Ugh.
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “perfection.”
Not my favorite concept.
When I was young, I was taught to do the best I could…
Which is a lovely thought and a worthy goal but it made it easy to think that the best I could do should be perfect, so I became a bit of a perfectionist.
It’s exhausting.
And futile.
As I matured, I began to expect that perfection was a chimera, that there was really no such thing.
When my first child was born, I was convinced of that.
Well, not immediately.
I had dutifully followed all the advice from my medical team and from What to Expect When You Are Expecting, which was a hot title at the time. Still, somehow, my membranes ruptured at 36 weeks, so my precious daughter arrived early, officially classified as premature, although only by a few days, and, after being home for a couple of days had to be re-admitted to the hospital for light therapy for jaundice.
It was not perfect and I was scared and blamed myself, figuring that I must have done something wrong.
It took a while – well, maybe even a long while – to realize that, sometimes, things just happen without a discernible cause.
I then realized that there was not ever going to be a perfect way to do something as complex as raising a child – and then realized that there wasn’t really a perfect way to do much of anything.
I did still try to do the best I could, though, which often means things turn out pretty well.
Except when they don’t.
But, hey, nobody’s perfect.
*****
This Stream of Consciousness Saturday post is part of Linda’s long-running series at her blog Life In Progress. Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/02/03/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-feb-4-2023/
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Good post! I remember reading that book, too, studying it in detail, with my first child. After we brought him home, I couldn’t figure out why he kept crying so much. On the second day home, we took him to the doctor who said he was just hungry and to give him some rice cereal. What was happening was that I was so tense, my milk had not “let down” so he wasn’t getting much. What I needed to do was RELAX. That’s my best advice for breastfeeding moms. The book did help with preparation to toughen up the nipples and many other things, but if the part about relaxing was in there, I must not have noticed it – probably too busy trying to be perfect. Parenthood is a good remedy for perfectionism.
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Yes, it is a good remedy. Wonder how long it would have taken to figure out otherwise…
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