How to Be Mom of the Year and Other Stories of Motherhood Failures
plus two Scriptures I think every mom should memorize
Once I started writing out these vignettes, I realized almost all of them were about our oldest son. I had just finished listening to Fortesa Latifi’s Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online and felt strongly that I needed to ask his consent before sharing any of these stories. I told him they didn’t really make him look bad; they make me look bad, but I didn’t know if he’d be embarrassed if any of his friends came across any of these stories. First, he said, “Well, Mom, no offense, but I don’t think you’re actually an influencer?” I agreed that I am not, but that I still wanted to ask his permission. He said he didn’t care if I shared these stories, so here you go.
I remember coming home from the hospital with our first son, Stephen. I was 23 years old and had babysat and nannied for years, but never for a baby so young. It felt almost illegal that they would let my husband and I leave the hospital with this living being who was completely dependent on us. I gingerly carried him into our tiny duplex for which we paid $400/month in rent, and I held him while Christian brought in all the stuff we had taken to the hospital. Once everything was inside, I wanted to unpack some of the baby items, so I gently laid Stephen on the body pillow that I had used to sleep for the past several months. It was in the middle of our queen-sized bed. I turned to take something out of my suitcase, and when I turned back around, Stephen was gone. Panicked, I ran around to the other side of the bed. He was face down on the bed next to the body pillow. Somehow his two-day old self had managed to squirm to the edge of the body pillow and gravity had down its work.
A couple years later, I had two children: Stephen, who was almost 2, and Cohen, who was 6 months old. My husband was out of town, and it was bath time. My survival routine on nights like that was to bathe the boys together and then hustle them into their room and close the door so the naked toddler wouldn’t escape. Once I had done this, I laid baby Cohen on the changing pad on top of the four-drawer-high dresser, which was positioned next to a wire shelf. I always put Cohen’s diaper on first; although Stephen wasn’t potty trained, he was less likely to pee before I could get the diaper on. I diapered and clothed Cohen and turned around to see that Stephen had pooped on the floor. This was not in and of itself an emergency; by that point I had interacted with a lifetime’s worth of excrement.
The problem was that Stephen was about to touch the poop.
In a split-second decision, I left Cohen on the changing table and ran to snatch Stephen away from the poop.
(I should pause here to say that up to this point, Cohen was mostly a blob. He hadn’t ever tried to roll over, and he was certainly not crawling. If he had ever been mobile in any way, I would never have left him on that changing table.)
I ran to grab Stephen and—eerily reminiscent of the day we brought Stephen home from the hospital—previously immobile baby Cohen managed to scoot himself head first off the edge of the changing table and fall upside down between the shelf and the dresser. He began a slow descent downward until his head hit the hardwood floor.
I don’t remember the sequence of events after I grabbed Cohen out from between the pieces of furniture and held him tight. I must have cleaned up the poop and gotten Stephen taken care of, because I do remember when I finally called the after-hours pediatrician. I said that my 6-month-old had fallen off the edge of the changing table and hit his head on the hardwood floor. He gave me some signs to look for that might indicate something was wrong, but thankfully, Cohen seemed perfectly fine. Before we hung up, the doctor helpfully noted that, in the future, I should be sure not to leave my baby unattended on the changing table.
About a year later, I had decided that the family memory we needed to make was to see the annual Christmas lights at the local zoo. I was sure the boys, now 2 and 3, would love it, and for the days leading up to the outing, Stephen couldn’t have been more excited.
The day finally came, but as we waited for Christian to get home so we could eat dinner and go, Stephen became less excited. He suddenly said he didn’t want to go. I didn’t know what the problem was, but I desperately wanted to make this memory with them. I just knew they would love it.
When Christian got home and heard Stephen’s pushback against the zoo trip, he said he thought maybe we should stay home. No, I said, We are going to make a family memory! And so we loaded the kids in the car and started driving to the zoo.
Stephen’s protestations continued. They reached a fever pitch as we approached the zoo, and Christian made an executive decision to turn around and go home. I was disappointed but agreed it was probably the best choice as carting a whining three year old around didn’t seem like it would be very fun. We drove home and unbuckled the boys. Stephen was pitiful, and so I carried all 40 pounds of him inside, his legs wrapped around me and his head on my shoulder. As I stepped over the threshold, he lifted his head, looked right at me, and vomited all over my upper body.
Just a few months later, after Stephen turned 3 and Cohen was almost 2, we were working on potty training. We had started potty training Stephen a few months before, and he was doing a great job staying dry and wearing underwear all day long. There was just one problem: poop.
The good news was that Stephen would not poop in his underwear. The bad news was that he saved his poop for nap time, when I was still putting him in a pull-up. I was really tired of cleaning him up when I was still also changing his brother’s diapers all day long. Finally, I decided the only thing to do was stop using pull-ups so he would poop in the potty.
The first day we tried, I placed our blue Baby Bjorn potty in his room on the floor on a large beach towel (the floors were hardwood; this was the same house where Cohen fell off the changing table). I told him if he needed to poop, he should sit on the potty, which he had peed in a hundred times, and then he should call for me.
When I came back after his nap, he had fallen asleep and pooped in his underwear. No big deal! It was only the first day. We’ll try again tomorrow, I told myself.
The next day, I reiterated the instructions. He pooped in his underwear again.
It was time to regroup.
