Baby

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