The Mommy Worries

I have always been a worrier – when I was young my parents had to hide the medical book as I was always trying to self-diagnose myself. But never did I think I would be such a worrier when I became a parent.

It started from the minute I found out I was pregnant. Now, we had a difficult time getting pregnant and I was really worried about something going wrong, so I spent the first three months of my pregnancy on the couch. I even had a case of “couch elbow” where the one elbow that I leaned on while sitting on the couch became very dry and cracked (my husband diagnosed this issue).

At about four months into my pregnancy I was going a bit crazy worrying about the baby – so I ordered, from an online company, a fetal heartbeat Doppler. This was the best thing that I could have done for my sanity. My husband was a bit unsure of the monthly rental fee, but I told him it was either this or weekly trips to the walk-in clinic – he opted for the rental.

Once the little guy was born I found myself constantly analyzing everything he did and many days in those first few months my husband came home to me in tears worried that there was something wrong with him. After many assurances that he was fine, I would be good for a few weeks until I found something else to stress about.

As he got older I then found myself comparing him to the babies of my other friends (there were four of us off on mat leave together). H was the oldest, but seemed to be the last one to crawl (12 mths) and walk (still not doing it all on his own at 16 mths). Every mom tries to tell herself not to compare their child to others, but it is so difficult, and I found myself repeatedly questioning why H was not doing what the others were. When I asked my doctor I was shocked to hear that crawling isn’t even a “milestone” and that many babies don’t even crawl, as for the walking she didn’t seem too concerned about it either.

It is just until recently, that I have been able to relax a bit and go with the understanding that each child is different and they will develop on his or her own schedule. Our little H is a happy and healthy baby – what more could we ask for? I know that there will be many other things to worry about as he grows up (i.e. sports injuries, car accidents, broken hearts), but I am going to try to not waste any more time or energy worrying about what could happen and just focus on the now. (Yeah right!)

I guess I just need to get used to the fact that worrying and parenting go hand in hand!

Guest Blogger: Erin Ryan