I Am Not Perfect but I Think I Am a Great Mother

The litloo of the story. (Photo: Simrat Ghuman)

DurrPhitayMoonh. Is what my parents probably thought, although they were kind enough to not say it to me. Two days later, it still took some courage to tell them – after all, one way to sum up my life is to count the instances when they’ve been left shaking their head with wonder at my latest cock-up, as if wondering for the nth time: is she really ours?

Like the time I missed my pregnancy till I was five months along. Or when I spent three days giving myself heart burn, begging my brother to wait a while before telling our parents that I’d lost his paintings, and frantically calling the train line’s Lost and Found dept – only to find them at my workplace where I’d forgotten them. Or the time I turned up to a really posh wedding in Greece, with my prettiest sari but without a petticoat to go with it. Anyway, the latest is way more serious. I managed to puncture my one and only son’s ear drum. Yep, you read that right.

I’m not perfect but I think I’m a great mother – definitely the best I can be. And when sometimes I’m at the end of my tether with life, or Darling Husband or Littloo, I don’t usually feel guilty about it: I’m human; it passes. But the other day, during a Littloo “deep-clean” evening, where I wash his hair, cut his nails, clean his ears, in my enthusiasm to remove some stubborn wax from one of the said ears, I made it bleed.

I thought I was SO gentle – after all I’ve been doing this for over a year now. The boy cried some but then fell asleep. I thought maybe the wax was stuck fast and had pulled some skin with it. The next morning however revealed quite a few blood spots on his bedsheet – some that looked quite fresh in the morning. So his beautiful, delicate ear had been bleeding gently all through the night.

It’s hard to describe how I felt, or still feel when I think about it – absolutely rotten, sick to my stomach that I’d hurt this little boy who relied on me for love and protection. If I see things from Littloo’s perspective, it’s even worse.

He must think: this woman who dominates my life spends at least 50 percent of her time making me do things I doesn’t want to (for example making me sit on the potty, changing my clothes unnecessarily, wrapping me in nappies when I want to run free), her life’s purpose seems to be thwarting whatever I want to do (like running onto a busy road, leaning precariously over the edge of a platform to watch an incoming train or trying to escape from my pram) and still I am good enough to tolerate all that, still smile at her every morning and then suddenly, she plunges a Q-tip into my delicate ear, gives it a quick twirl and triumphantly pulls it out while I scream in agony.

You’ll agree that from his perspective it’s worse. One minute, I’m lullabying him to sleep and the next I’m sneakily trying to scrape that lump of wax out. Darling Husband was very stoic as I got Littloo checked by the paediatrician and confirmed that lasting damage was unlikely. Only then did he vent, saying: How did you manage to do that to our little boy?! My parents were similar… they didn’t especially want me to make me feel bad, but were perplexed how I’d missed this Parenting 101 of not using earbuds.

Anyhow, the lesson learnt is this: Babies are sometimes tougher than you think, and sometimes way, way more delicate than you think. Till now, I took pride in the fact that I hadn’t had any accidents with cutting his nails or trimming his hair – no chopped fingers, no snipped ear lobes – and then just this one time, it had to happen. And don’t use Q-tips for ears of babies or adults. If you have to put anything in your ear, let it be your elbow. (Geddit? ….Geddit?)

(The author is a former TV journo who stays in London. She became Mama to baby Leo in April 2015. She started this blog as an outlet for the intense, roller-coaster experience that pregnancy and motherhood entail. And for recording the journey with as much humour –—black mostly — as she can cram in. Oh and dispensing free gyan as she ticks the been there, done that milestones.)

Follow Simrat Ghuman’s blog here.