I am Mom Enough

Posted by tyan (Singapore, Singapore) on 18 May 2012 in People & Portrait.

TIME magazine certainly created a wild furore over the attachment parenting issue last week, featuring 26 year-old Jamie Lynne Grummet breastfeeding her almost 4 year-old son. But what ruffled my feathers was the accompanying headline "Are You Mom Enough?"

As if there isn't already enough rivalry among moms about who raises their kids into smarter, more well behaved and better fed, the cover draws an imaginary difference between those who seem to treat parenting as an extreme sport and the rest of the slackers who simply don't measure up. Seriously, who cares how long you have breastfed your kid except yourself and the kid, and maybe the Husband?

THESE are why I am Mom Enough:
1) I have dug my finger into my son's rectum (I know, I know it's dangerous) to dig out that piece of poo that was too big to squeeze through and he was crying buckets squatting over the toilet bowl.

2) I have caught my kids' vomit with my bare hands, sometimes with the help of my shirt as well. (So it helps to wear big airy shirts!)

3) I have turned an empty unattractive looking milk carton,some glittery paint and sequins into something beautiful

4) I have endured childbirth thrice.

5) I have survived postpartum depression thrice, and probably still in the midst of it now, without killing my kids' grandma who had breathed down my neck when I was trying to breastfeed my no.1 that her poor grandkid doesn't have enough to drink and who had, the first thing when she saw me after giving birth to no.3, asked NOT how I was, but whether I had done my ligation and that we need to teach our daughter well so she doesn't end up a b***h (ok I coined that but she means that)

6) I have been smacked, kicked, bitten, puked at, peed on, had my eyeballs poked,my glasses smashed and jumped all over and live to tell about it.

7) I have been a monster, a chauffeur, a financial planner, a witch, a magician, a chef, a teacher, a counsellor, a doctor, and an one-eyed pirate, all in a day.

8) I have cooked and given tuition with a toddler clinging to my left leg, a preschooler clinging on to my right and succeeded in not cooking them as well and putting them into the washing machine and oven respectively.

9) I have stayed up all night to change bedsheets, wash ém, change again, interspersed with cleaning up vomit and mopping the floor, take temperatures, sponged and bathed them, a few times over, multiplied by three kids.

10) I have chased out monsters from the closet and under the bed with a Boo! and a prayer

11) I can fix almost any problem with a hug and a kiss and the occasional help of ice cream.

12) I have loved my kids ferociously so yeah, I am MOM ENOUGH!