How to get rid of the mum guilt - or at least learn to live with it

Mum guilt threatens to floor every mum who ever lived, but mum guilt doesn't have to get you down. Curb your mum guilt with Megan's advice.

“I went out at her naptime and so she didn’t sleep and now she’s tired and it’s all my fault and I’m THE WORST MOTHER IN THE WORLD!”

No, I don’t have drama queen tendencies, why do you ask?

Just mum guilt.

When my older daughter was a baby I felt the guilt over not being the perfect picture of the ‘ideal’ mother all the time. That is, sometimes I put my own needs first, and would then regret it – for no reason other than feeling selfish. Of course, none of this had any effect on her life whatsoever, other than growing up learning that sometimes your own wants can’t come first over everyone else’s. Not a bad life lesson, but definite reason for questioning oneself when you’re a mum.

Here’s the thing: I don’t tend to feel guilty over big things – I guess because they’re the decisions that are well calculated, with the pros and cons carefully weighed – but I am prone to guilt attacks over the relatively teeny day-to-day issues. Like interrupting a sleep or keeping the kids out doing things that I want, or need, to do.

Now that I’m a mum for the second time, I’d LOVE to say that I’m over the guilt. That I’ve learnt once and for all that guilt is a wasted feeling, that I just get on with my days as they need to proceed. Unfortunately, it isn’t always so.

These days I feel guilty when one child’s needs don’t match the other. I’ll feel bad for the baby when her nap has to once again be interrupted for a preschool pick-up, and I feel guilty when we need to keep the baby home on a super hot day when my older daughter wants to go out. Somehow I’m left feeling that I should be able to match a baby’s needs with that of a four-year-old, and that would make me the perfect parent. When I write that down it sounds totally irrational – but that’s motherhood for you.

Add to the equation that these days I work from home. (Did I just hear a collective sigh of understanding from all the work-at-home mums out there?) This means I spend my days torn between parenting and work deadlines and feeling guilt over both. Fun times! It seems as though there’s a perception of work-at-home mums that goes something like this: the mother spends her day at her computer, feet up and a smile on her face as she ignores the children and the housework, while of course the kids pine for her and beg her to just look at them.

This is where much of the guilt focuses itself: the need to prove that I’m a capable mum above all else. You’re quite often left feeling like you can’t win.

I once spoke to my mum about the guilt I was feeling when my first daughter was a baby. She was sympathetic to my plight, but ultimately shrugged and said, “Well, you’re a mum now – get used to it.”

I loved that. It’s blunt advice that always comes back to me when I’m having a guilty moment and perhaps my self-punishment is a little out of proportion with the perceived crime. And it makes me remember I'm not alone.

So even though I haven’t managed to remove mum guilt from my life, I’ve at least learnt to live with it and keep it in its place.