I often think about the childless, single girl that I used to be, living in San Francisco.  Days were spent having crushes on professors, trips to Target and lazy days in bed.  I want to go back in time and have a talk with that girl. I want to sit down, Indian style on her futon, while sipping a cup of mint tea in her violet painted bedroom. We could sit together under her window, watching the rain drop off petals from the gardenia tree. At 26, she is not thinking about children at all, she is thinking about whom she is going to seduce and finishing her thesis.  

It’s as if the eternal personal ad that everyone compiles in their head at least once a lifetime has been fulfilled.

All of my life I’ve been an overachiever. I was the child who wanted to try everything, and wouldn’t settle for being “good” at anything. I wanted to be the best. I had to be the best.

I married when I was twenty, to a man who didn’t love me but insisted that he did and would forever. Within a year he insisted that he didn’t, and never had. By this time, I was ten weeks pregnant. With twins.

To say I was depressed would be a massive understatement. He left and I wandered; through my home, through church after church, through doctors appointments. Waiting and hoping and searching for something that would make it all okay.

It didn’t come. The answer didn’t magically appear out of the sky. I reflected on my life and didn’t find any wisdom or peace or solace. I just found myself alone, with my stomach swelling and my fear growing. I literally had no idea what I would do, how I would live, how I could support myself and these two people I was growing.

I always thought being a mother was easy. Television had told me so most of my life and besides, almost everything had been in the past. If it wasn’t I tackled it with vigor and willed it to become easy, told myself it was easy.

Being pregnant and alone wasn’t easy.

The twins were due in May and arrived in March. The first day of spring, 1998. My daughter was a beautiful baby; small, delicate and sweet. True, she was tiny; much smaller than a baby should ever be. But she was glorious. She was perfect.

My son? Was a different story.

I had a c-section, a forced and painful affair, and my children were immediately whisked away. Out of sight. Out of reach. Later, as I laughed hysterically and proposed marriage to the Anesthesiologist (thanks to the massive amounts of painkillers pumped into my veins), the doctor brought me pictures of my little boy and my little girl. Two little Polaroid pictures that I still look at sometimes.

I looked at my son and asked, “Is he dead?”

Because frankly? He looked dead. He was purple and his tiny belly was swollen. He was small, not even as small as my daughter, but still small. He looked fragile and frail. He looked unnatural. He looked wrong. He looked…imperfect.

I was quickly assured that he was not dead, but that his lack of oxygen during the birth might cause some problems later in life. He might be blind or deaf, he might be slow, or he might be retarded.

I was twenty-two. My husband had unceremoniously dumped me for a thirty-year old woman he worked with who had a Billy Ray Cyrus mullet and inner-thigh tattoos. I had just given birth to an infant who looked like a science project gone horribly wrong. I was, markedly, not okay. In fact, I was merging dangerously into “Jerry Springer” territory.

But something inside of me, something I had never felt before, surged. Powerfully.

I drew myself up, as much as I could while recovering from a c-section, and said to the doctor that I didn’t care. That it would be fine. That he was my son, and no matter what, he was my son. I didn’t care what physical or mental imperfections he had. He was my son.

In time, my son and daughter came home and I quickly realized that my son hated me and wanted me dead. My daughter cooed and smiled and patiently waited at her turn for a bottle. My son screamed continually. He had acid reflux and was miserable. He didn’t want me to hold him or touch him or come near him. Looking at him was okay, but only when he felt like it. He didn’t let me know when he felt like it.

I was a failure. I failed at being a wife. I wasn’t good enough for my husband to want to keep around. Now, I was failing at being a mother. The thing that I was sure was so easy. The one thing I knew would be natural and not forced. The one place in my life I was sure I would not have to pretend or try, I was failing. Miserably.

One day, when my son was six months old, he was quietly laying in his crib. I assumed he was plotting my demise and trudged drearily over to him to see what was next. I was exhausted, overwhelmed and just plain sad and anticipated he would begin to wail the moment I came into his sight.

My son, the child that had screamed every time he had seen me for most of his life, looked up at me and smiled.