On the third day, I put him down for his nap totally naked from the waist down; no underwear at all. I hoped the fact that he didn’t have anywhere to “go” might psychologically compel him to poop in the potty.
It worked—kind of. He didn’t poop in the bed.
He also didn’t poop in the potty. Instead, he left a circle of small turds around the Baby Bjorn potty.
This told me that he was able to control his poop, although I didn’t understand why he couldn’t have just sat on the potty. I talked to him again.
The ritualistic poop circle continued the next day. Now I was really starting to get frustrated.
At that age, Stephen’s main obsession was superheroes, specifically the superheroes from the show Superhero Squad. He had several of the figurines, but there were a few he didn’t have. That week I picked up a set of two more figurines at Target and told Stephen if he pooped in the potty, he would get the superheros as a reward.
He continued to poop on the floor and/or in his bed. I was washing his sheets almost every day.
It appeared positive reinforcement wasn’t working, so I switched to negative reinforcement. Instead of giving him the superheroes as a reward, I would take away all of his superhero toys and put them in the closet if he pooped anywhere but the potty.
I felt like this was going to be the key to getting him to poop in the potty. I was proud of myself for figuring out what would work. He was distraught when I removed all of his favorite toys, but I just knew it would be worth it.
The next day, I cautiously opened the door to his room at the end of nap time.1 He was starting to stir but still asleep. I looked around the potty. No poop circle. I got my hopes up and looked in the potty. No poop there, either.
I pulled back the covers, expecting to find poop as I had for the past several days. No poop there, either. So he hadn’t pooped. Well, I thought, at least I don’t have to clean the sheets.
He woke up and got out of bed, and then I smelled something. I gingerly moved his stuffed animals and blankets out of his little toddler bed. I picked up his pillow and—there it was. The poop.
He had pooped at the head of his bed, covered it with his pillow, laid on the pillow, and fallen asleep. As one does.2
Time would fail me if I told the story of when Stephen fractured his wrist and we told him to suck it up for several days before realizing it might be broken and ended up taking him to the doctor; or the story of when I burned Zoe’s ear with a curling iron before my cousin’s wedding; or the story of when I left Zoe and Noah in the (running) car while I ran inside Little Caesar’s to get pizza, but it took longer than expected and by the time I got back they were hysterical and thought I had forgotten about them. The stories of my failures as a mom, accidental or not, could fill a book.
I did not have epic dreams of motherhood before I got married, and Christian and I backed into early parenthood without putting a lot of thought into it. Almost all of my married life and half of my life so far has been mothering. Now I am 17 years in, and my motherhood mistakes and failures have been a humbling experience. I do not pretend to know how to magically help every baby sleep through the night, although mine were mostly good sleepers. I don’t know the solution to every illness, although I have now seen just about every childhood health issue under the sun: strep throat, stomach bug, hand/foot/mouth, pneumonia, untold rashes, influenza, croup, ear infections, sinus infections, broken bones.3 I do not feed my children all organic food, and they probably get more screen time than they should. I’m not always emotionally present and available for them when they need me.
I could not have made it this far in motherhood without two Scriptures that have together formed a bulwark against mom guilt, against anxiety, against despair.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. — Romans 8:1
The opportunity for implicit condemnation is everywhere: from the perfect mom-fluencers on TikTok or Instagram or the women you see at the park or the other parents in your kids’ school class or your own mom. Sometimes the condemnation is explicit. And even if you don’t experience that, our own hearts and brains condemn us.
But you know who doesn’t? Jesus. He sees every motherhood failure I have ever made, some of which I am not even aware of, and he does not condemn me. To be sure, I have had to apologize to my kids when I’ve sinned against them, and I’ve had to make changes in our family routines to better serve my kids, but that verse isn’t an excuse to be passive. It’s an encouragement to keep trying to love my kids and be a faithful mom because I am free from condemnation.
Behold, the Lord God comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
behold, his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
He will tend his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms;
he will carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead those that are with young.—Isaiah 40:10-11
I have texted this verse or a paraphrase of it to more moms than I can count. We see God as the king, as a warrior, coming to fight against evil and bring judgment and justice. And in the midst of that, he is gently caring for his people, including those that are with young. So many nights when I was nursing a baby or calming a fussy kid, I would cling to this verse that promised that the Lord saw me and that he would be gentle with me in some of the most difficult seasons of my life.
I am long past midnight nursing sessions, and my kids all sleep through the night in their own rooms, and some of them can even make their own meals. My role as a mom has changed and continues to evolve, but my kids still need a mom who doesn’t condemn herself, a mom who is free to live each day with the knowledge that she doesn’t have to be in control, a mom who is leading them while she is also being gently led by the Good Shepherd.
Time has a way of softening things, and I can laugh at the motherhood failures I’ve written about here. But guilt is pervasive and anxiety is a thief, and I know these two feelings all too well. If you are a mom, I hope that you will run to Jesus with all of your motherhood failures. He sees them, he knows all about them, and he can handle them.
May all the moms out there be as beloved as I am by my own kids, as evidenced in this beautiful portrait my oldest drew of me when he was six.
At the time, his younger brother was almost 2, and I kept them on identical afternoon nap times so as to make my life easier.
If you’re wondering if Stephen ever learned to poop in the potty, good news: he did.
Hand/foot/mouth got added to our punch card within the last year! Exciting!