[Kelli]

Last night I joined some of my women friends for dinner and we had some great laughs while sharing what we call our various “bad mommy” stories (and our dh’s “bad daddy” ones, in which mine won the prize ). These are the kinds of stories that were not necessarily funny at the time they happened, but looking back now we can laugh about our “mommy” mistakes or things that happened while we were around but were not directly responsible. I thought it would be fun to do here and it would have the added benefit of reinforcing to new and waiting parents that none of us is perfect, and you don’t have to be. All are welcome to share their story here and it does not matter if you are a parent, aunt, uncle, special friend to a child, or know of someone who had an incident, etc. The only rule is that no one is allowed to call children’s services on anybody. I guess I’ll start.

My daughter who we adopted as an infant is now three, so as a first time mother, I have certainly made my share of “mommy” mistakes. The earliest one that I can recall took place during my birthday celebration (first one as a mommy) about three years ago. My daughter was about 6 months old at the time and we took her to a nice restaurant (children were welcome) with a group of friends. She was still being toted around in her car seat carrier and when we got to the restaurant I placed her next to me on the “car seat chair” that the restaurant provided for us. While we were sitting around having a good time and waiting for our meals to be served all of a sudden there was a loud CRASH, and when I looked over, the chair my dd was in had flipped completely over forward and the car seat was face down on the floor. The restaurant got so silent that you could have heard a pin drop, as I rushed down to the floor to pick her up. And when I reached her and turned her over, she had the biggest grin on her face and was baby babbling/laughing away. I think she thought she was on a ride or something. Her head and body had never hit the floor because I did have the good sense to keep her tightly strapped inside her car seat even though we were not in the car (lesson to you new mommy’s). The people in the restaurant started clapping. I was so embarrassed and upset that I was the one that started to cry, and needless to say I did not enjoy my birthday dinner. I didn’t let her go and had her in my arms the rest of the meal. Because the restaurant thought it was a bum chair (to this day I still feel responsible) they ended up comping our meals.

I’m embarrassed to say that I have others but am more interested in hearing yours. Any other good, but “bad mommy's” out there?

Best wishes,
Kelli

[Jensboys]

Kelli - well as a mom of 4 boys, I have more than my share of bad mommy stories ... but this one happened this week (including a couple very similar to yours ).

My son Tanner, fell off the monkey bars and really hurt his arm. But my husband was at work for the evening and I was home alone with the 4 boys -- and I really, really didnt feel like sitting in emerg. for hours with the kids ... So, I put ice on it and hoped he'd be ok. He calmed down and seemed "fine" so all the boys had supper and went to bed.

10pm up awakes my hysterical son in agony from his "fine" arm. Called my husband at work who came home and took him into the hospital for me.

Apparently, it was BROKEN!!!

Ahhhhh ooooopppps. But what has made me feel better is how many other mothers have told me it took them a day or two to realize their child had probably broken a limb!

Jen

[Nevada Jen]

I have so many of these. The first one happened within days of my daughters birth. I had a c section and really could not get off the couch and was still a little doped up. DD was sleeping on her back on the floor next to the couch. My husband was nice enough to bring me pizza on a hard plastic plate while I lay on the couch. I ate the pizza and set the plate on my stomach and proceeded to fall asleep. The plate slipped off my tummy and landed sideways with the edge firmly planted in my daughters soft head. I remeber looking down and thinking in a druggy haze "How cool that a plate can stand on end like that. . . Of sh_t! That plate is stuck in my daughters head!" She of course did not even wake up but she had a dent in her head for the next two weeks!

Bring on the stories, I have another good one but I think I should wait my turn.

Jen

Needless to say, that was the end of the good drugs.