He soon started to like me and enjoyed when I held him or tickled him. He liked the songs I sang to him and seemed to try to watch me as I fumbled through all those nursery rhymes I had forgotten (incidentally? Jack and Jill going up the hill have NOTHING to do with the Itsy Bitsy Spider). When he was a year old and he went for a check-up and the doctor said he was pretty small for his age, but still, pretty average.

Average.

My daughter grew and thrived. Every day she became more self-assured and self-confident. She is now nearly ten years old and strong, confident and utterly hilarious. I admire her and am almost in awe of her most of the time. She is the person I wish I could be someday.

My son? Struggles.

School has been a challenge for him. In Kindergarten he had to have a tutor. As I shelled out thousands of dollars for his classes, I kicked myself inside. How could I have failed him this much as a mother? How could he struggle so much and be so far behind? What could I have done to make him better?
 
Yet again and again, every time he fell down or failed, he got back up and tried again. He refused to give up. It didn’t come easy for him, nothing ever did, but it didn’t matter. It never mattered.

While my daughter moves fluidly through life my son plods. My daughter is careful and cautious and never wants to make a mistake. My son is more concerned with trying than if he makes a mistake or not. 

“Mistakes are just another way to say you’re learning,” he told me one day, a wise old sage at the age of nine.

My son is average, in almost all things. He’s not quite as tall as the other boys his age, nor his sister who towers over him (and gently teases him about it, as siblings do). He will probably never be a star when it comes to Taekwondo or soccer. While I can someday see my daughter as the President of The Known World, it’s easier to imagine my son in a quieter role; an artist, definitely a father, a gentle man with a loving heart. He often asks me if I will love his future wife, even if she has children of her own when he meets her (reflection, of course, on our lives). I assure him over and over, I will. I will trust him. I will trust his judgment. I will trust the man he becomes.

It’s hard sometimes, to see one child flourish and the other struggle. It would be more difficult if one child did not so easily share her successes and the other let his failures overwhelm him. I am so grateful for these children I was given and everything they have taught me about being a human being.

I spent so many years of my life striving for perfection. I always wanted the huge white house with the picket fence, the perfect husband and the perfect kids. I wanted to be someone famous and for the whole world to know my name. That, to me, was the definition of success.

I’m thirty-two years old. I still don’t know what I will be when I grow up. I have a husband now, a wonderful one who loves my son and daughter as his own. We have a house; smaller than I would like and with no fence, but it’s our home and it’s full of laughter. If anyone knows my name it will be because I am their friend, not their idol.

And all of that is okay.

I wish someone had told me before I had children, just how very perfect being “average” could be.

Stephanie R. Snowe is not really a writer but she likes to play one on the internet. She and her husband Jason live in East Tennessee with her twin son and daughter and their really hairy dog-child named Ginger. Stephanie spends her days as an Environmental Specialist/Training Slave and devotes her nights to writing in her blog Jason for the Love of God teaching young girls how to not take any crap (as a volunteer for the Girl Scouts), plotting elaborate revenge fantasies involving angry monkeys trapped in boxes, and preparing boxed dinners and passing them off as homemade.

As I sit in my plush glider chair, resting my aching feet on the matching ottoman, I drop my head wearily back into the cushion.  The dim light casts shadows upon the nursery walls, and I close my eyes to listen to a reassuring sound.  “Ts-ts-ts-ahh, ts-ts-ts-ahh,” my infant son nurses from my breast.  I glance down at his sparse, silky blond hair and admire his perfect little fingers as they delicately grasp my sweater.  Only five months ago he announced his world debut with a hearty cry and commanding presence.  The experience of our first moments together already fades from my memory like a fantastic dream.  I know that once he finishes his meal he will drift into a blissful sleep as I lay him down for the night.  It wasn’t always this simple.  I learned more over the last five months than in my last year of medical school and endured more harrowing, sleepless nights than I did on call as an intern.  I smile now as I recall the traumatic joy of each precious second.

