An Elephant Never Forgets

I didn't wash them! Call the cops!

And apparently, neither do mothers.  Or more specifically, neither SHOULD mothers.

I was just reading an article entitled "Mothers Don't Forget" that told the tragic story of a mother who had forgotten her infant daughter in her vehicle while she was at work for the day.  She made a slight deviation in her morning routine right before dropping her daughter with the sitter, and the rest of the story is history.  This is a story that has been on the news a lot in the past few years.  I feel as though at least twice every summer we hear a big story about a parent (usually a mother, seldom a father) accidentally leaving their child in a hot car for hours and finding the child dead later in the day.

The stories are horribly disturbing.  But in my eyes, even more disturbing are the commentators who spew hateful bile in the comment section of this particular article I was reading, and articles like it all across the internet.  "She needs to be sterilized!" "She should get the death penalty" "What sort of woman would forget her child in a car? That's MURDER!!! SHE'S A MURDERER!" "I hope she spends the rest of her life in agony knowing that SHE KILLED HER BABY" "I hope she kills herself" and of course "A good mother would never forget her number one priority in life, her child".

Of course, these were followed up by a string of things like "I have a million children and have never once forgotten anything about any one of them, including but not limited to their weight at every single doctors appointment until they turned 18, their head circumference at birth, and of course, I certainly never forgot one in a car, because unlike that other woman, I'm a good mother"

These comments aren't written by husbands and fathers, neighbors, or firemen... they're written by OTHER MOTHERS!

It must be so nice to be perfectly perfect in perfectly every way.  I wonder if they teach a class somewhere entitled "101 Steps to Become A Perfect and Completely Infallible Mother" that nobody ever invited me to take.  Or maybe they sell perfection in a bottle over the counter at Macy's.  Just spray it on and you'll never ever ever do anything wrong as a parent... or specifically, a mother.

But don't FORGET to spray it on, or you're at risk of murdering your child.

I don't get it.  When the hell did mothers become so judgmental of one another?? I can't even say I'm above all of the judgments, because I can be judgmental in certain situations.  For example; I'm super judgmental about car seat use.  I cringe when I see people putting their babies into a car seat with a super huge fluffy, puffy snowsuit on, and I hate seeing itty bitty babies who are no longer rear facing when it's obvious they are nowhere near the 1 year/20lb minimum.

But that sure doesn't mean I'm perfect.  Those carrying car seats are a real nightmare.  More than once I had Jakob in his as a baby in a store, took him out of it for whatever reason, then put him back in without buckling it, thinking I would buckle it when we got to the car.... then completely forgetting his buckle was undone.

Thank goodness we were never in an accident when I had made such a stupid, completely thoughtless error.  If we had been, chances are my child would have been ejected from the seat, and even the car... likely not surviving. 

And hateful, cruel, spiteful and downright vicious mothers would have labeled me a murderer, said I deserved to lose my baby, and painted a picture of me as the most horrible human being on the planet. 

I'm happy to say that my judgments don't go that far.  Sure I can be judgmental about car seats, but when I hear a story on the news about a child who died or was injured in a crash, I don't pipe up with "if you had only bothered to get a good car seat and use it properly then YOUR BABY WOULD STILL BE ALIVE! You're a killer! It's your fault!".  I couldn't imagine thinking, let alone saying something so awful to another parent.  My heart bleeds for them and I wish with all of my heart that someday they are able to find peace and comfort through their grief.

So kudos to all of you perfect mothers out there, if you don't mind, could you email me your secret? Because I'm damned sure not anywhere close to perfect, but I would sure as heck like to be.