Being a mom sometimes makes me feel like I'm the funnel cloud of a tornado, whipping around so many different things in the air that if I dare slow down, I'll drop them and smash them all to pieces. I live with that vague feeling that I'm one silly mistake away from being that "bad mom" on the news. That's what happened to Iesha Hill when she dosed her infant daughter's bottle with rum.
The California mom got up in the middle of the night to make her 5-month-old daughter a bottle. Only cops say that instead of grabbing the bottle of water off her counter, she grabbed a similar looking bottle filled with rum. When she rushed her baby girl to the hospital for treatment, Hill ended up being arrested.
Prosecutors have now dropped their child endangerment claims against her after Hill convinced them the rum and formula mixture was an honest mistake.
An honest mistake. How many times have we made one of those, and then held our breath, praying that things turn out OK. I'd venture to say this is the scariest part of parenting. Honest mistakes happen because we are human, but the fact is, they affect human life. Rum in the formula bottle is not putting the wrong paper in the office copy machine. It's life and death stuff.
And yet, as mothers, the obstacles we face are huge. You could say, OMG, I would NEVER put rum in my baby's bottle. But what have you done late at night when the baby is crying and you're exhausted?
I remember once having to pee so bad I could taste it (yeah, it WAS that bad) in the middle of the night. I leaned over and shook my husband awake so he could watch our infant daughter in the bed. He assured me he was up to the task, and I rushed downstairs, did the deed, and came back up ... only to find him snoring and our daughter -- fortunately -- lying in the middle of our bed staring at the ceiling. He didn't do it on purpose. He was tired!! And yet, I don't have to paint all the bad scenarios that COULD have come of it.
Of course after that happened, I made a pact with myself that I would hold it if it KILLED me. And I can tell you that as long as my daughter was awake in the middle of the night and not in a crib or bassinet, I held to it.
That's what good moms do to make up for our mistakes or "quasi-mistakes." We fix them as best we can so they don't happen again. Iesha Hill says she's going to give up drinking because she doesn't want to run the risk of another "honest mistake."
What life change have you made after making one of those mom mistakes?
Image via Nerissa's Ring/Flickr
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Comments 42
you never learned to pee with a kid in your arms? LOL I use to have to take my daughter's bouncy seat in the bathroom with me just so I could get a shower.
@Shandeigh gee, aren't we holier-than-thou? Some people drink. As long as it isn't during the pregnancy or breastfeeding, and it doesn't significantly impair you, what matter does it make? Loosen up.
People are so quick to judge everyone else's parenting mistakes, yet all of us make them. Some worse than others, but all are still mistakes! Get over yourselves, your not perfect parents, no one is!!!! Thank God this little baby is ok, this could have had a tragic horribly sad ending. Props to the mom for realising the mistake and bringing the baby to the e.r. im sure she knew she would probably get in some sort of trouble for this but obvously her baby's life was more important! Than God for happy endings!!!!!!!!
I would think the smell would give it away but I kno the feeling of being so tired you mix things up. Im not to sure about this case thou.
wasn't
i poured coffee in my sons bottle once. I didn't give it to him, i realized that the bottle was a little too hot when i put my hand around it to shake it up. I also poured milk in the sugar bowl. accidents happen. especially when sleep deprivation hits.
My daughter was 13 months old and we hadn't yet realized how high she could reach so we hadn't entirely child proofed every surface from her grabbing hands we were each doing our own thing my husband on the computer and I was in the kitchen and somehow she got up on her tippy toes high enough to reach the bottle of Excedrin tension headache pills. We still have yet to figure out how she managed to get the lid off of the bottle but when I came out of the kitchen there she was sitting in the middle of the living room floor with red pills all around her... We rushed her to the E.R. and they took blood and we had a long wait but it came back and she had nothing in her system. We came in and immediately all of the meds any kind whatsoever even her orajel got put up in a high cabinet. And now we take things out of that cabinet and use it right there and put it right back. It's a frightening thing and it makes the moment even more real when it could be that life or death.