I insisted on coming home the day after Alex was born.  As a doctor, I didn’t want to spend any more time in the hospital than I had to, thinking it was for women who didn’t have the comfort of medical knowledge.  That night I discovered that medical knowledge was the furthest thing from comfort.  I felt like I was sleeping on egg shells, hyper vigilant to the faintest sound of distress.  I awoke repeatedly to warn my husband against rolling over the baby in bed, only for him to remind me that Alex was sleeping soundly in the bassinet.  At one point I arose to his cries and noticed that his arm seemed limp.  I frantically shook my sleep deprived husband awake to notify him, desperate for reassurance.  Despite his brilliance as a doctor, gathering his wits upon waking is not one of my husband’s strengths.  “Okay, calm down.  Is there any juice left in his fingers?” he muttered.  Feeling utterly hopeless I burst into tears, convinced my husband had lost his mind.  Looking back on that night I understand how overwhelmed and isolated single mothers must feel.  I believe that sense of powerlessness when one cannot soothe her crying infant must be universal to mothers of all cultures and backgrounds.

Of all the things I know now that I didn’t before becoming a mother, would any of them have made a difference?  If I knew that a baby can poop with projectile force across a room would it have prevented me from getting it in my hair?  If I knew that snaps were so much easier to fasten than buttons would I have requested them exclusively?  If I knew how pacifiers tend to mysteriously disappear would I have stocked them on every flat surface in the house?  If I knew how many countless gallons of water I would have to drink and hours I would spend pumping at work, would I still have chosen to breast feed?  I don’t know that I would have done anything differently had I any foresight into these life secrets.  It seems that part of the magic of raising a child is in discovering them.  Considering how my medical training only heightened my anxiety when something didn’t go as expected, knowing what to expect as a new mother may in some ways be a curse.  I read the leading books on getting baby to sleep through the night and establish a comfortable routine, but apparently Alex did not.  He set his own pace and determined his habits with blatant disregard for my agenda.
There is one thing that I know now that I wish I knew before becoming a mother.  That is exactly how boundless a mother’s love is.  All my life I heard women describe the wonder of becoming a mother.  To say I never listened is an understatement.  The concept of motherhood existed completely outside my reality, in a world so far from me it may as well have been another dimension.  I always appreciated my mother, but I never understood what it meant to love as a mother.  Looking back it suddenly all makes more sense.  From the time I was a young child up until I delivered my own child my mother's love comforted me, lifted me up and carried me.  She sat in the delivery room with me while I suffered painful contractions.  I cannot imagine how much more painful it was for her to see her daughter endure them.  When my husband and I dozed off, she remained awake.  She said, "Even though you are having a baby, you are still my baby and I have to take care of you."  

I think of that night now as I look at my son.  As a mother I may not know the meaning of life, but I have certainly discovered its value.  That is something that years of training to be a physician cannot teach.  Just as I have learned a new sense of love, I must now learn a new sense of patience.  I realize that Alex may never understand my love for him.  He may not know why I worry, or why I say or do certain things.  Only in becoming a mother did I learn this; how can I expect to teach him something that no one could teach me?

In medicine it is not as important to know information as it is to know what to do with information.  If I knew how it felt to be a mother, would I have done anything differently?  Maybe I would have worried more about myself, driving more cautiously and wearing a jacket more often.  But my mother would argue that it is a mother’s job to worry.  She took that burden upon herself as I will take it upon myself for Alex.  I guess her reward is in being his grandmother.  That is a joy that I hope to one day know.

Hmm!  That is an interesting statement.  Being a mother of four grown children and grandmother of three teenagers, this has really given me food for thought ever since Kat sent me her email about MOTHERING HEIGHTS.
 
Moms don't go to school to be parents.  Being 68, I have garnered a wealth of information and a lifetime of stories.  In high school and in college, I always said I wanted a baseball team, 9 boys and a girl to be the batboy.  How sexist was that!   After having my first child my mind changed in a nanosecond!  I became fertile Myrtle, and in four and a half years produced three children, before coming up for air. Five years after the first three, I went to the doctor to go back on the PILL.  He told me I would be able to in nine months.  That rocked my world, and after number 4 was born, I ended the possibility of having any more children.
 
