Am I Mom enough?

According to a recent article in Time magazine, not so much. In order to be “mom enough,” you have to breastfeed for 2+ years, co-sleep and “wear” your baby.

If that’s the criteria, then I am clearly not mom enough.

Much as I loved my multiple bouts of clogged ducts and mastitis, my kids were primarily formula fed. The fact that they are all healthy as horses means just about nothing. Of course, horsemilk produced by a nursing mare loses most of its nutrients once the mare has been lactating about four months, so who knows how healthy those horses really are. I’m certain they’d be much healthier if mares lactated for a couple of years or so.

I did co-sleep for about 5 months with my kids, but I did not welcome these kids into my bed. I used a great co-sleeper that attached to my bed. I share enough with these children – my bathroom breaks, my chocolate stash, my uterus. Can’t I have one thing that belongs to me (and my husband) alone?

Baby-wearing? I tried it with my youngest. Have I mentioned that he weighed 11.5 pounds at birth? I stuck him in a sling, promptly threw my back out and couldn’t get out of a hard-backed chair for three days. Another mark in the “not mom enough” column.

My twins will be six in less than a month, and my youngest will be four this summer. No one is more amazed than I am that these kids are still alive, but doesn’t that mean that I’ve done something right? Haven’t there been instances in the past six years where I have been “mom enough?”

Like the weekend all three kids had the norovirus, and I cleaned up explosive poop and vomit nonstop for 72 hours straight.

Or the morning sickness that lasted all damn day for seven months (twice), only to be replaced by symphysis pubis dysfunction for almost three months (twice – and for those lucky enough to not know what this is, don’t Google it. Just reading about it will make you cry.)

What about when I didn’t sleep for almost a week, because my twins each got the swine flu and their fevers were so high, I was afraid to close my eyes for fear that they would develop febrile seizures?

Oh, I know. How about the time we were flying from Florida to New York and thirty seconds after the plane took off, my son (who was eleven months old at the time) leaked pee and poop out of his diaper all over my lap and, while I had the foresight to pack a diaper bag full of supplies for him, I didn’t have a change of clothes for myself and spent two and a half hours smelling like a gas station bathroom?

Hasn’t all the wiping I’ve done – bums and tears – qualified me as “mom enough?”

The love and the worry and the hugs and the time-outs and the sleepless nights and the morning snuggles and the tears on the first day of school and the feeling that my heart is going to burst out of my chest when I see my kids do the right thing – aren’t these the things that make me “mom enough?”

If you want to breastfeed for longer than the WHO recommended two years, then by all means, nurse away. If you believe that extended breastfeeding is what is best for you and your child, then I will defend your right to do so at the top of my lungs.

If you want to share your bed with your child and wear him around your body because you both love it, then screw the naysayers and do what you want to do.

As long as you’re doing what feels right for you and your child is thriving, then you are most assuredly “mom enough.”

And shame on anyone who thinks that if you don’t parent the way they do, you are somehow less of a mother.

To all the mothers out there, the nursing and formula-feeding, the co-sleeping and the CIO proponents, the yellers and the baby-whisperers – Happy Mother’s Day!