Motherhood = Fear, constant fear.

I am currently in the attic.  That's where I  usually am at night, because it's our fantastic bedroom with lots of cozy places to sleep, relax, and blog of course.

My son is currently sleeping in a bedroom downstairs.   If I were to walk down the stairs, walk out the door that separates the attic from the hallway, and take an immediate right, he is in that room.

Eric is currently at work.  Every time Eric is at work and the house is empty other than my son and myself (and sometimes even when Eric isn't at work), I hear noises.  I hear noises that sound exactly like someone opening the door to the downstairs bedroom and kidnapping my son. 

I could go check on him- but he is the lightest sleeper in the world and I would instantly regret it the moment I open his door, turn the light on, and see him frowning and rubbing his little eyes furiously with his tiny fists trying to make the light go away.  And then he would most likely start to cry and I might have to spend the rest of the night trying to make him sleep again.

I go through this every night, and every single morning when I wake up my son is still alive and well.  You'd think I could get over this irrational fear that he's going to be kidnapped every single night.

Here is a list of other Motherly fears I currently have/have had:

My son can't talk yet.  He says Dadada, and that's about it.  I'm not even sure if he knows what dada means.  The first word he ever said was Mamamama but he definitely didn't know what that meant, and he stopped saying that a few days after he started.  He hasn't even attempted to say it since.  Most kids his age say things, and I'm terrified he's not developing normally.  He's happy though, and he smiles more than any kid I've ever met.  So I try not to worry too much about it.  A bunch of people have told me, "My kid didn't talk until he/she turned 2!"  And since he's not 2 yet, and he won't be until December, I'm trying to hold onto their kind words.

My kid was underweight for a long time, and he probably still is.  (Saying that makes me feel like I should be arrested or something.)  He wasn't eating enough solid foods because we were reluctant to wean him fully from the bottle.  I guess we were addicted to the joy that came over him when he saw us making a bottle for him.  One day I looked at him and burst into tears because he looked so skinny.  I wanted to snatch him up, throw all the food in the house into his little body, and then rush him to the ER to see if he's okay.  Don't worry, we immediately went to work trying to fatten him up.  He's totally weaned now and he eats everything we eat.  I haven't weighed him lately but he looks more healthy now. From the time he was born he was always lighter than other babies his age (he gets that from his daddy's genes), so I doubt his fabulous new eating habits have gotten him up to the normal range for kids his age yet.

He sleeps too much.  I'm not kidding, he sleeps way more than any other baby/toddler in the world does.  When he's awake he's always happy and energetic and hungry, and he seems totally healthy.  But boy can he sleep.  I worry pretty much every second of my life that there is something wrong with him that causes him to sleep as much as he does.

He was tongue-tied when he was born.  He couldn't stick his tongue out, because that little thing below his tongue that connects it to the bottom of his mouth was very tight.  We got that clipped (sounds gruesome, doesn't it?) when he was just a few weeks old before he developed nerves in it, and his tongue got dramatically better after that.  He stuck it out all the time!  Now I fear his tongue is slowly going back to the way it was when he was born.  Even though he can get corrective surgery later on in life if his tongue poses a problem, I'm worried his tongue will still be shaped like a heart at the end for his whole life.  Although I think his tongue is absolutely adorable, maybe he'll be embarrassed if it looks different than everyone else's.

My son has had several really bad eye infections.  It's always diagnosed as pink eye in the beginning, but when they give us the eye drops they don't work.  Then we have to get more powerful ones, which I'm pretty sure are meant for more serious eye infections than pink eye.  Sometimes those take a while to work and we go through a traumatic few weeks of me crying about his eyes and him crying every time I have to clean the mucus off of his eye or give him drops.  Every time I look at him I'm secretly examining his eyes to see if they look red or irritated, and I can't even count how many times I've said to Eric, "I think he's getting his eye infection back..."

And I constantly scrutinize my parenting.  For instance, I freaking LOVE staring at my little guy when he's playing and watching him learn new things.  I love his smile, I love showing him new places and toys.  I love his laugh, and the things that amuse him are always fascinating to me.  But I genuinely don't enjoy taking care of him:   changing him, bathing him, and chasing him around to keep him from swallowing yucky floor treasures.  I don't like doing those things, ever.  I don't mind feeding him usually, because most of the time that means he's sitting still (and therefore I can sit still) and he's happy as a lark when he has food headed toward his mouth.  

As a mommy who loves her kid to the depths of her soul, and maybe even deeper, shouldn't I enjoy more of parenthood?  You'll probably say something along the lines of, "That's normal, no mommy likes changing diapers as much as she likes to watch her kids play and learn."  And that would be nice and considerate of you to say that, but I feel like normal mommies dislike those things less than I do.

I guess it's easy to doubt my parenting when my mother doted on me as a child, and she did perhaps too good of a job raising me because it's a lot to live up to.  One time I was at my mom's house and my son was strapped into his highchair in the kitchen.  I walked into another room for a few minutes, and she nervously said to me, "He might be strangling himself out there!  We need to be with him!"  I said to her, "Mom, did you really watch me every second of my childhood?" and she very seriously responded with, "Yes."  It blew my mind- that poor poor wonderful woman.  I mean, I know she didn't stare at me every moment as I slept in my crib, but she genuinely didn't let me out of her eyesight when I was awake.  What a saint.

Parenting is a beautiful thing.  It's a miracle that no mommy in her right mind would never regret doing.  But parenthood is not as simple or fun as Hallmark commercials would lead you to believe.  It's scary, and every single last thing in the world has the potential to strike a fear in your soul unlike anything you've ever felt before.  Because the world is far too dangerous for our babies, and yet we're forced to raise them in it.