I found that changing three diapers was as easy as changing one.  I learned that two children got into more trouble than one –  finger painting the kitchen floor with iodine, dancing naked on the sun porch roof, starting fires; dialing 911 to see what would happen; throwing snowballs at police cars.  I discovered that I could walk out of a grocery store unembarrassed, leaving a full cart of food sitting there, when one of the kids threw a tantrum.  I remember the total fear of not being able to find one of my children, even if it was for a split second.  I recall my helplessness and fear when my son got badly bitten by a dog; when my daughter, while riding on her bike, got hit by a car; on learning that one of my kids had floated out to sea, and had to be rescued; or the several times my teenagers were in car accidents or a policeman showed up at our door.  Did I expect any of this before I had children?  Did I even think that these things would happen on my watch?  The answer is a resounding, “NO!”
 
Keeping the cookie jar full, reading lots of books, looking for tadpoles, putting up with snakes and turtles and any number of cats and dogs and mice and guinea pigs and hamsters, became a way of life. Kids running in and out of the house, some mine, some their friends.  I expected that.  What I didn't expect was how gut wrenching it was to listen to my child scream “MOMMY” when a doctor was putting in stitches; when my child came to me with hurt feelings; when they didn't get picked for a team; when on a team, they didn't score or missed a ball or didn't make a save; when they didn’t get invited to a birthday party; or when one of them got teased by “friends”.
 
Thinking back on those years, the most amazing thing I learned was that I was able to juggle a multitude of tasks at the same time.  What is now called “multi-tasking” was something that all of my friends and I did without even thinking about it.  My daughter Kat calls it being a “super-mom.”  I don’t know that I would go that far, but it became second nature.  Besides being a household engineer, I volunteered at the elementary school, I was a Brownie/Girl Scout leader, I worked for Democratic candidates, I actively participated in town meetings.  A bunch of us formed a book group, and read a wide variety of books and supported each other with love and laughter.  Was I am expecting to do all of this, or more importantly be able to do all of this, with four children?  I truly never gave it a thought.  
 
There were some things that I did, because my mother had done them for her children.  Instilling a love for nature and everything it encompasses. Having respect for all of mankind.   Insisting that each child learn to play an instrument, if only for one year.  Introducing them to the fine arts: music, plays, musicals, and art.  Encouraging them to take ballet, sing in a choir, act in a play or a musical, be in a band.  As I was taught the love of books, I passed that down to my children, reading to them daily, and encouraging them to read by themselves, and also encouraging them to write.
 
At the same time, I wanted them to learn responsibility.  While they were in grade school, there was a chart on the refrigerator, and everyone had chores to do each day and each week; washing or drying dishes, setting the table (we ate together as a family most every night), sweeping the kitchen floor, folding clothes, emptying the garbage, feeding the animals, and on and on.  In payment, they would get an allowance – not much, but it was theirs to spend as they wished.  Did I dream of this happening Before Children (BC)?  No.
 
I think I must have said this a hundred times to all four of them -  “For every action, there is a consequence.”  I reminded them that whenever they were around other people to remember that they were representing the Williams family.   I also told them that they could do anything they wanted to do, IF they wanted it badly enough, and to shoot for the stars.   I also told them, and still do, that I loved them very much.
Suddenly I had no more teenagers.  They had left the nest.  At one time or another all of them fell on their tushes and struggled to get up, but get up they did, and managed to get to the other side of the mountain.  I know now, with great joy, that I have four wonderful adult children of whom I am very proud, who are loving, kind, generous, respectful, responsible people.  Individuals who are aware of others and do good works on a continuous basis; who care about our world and our environment; who are very artistic – writers, painters, crafters, photographers, musicians; who are involved in their communities; who are good parents and providers; who have a love of learning and call books their friends.  Did I think about these thing BC – no, I didn't even give it thought.
 
This then is my legacy.  This is what I know now.  Thank you Frank, Siobhan, Kat and Phil.  I love you very much.  MOM
 
LEARN TO LOVE
 YOURSELF!
 THEN SEND THAT LOVE
 THROUGHOUT THE WORLD!
















As a new mother, I didn’t fully understand how--from day one, upon learning about my first pregnancy--the opportunity to grow through experiential learning had arrived.

