Why it’s hard to be a “normal” mom after loss.

Some days, being a mom is hard.

Like when you go to the pediatrician for a simple follow-up appointment but she hears wheezing in your son’s lungs, so suddenly you’re worrying about chest X-rays and breathing treatments and steroid doses. You’re driving clear across the county because your local pharmacy doesn’t carry one of his new prescriptions. You’re dealing with a diaper rash so bad it bleeds, getting kicked and listening to your child weep when you try to wipe him clean and being peed on when you try to give him no-diaper time. You’re considering keeping him home from school another day but wondering whether your job will really believe that your kid is sick, again. All while your in-laws are visiting and you’re trying to write a book and take care of an ornery geriatric terrier and keep things quiet so your husband can get his school work done. And through it all you’re anxious, and frustrated, and so, so tired.

But I feel guilty for admitting that I feel this way, because once upon a time I lost a baby and I wondered whether I would ever be lucky enough to be an anxious, frustrated, tired mom.

Although my son has been a brighter light in my life than I could have ever imagined, there are some moments on some days when I just want to be alone. I want to go sit at a bookstore and drink coffee and browse through a stack of novels and magazines. I want to hang out on the deck with a cold beer and read the newspaper cover to cover. I want to go upstairs just to sit, to breathe, to sleep as long as I want without being interrupted. But all of that is hard when you have a busy, energetic, affectionate toddler and a husband with a full-time job who’s also in an E-MBA program.

I could probably ask for more help. I could hire a babysitter. I could get up earlier or stay up later so I could carve out more “me” time. I could also let myself off the hook a little — I know that my frustrations are totally normal and that every mom experiences them. I could simply lower my expectations and stop trying so hard to do it all.

But what it really comes down to is that I almost missed out on having my son in my life. And so I feel compelled to soak up every possible moment with him, and I worry that if I don’t appreciate every single second, maybe some higher power will decide that I don’t really deserve him. And then maybe I’ll lose him.

I’ve interviewed so many loss moms who deeply resent when women lament the day-to-day realities of parenthood on Facebook and Twitter. Seeing these complaints seems profoundly ungrateful to them — what they wouldn’t give to be woken up at 3 am by a crying baby, to be exhausted from taking care of a child rather than their grief at losing it.

And so I feel stuck. I feel like I’m straddling two worlds, and I don’t know how to build a bridge between them. I can’t keep my frustrations in or I’ll end up bitter, but if I let them out, I’m consumed by guilt and fear. Simply put, how can I be a “normal” mom and a loss mom simultaneously?

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