in a little ball as he fell, protecting himself when I couldn't.  At the hospital, he was playing and looking for his sisters and nursing.  His usual beautiful self.  And he came out of it without a single bruise.  Proof to me that we have a guardian angel who held my boy above those hard wooden stairs and laid him gently on the landing at the bottom.

I'm not sure what to do about the mama guilt, that nagging what-could-have-been feeling.  Some days, I can't believe he still trusts me to hold him safe and some days I realize I've gone all day without thinking about it.  So I'm putting it here, giving it a place outside of me, and freeing myself from a little bit of the guilt.  And I hope that other mamas are able to do the same, to let go of at least a little bit of that mama guilt and move on.