Regardless of fair or taxing times, what I take away from my learning experiences strengthens me for the next priceless chance to gather knowledge.  

And the learning isn’t always easy to accept.  Sometimes, mothering lessons prove painful.  I learned through experience that a healthy pregnancy and normal delivery doesn’t guarantee that the next pregnancy will produce the same healthy results.  I have realized that so many women, who try to conceive and carry a baby to full term, suffer through these experiences only to miscarry.  I have learned to be grateful.

Two little guys, my sons, have given me a chance to live life in countless new ways—few difficult and many joyful.  What may appear as a challenge, I welcome as a blessing.

And I feel blessed that my kids are curious.  Hoping that my curious little people will grow up to become inquisitive big people seems like a universal tendency.

As soon as my children were old enough to start speaking, the flood gates opened and their questions spilled my way.  In the familiar axiom, “be careful, you may get what you wish for,” my wish was granted.

I try to lean toward the honest camp when fielding their questions.  I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t admit that occasionally (I stopped counting a while back) I still dance around the absolute truth.  Depending on circumstances, full disclosure of some content can do more harm than good to impressionable young minds.  But through my transformation to motherhood, I’ve discovered there’s no better way to answer.

“How old are you Mommy?” my five-year-old asked me on my “29th” birthday.  “I’m the oldest in the family!” I answered.  

“You mean you’re older than Dad?  But he’s bigger.  “How come you’re the oldest?  Are you 100 years old?”  The conversation would not end.  I felt even worse.  I launched the curiosity fest and now I not only needed to spell out my date of birth, I needed to explain that moms and dads aren’t always the same age and were actually kids once, too.

So for my next birthday celebration, my sons recycled their own birthday candles found buried in one of our kitchen drawers.  They wedged giant numerical candles -- a four, a one and a two -- into the icing on my birthday cake.  The boys were shooting for 43 but had to settle for a little addition on the cake to arrive there.  It looked as if I was turning 412 years old.  I knew it would catch up with me, just not that quickly.

Mothering encourages the truth to catch up with us and being a mom has put it all in perspective for me.

My oldest son came home from school and reported that if I didn’t attend Back-to-School night, I would be in big trouble.  I wondered, but not for long, where he’d heard “big trouble” before.  Of course, I attended and when I mentioned this to Liam’s teacher, she naturally offered wise counsel.    

“If you believe only half of what he tells you,” she said, “I’ll believe only half of what he tells me.”  I could see she had done plenty of teaching—and parenting.  A clear stream of stories as told by a four-year-old at his Presbyterian preschool flashed through my mind.  I accepted right then that I had a few more lessons to learn.

But not to worry.  Further learning opportunities presented themselves.

On a Sunday morning as our family drove across New Hampshire on the way home from a road trip, I told our children, buckled up in the backseat, that it looked as if we would miss church that morning.  We were still about an hour outside of our destination.  The kids weren’t noticeably upset about missing church.  They responded in unison with “Whhhhoooooohooooo! I turned around and gave them the grumpy mama look.  They were giving me their honest reaction, I realized, but mama felt a little sting of disappointment.

“Do you know that Jesus can hear our thoughts and words?”  I asked.

Without hesitating, my six-year-old, Jonas, said, “I meant to say, ‘Oh, mayonnaise!’”

Who was kidding who here?

Mothering is still heightening my awareness in profound ways:  it’s not always easy to practice what I preach.  I’m not a big fan of tattling either and during dinner one evening, the boys told my husband that I used the “s” word in the car on the drive home from school.  “Stupid” is the “s” word in our family.  We have asked our elementary school, puddle-jumping, Lego-building, hockey-playing boys to avoid the word “stupid.”  So there I was.  Elementary summary judgment had been passed.  I was guilty of breaking my own rules.  Why deny the truth? I let it slip and I came clean around the dinner table.

When that driver pulled out in front of me, the action appeared to be a careless and dangerous traffic violation.  And I just couldn’t resist calling out “stupid driver.”  But I should have skipped the ranting, or at least kept my thoughts to myself.

