Why Is It So Easy To Blame Myself?

My toddler looks so funny with her one tooth. Now every time she smiles, I laugh. When she laughs, watching her gets me almost rolling on the floor. It’s amazing how much joy I feel just looking at that one tooth in the upper part of her mouth. In retrospect, my feelings about this milestone seem a little irrational, especially the guilt.

My toddler is currently 11 months old. And she just had her first tooth. That’s normal timing, right?

In my family, that’s a little late. Actually, that’s very late. Most of us had our first tooth at four months. And that shaped the way I think. The way we all think. I have nieces and nephews who also had their first tooth at four months. Latest five. All the books about child development and the doctor’s constant reassuring did nothing to alleviate the fear I felt when my daughter passed six months, and she still hadn’t grown her first tooth.

I blamed myself. I knew it was me. I had failed to take my drugs as regularly as I should have. My phobia of drugs was the biggest obstacle in my pregnancy. I had days when I skipped the pregnant-care drugs and only took calcium. Many days I took the pregnant-care drugs without the calcium and folic acid when I was supposed to take all three daily. And some days, very rarely though, I couldn’t bring myself to take any of the drugs.

My husband would beg, warn, please, practically do anything to get me to take my drugs. This was imperative. The drugs would aid the development of my baby. And yet, I found myself lying to my husband, to the doctor. It was just too overwhelming.

Eight months, which amounts to over six hundred days—I was meant to take drugs for that long and the task felt daunting. It was far more painful than the indigestion, the morning sickness, the back pain, and, toward the end of my third trimester, the abdominal pain.

The first question I asked the doctor when my baby was born was, “Is she fine? Is she whole?”

Luckily for me, I withheld from admitting guilt in my disheveled and delirious state. I was scared. I cried when I was told my baby was okay. Still, I counted her fingers and toes when she was placed in my arms. I needed to alleviate my fears. And I did.

Until she was two months old and I was back to panicking, I was desperate to know if her eyes and ears worked. I would clap close to her ears and pray she reacted. The irritating look on her face every time I did this was very welcomed. Then I’d move to placing two fingers in front of her face. Smiling when she lightly grabbed my fingers with her little hand. I thought I would be okay once I’d confirmed this, and I was.

Until the fifth month and no teeth. Then the sixth. The seventh. The eighth. The ninth. The tenth. With each passing month, there was an internal battle, and I found myself losing, not just the battle, but also my mind, especially when my mother would ask why my baby hadn’t grown any teeth.

And then one day, a few days before she turned 11 months, my husband called me to the living room, our baby girl in his hand, and with a big grin he said “See. . .” I wasn’t expecting it—the relief I felt when I saw the small white tooth. A weight just . . . left. Then he looked at me, and it was like he knew I’d been beating myself up because of this. I couldn’t dare tell him, or anyone else the thoughts I’d harbored.

After this incident, I realized this need to blame myself for everything I suspect wrong in my daughter’s life as she grows would continue. And I know I’m not alone. A lot of mothers blame themselves for things, especially bad things, that happen to their children even when it’s no one’s fault.

I now understand that it is part of being a mother. Feeling this guilt over everything that doesn’t seem right in our child. My situation was just a teeth thing, and I honestly cannot imagine the mental turmoil of mothers who give birth to children with a hole in their heart, a defect in their lungs, or any disease—there is no consolation for what they go through. Nothing anyone says can or will help them get over the guilt.

Nonetheless, I know it’s going to be okay. That we are going to be okay. Because I truly believe that embedded with the guilt, we also have the spirit to overcome. So, until the next time I blame myself for something I have no control over. Cheers.