Please Don’t Judge Me

09/25/2013

As I write this blog post I am sitting in the Family Waiting room at William Osler hospital.  My family has secretly been going through a rough couple of weeks.  Although my nature is to keep fairly quiet about my personal life, I realized this morning that this is a story that needs to be shared.  I started Mommy Connections so that moms had a place to go to know where they knew they weren’t alone in their journey to be the best mom possible.

Unfortunately, I’ve heard plenty of unsettling stories about moms being judged for the decisions they make for their family.  Bottle vs breast, crib vs bed share, you name it, and likely there is a mom somewhere feeling ashamed of her choice because of the opinions of others.  This is a hard post for me to write so I ask any readers to please only share words of encouragement, there is nothing that you can say that I haven’t already said to myself, so no negative comments please.

My Mommy Connections chapter is now 3 years old, which means I have sat through over 1,000 presentations by local parenting resources. Like all of the presentations we have, I encourage moms to take in as much as they can and then speak to their health care professionals for their own personal advice.  Parenting is not a cookie cutter model.  We all have different situations, not to mention, extremely different children.  I’d hate to think that a mom ever left one of classes feeling like they were doing something “wrong”.  Our goal is just to raise awareness and provide access to the experts so that moms know where they can seek out knowledge and advice for their own unique situations.

Pediatric Dental Care is always one of the topics moms find hard to hear.  “Really?!  I should be flossing my infants 2 teeth?!”  I heard all of the great advice, and made sure to limit sugar, brush my little guy’s teeth, and take him to a pediatric dentist every year from the time he got his first teeth.  But for some reason, that presentation always made me a bit uneasy.  Call it mother’s intuition, but I was always very fearful of my son having cavities.  I have been lucky enough to never have one, so part of my fear stems from the unknown.

That being said, my family had a dirty little secret.  My son still had a nighttime bottle of apple juice up until he was 3.  I knew better, and for that reason I diluted the juice to 75% water, and never put him to bed with the bottle.  It was just our way to relax after a long day and ensure a good night’s sleep.

Fast forward 3 years and I noticed a black mark on my son’s back molar.  We had just visited the dentist 6 months prior and had been given the all clear, but my son was too restless for an x-ray at the time so we decided to save that for the next visit.  When I saw the mark, I decided to bring him back in.  One of my darkest days was when the x-rays revealed that he had tons of cavities.  I almost dropped to the floor. Immediately the self-judgment started.  “I know better!  How could I let this happen?”   But the truth is, I am not a bad mother.  I brushed.  I limited sugar.  I went to the dentist.  And yet, he still had cavities.  In hindsight, the bottle would have been gone after his first birthday and I would have flossed his teeth.  But you know what they say about hindsight.

He’s now in for day surgery under general anesthetic.  It has been an emotional time, but writing this post already makes me feel better.

(5 hours later) I’m going to end here given the length of this blog, but not without saying that he came out of surgery just fine and is now resting peacefully beside me.  Keep your eye out for a happy 4 year old boy and his “Iron Man” tooth.  And please don’t judge his mother when you see that flash of silver 🙂