Truth be told, while we’re learning, so are the kids.  Parents are a child’s first teachers.  Much of what they learn, they learn at home.  If I want my children to follow the rules, I must follow them, too.  My best helpers are my children, an inspiration to aim higher.  So when I’m tempted to shout out a rant, exceed the speed limit or pick up that ringing cell phone when I’m behind the wheel, I rethink those actions.  And I can thank my young ones for the privilege.   

Mothering comes with a certain set of innate skills, while others need to be learned and polished.    

So next time, when my children ask, “Mom, how old are you?”

I’ll give them an honest answer.

“I’m close to 40.  But I used to be closer.”

Mary Ann Ebner and her husband Greg are the proud parents of two sons, Liam (8) and Jonas (6).  While searching for the truth, Mary Ann writes about family, food, life, the arts and sports.  She and her family live in New York’s Hudson Valley.

    

When our first child was born, our pediatrician gave us a sticker with the poison-control number on it. I dutifully stuck it on the phone, but I didn’t give it much thought. Why would attentive parents like us ever need a number like that? After all, our house was childproofed: Cleaning supplies and medicines were locked in cabinets; plastic plugs covered the electric sockets—you get the picture. But our second child, a lovely two-year-old girl, popped our security bubble in the blink of an eye, and we are now eternally grateful for the number on our phone.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I often feel ashamed of my mistakes with the kids. I wish someone had told me before I became pregnant that I would make so many. Then maybe I could have prepared myself for the great humbling that continues to flood over me. But now, instead of covering up my failures, I like to talk about them with other mothers. I need to be reminded that I’m not the only parent who messes up and that parenting is a tough, 24-hour career with on-the-job training.

As parents, we all make stupid mistakes. It’s a fact of life.  Instead of beating ourselves up, my friends and I have developed our own way of dealing with these lapses in judgement: We nominate one another for the “Mommy of the Year Award,” open to any mother who does something that, in hindsight, is just plain dumb. The title of the award is not just an attempt to put a light-hearted face on terrible events; rather, it’s an ironic recognition that we all strive to be perfect Moms yet frequently fall short.  

Now my name has been engraved on the “Mommy of the Year Award.” Louise Orlando: idiot, dunderhead, dope. C’est la vie. All that matters is that we were lucky—and I learned a valuable lesson. Here’s what happened…

We had just returned from the grocery store. My husband and four-year-old son, Graham, and I were unloading the car. Katharine, our two-year-old, climbed into the driver’s seat to play. It all seemed harmless enough. But then Katharine started to spit and cough.

Rushing to her, I discovered a baggie of white pills spilled onto the seat, along with the rest of the contents from the glove compartment. I could see she had spit one pill onto her dress front. I stuck my finger in her mouth searching for other pills. What were the pills? Where had they come from? How many had she eaten? Questions raced through my mind, but I didn’t stop to think. I grabbed her and the bag and ran inside. I asked Katharine how many pills she had eaten. ”One, two, three, four, five,” she replied. My husband tried to coax an answer from her. “One, two, three, four, five,” she repeated.

We thought she had probably sucked on a single pill, found it bitter, and spit it out. But did we really want to gamble with our daughter’s health? So we did what any parent would do: We dialed the number stuck on the phone.

The poison-control operator answered almost immediately. Our conversation went something like this:

“I think my daughter ate some pills.”

“How old is she? What’s her weight?”

“She just turned two and weighs 24 pounds.”

“Okay. What kind of pills did she eat?”

“I don’t know. Advil. Or maybe Tylenol. They’re the only medicines we have in the house.”

“Well, which do you think it was?”

“I don’t know.” I could feel my throat tightening.

“How many do you think she ate?”

“I don’t know.” I was worried and realized that I also sounded pretty stupid. Would I be arrested for endangering a minor?

“All right. How did she get the pills?”

“She was in the car. They were in a baggie that must have been in the glove compartment. I had no idea they were there. What do I do? I have Syrup of Ipecac.”

“No, no, don’t induce vomiting. You’ll only worsen the situation. How many pills do you think she ate? If it’s Advil, she should be all right unless she ate more than 10. Tylenol is another story.”

