A Life Update and Being a Great Mom

This post brought to you by Post Great Grains Cereal. All opinions are 100% mine. If you have been following along on facebook and instagram you know that I recently spent 5 days in the hospital with my youngest.  She sort of broke her wrist (there were a bunch of inconclusive x-rays) and from that got a pretty serious bone infection.  For the most part I think I am a pretty great mom; I take my kids to the park, the library and on lots of fun adventures around our great state.  However, in this instance it was super hard not to feel like the worst mom ever.  Unfounded and ridiculous as it seems, seeing your baby in that situation is enough to make even the best parent question their ability. I kept thinking that if only I had been watching her more closely or if only I had known there was something more going on the first time we went to the doctor we could have been spared all of this trauma. In reality there is nothing more I could have done, short of strapping all my children to my body and never having another moment alone, to prevent this from happening.  Kids fall, they get hurt and then they recover, and hopefully somewhere along the way they learn a lesson.  I learned that I am a pretty great mom, because I encourage my children to experience life for all that it is; the good, the bad and the ugly. I recently read some research that Great Grains on Facebook did regarding how women view their greatness.  I wasn’t surprised to read that 86 percent of women agreed that their mistakes that led to failures were worth the learning experience. I think when you find yourself in those challenging situations you are given a learning experience, something to help you make a different choice the next time. This same survey found that some of the most profound support can come from a mother-daughter relationship, where a mother teaches her daughter what it means to be a great woman.  I can only hope that my daughters will learn from my example that in order to grow into happy, healthy and high functioning adults they need to be given the opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them. One of the things I didn’t count on while being stuck in the hospital for five days was the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to cook myself breakfast, lunch or dinner.  On our second day there my husband came to spend some time with our daughter so I could go to the store and pick up some much needed supplies.  We were lucky enough to have access to a fridge and microwave so I made sure to grab some easy to fix foods that would tide me over.  Healthy microwave dinners and delicious cereals were a must!  I grabbed a box of Post Great Grains Cereal Crunchy Pecans, because I like cereals that have lots of crunch and a list of ingredients I can actually pronounce. Although they have lots of other flavors (cranberry almond crunch, raisins dates and pecans and banana nut crunch to name a few).  “Great Grains has nutrition you can see” is their slogan and it’s totally legit!  I was happy to crunch away on my cereal in the mornings while we waited for whichever doctor we were going to be visited by that day (we met probably 40 different doctors, surgeons, nurses and other specialists while there).   After five days we were finally sent home with a cast on one arm and a picc line in the other.  She is given daily antibiotics through her picc line and we have weekly nurse visits to draw blood and monitor her ongoing infection control.  We also make weekly trips back to the doctor to check her fractured wrist and analyze her blood work.  It’s a long recovery plan (6 week minimum), but we are all recovering and doing great!  Knowing that I trusted my gut and gave my kids the space to make mistakes and learn from them (even when it turns out terribly) reminds me that keeping them in a bubble, safe from the world would be a greater disservice in the long run. And that makes me a great mom.  What makes you great?  How do you remind yourself of that?