Are you a good mother?

Lil General completes five months next week. As I see him thumb sucking, lying down showing his bum and holding a fistful of hair in his other hand and sheepishly smiling at me half asleep, I'm retrospecting if I have been a good mother to this kid? I don't know if all mothers think if they have done a good job ....

As I ponder on this, I can only think of the numerous instances when I have been negligent towards Lil General ---

- the first one being, when I let him smear his potty all over his lower half of the body while I fixed some really messy Javascript code - my first freelance job post Pregnancy. He made sounds to let me know that he had done his job but I was so engrossed and frustrated with work that I didn't look at him. That evening I swore never to take up work again until I felt comfortable handling LG and work.

- the second one when I first fed him Nusobee and let my milk waste away as I was bleeding from his sucking. Not exclusively breastfeeding him for the first 6 months has been my biggest guilt.

- the few times he has woken up form sleep and cried in hunger while it took me minutes to prepare and cool the formula. Do I even need to say how it feels to see tears rolling down his eyes ..

- maybe I did something wrong or didn't eat enough during my pregnancy that caused him calcium deficiency a day after he was born. Soon after he was taken to the ICU and given drips in those teeny-weeny hands and feet and the numerous punctures to find a suitable vein?

- ah and the one time when I was so tired that I let him sleep in wetness and he caught cold and fever.

and the list goes on and I feel awful how I have not been able to meet the standards of a good mother or as good my mom was.

There are umpteen reasons for why I failed in each of the above like being tired for holding him for 6 hours at a stretch or feeding until my nipples bled during his colic days. But at the end no reason is good enough.