“I told you I don’t know what they are. Wait, the pills have a number on them. Can you tell from the number?” I read it to her.

“Okay, that’s Tylenol, 500 mg. How many do you think she ate?”

“Listen, I don’t know. I’m not even sure where she found them. Just tell me what to do.” Meanwhile, Katharine is screaming in the background because Graham is scolding her for eating pills. My husband is losing his cool and is raising his voice telling them both to be quiet. I am now certain the operator is dialing the police. The kids will be sent to foster homes.

“Here’s the thing,” the operator continued. “If she took three or more Tylenol she can suffer kidney and liver failure.”

“Oh God. What do I do?” My voice was starting to quiver.

“Remain calm. Nothing will happen for a few hours. Take her to the emergency room and have her blood tested. They’ll probably make her drink some charcoal. You really don’t know how many she ate?”

“I don’t. I think she just tasted them and then spit them out.”

“I’m going to call the hospital and tell them you’re coming. Don’t speed. Stay calm. You have plenty of time to get there.”

At the hospital I explained the situation three more times, once to the admitting nurse, once to the staff nurse, and finally to the doctor. By the time I spoke to the doctor I was near tears, feeling foolish, and frightened for Katharine.

The doctor also thought Katharine had probably just sucked on the Tylenol and spit it out, but she couldn’t take that risk. Out came the liquid charcoal. (Charcoal binds with any drugs in your stomach slowing them from getting into your bloodstream.) Katharine needed to drink the black sludge. The nurse mixed up a little cocktail of charcoal and apple juice.

“Mmmm, doesn’t that look good!” the nurse said encouragingly. Katharine looked skeptical but dutifully drank three sips before refusing the rest. The nurse then used a syringe to try squirting it down her throat. That left Katharine and me covered in black ooze. Katharine was getting increasingly upset, but the nurse insisted she drink more; otherwise, she would have to stick a tube down her throat to administer the charcoal. No way, I thought. I begged Katharine. The nurse brought in a stuffed Barney. Barney drank. Katharine drank. Barney drank. Katharine insisted Barney drink more, but finally Katharine did drink enough to make the nurse happy. Now we just had to sit tight for four hours (the time it takes for Tylenol to show up in your blood).

Four hours in a windowless emergency room with a toddler and only a stuffed Barney for entertainment was nearly enough to make me drink the remaining charcoal cocktail. It was truly excruciating and gave me way too much time to replay the events of the day. (My husband had left us at the hospital to take Graham to a neighbor’s house.) So when the four hours were up and the nurse walked in to take Katharine’s blood I was relieved. Of course, taking blood from a toddler is no picnic but Katharine did her best to remain still and quiet. She seemed aware that she had done something wrong and that we were trying to fix it.

As we waited the last hour for her test results, I couldn’t help feel that my husband and I had subjected her to this torture unnecessarily. It was inconceivable to me that a toddler—particularly a picky eater like Katharine—would find the bitter taste of even one Tylenol palatable. Couldn’t we have spared our family this Friday-night ordeal at the hospital? But what if our gut feelings were wrong? Our initial mistake was one thing, but we couldn’t have lived with ourselves if we had gambled on Katharine’s health and lost.

Four hours later, the test results confirmed that Katharine had not eaten any of the pills. With a great sigh of relief, we signed the release forms and headed home.

With two active children I realize there may well be more dunderheaded mistakes in our future. (By the way, we’ve combed the car, my purse, backpack, and the house looking for baggies, bottles, anything that could be easily opened and consumed and either tossed it or moved it.) I realize that I can’t protect our kids from everything, although I won’t stop trying. So when I make my acceptance speech for Mommy of the Year, I’ll just have to remind everyone that being a parent isn’t about not making mistakes, it’s about what you learn along the way.

Louise Orlando is a freelance writer and editor. Her career goal is to finish writing the book she started nine years ago (that would be, before children) about traveling across Africa with her husband. Once city dwellers, Louise, her husband Andrew, Graham (8), Katharine (6), and their yellow Labrador now live on the Eastern Shore of Virginia along with two cats, 12 chickens, a rooster named Big Red, one guinea fowl, and the occasional stray sheep.