[Nevada Jen]

OK I will go twice. Jen the same thing happened to me in 5th grade. THe difference was I never said I was fine and really could not operate my hands very well after the fall. After two days my mom threw a fit at a fancy restraunt because I "was intentionally using my most atrocious manners to embarrass her." I guess that would be because I could not propperly cut my steak. SO she drags me to the emergency room and essentially demands that they do an xray so that I can stop using my arms as an excuse. You guessed it. TWO broken wrists. As if she did not learn her lesson, two weeks later I slammed my thumb (the part that stuck of out the cast) in the car door and she locked the doors and walked away and refused to come back and unlock them because she thought I was being a drama queen! I gotta say, 30 years later, I am still get milage out of these bad mommy moments. SHe actually was a good mom, by the way.

Jen

[MamaTo6]

Ohhhhh what a fun thread! Okay, you gotta promise nobody calls childrens services. lol. We got our lil guy when he was 10 days old from foster care. He has had regular 3x a week visits with bmom since birth, tpr is monday. Thats not my story though. When he was about 5 months old, I had him all dressed and waiting in his baby rocking chair, strapped in, resting on the floor. We were just waiting for the driver to pick lil guy up to transport him to his visit. Just as the driver knocked on the door, I heard a loud cry from our lil guy. He had leaned over forward so far that he overturned the chair and was now face first on the floor with the chair still strapped to his back. I quickly picked him up and had just seconds to comfort him. I carried him out to the car and strapped him in the car seat. It was only then that I noticed he was bleeding. Poor lil guy had put his tooth into his lip. I got some tissues from the driver and gushed about how lil guy had hit himself in the mouth.... with a toy. Shhhh.
Oh I have a million of these stories after raising 6 kids and 5 gr kids. I like to hear everybody elses stories though, so keep them coming.

Warm Wishes....Barbie

[saxxxy]

My story happened this week. My husband is home on a two week leave from Iraq and was downstairs with my 14 month old daughter. She was at the bottom of the stairs standing at the gate whining up at me. I figured if I gave her her binki she would stop whining. I got the binki and tossed it down the stairs, well over her head of course. Well, the binki landed right in between her eyes on her forehead. It left a huge bruise. You could hear the binki bounce off her head.

I felt AWFUL!!

I promise that is the first and last time I will be tossing the binki or anything else down the stairs when my daughter is standing at the bottom.

I have terrible aim, obviously.

[lisa in venice]

I am sure that the other kids have been victims of my bad mommies days but the only ones I can think of right now are about my second child Rachel. When she had only been home for about a week two truely evil Sws from the county came to do the final certification of our home *** a foster home and check in on Rachel. We entered the foster/adopt program in it's early stages and they only did the final certification after placement.

I found out later that these SWs had decided that we were not the family for Rachel becasue we were the wrong cpmbination of Biracial and were looking for a reason to move her to a more "culturally appropriate" home. Everythig seemed to go wrong that day with it culminating in me putting her into her carseat which was sitting on the table the wrong way and her sliding right our onto the table infront of these two women. Bigs OOPs there.

When she was three she decided that she wanted to dress herself for hurch. Iw as sleeping and she woke me up fully dressed. I am talking adorable dress, lace socks and her "Maryjanes". All I had to do was do her hair. I was quite pleased with her and with myself as a mom until........ We get the the church nursey and she climbs up on the slide and I notice that she is not wearing panties . That was just the first of her embarressing "commando" moments hwere she owuld wear a dress and take off her undies and leave them places .

Recently she went off to a big swim meet in OH. She is a synchronized swimmer so the competition involves both "free routines" and technical elements called figures. On the day they were to swim figures she called me to tell me that she was nauseous. I told her that she was nervous and to just swim. Well she called later and told me that she was done with figures but that she was cold and couldn't get warm. You guessed it she really was sick. I told her to take it easy the rest of the day and swim the heck out of the team routine the next day. Well by the next day she was in the hospital hooked up to IVs becasue she was so dehydrated from vomiting all night. She had a 104 fever and they had no idea of what was wrong with her. The team moms called me and asked if she was released from the hospital in time to swim tread water while the team swam their routine would I allow it. By just being in the water she would raise the team score by .25 points. Logically I knew that she had traveled 2000 miles to be at this meet and to not get a score would be really sad so I told them to put her in the water. talk about a bad mom! making my sick as a dog kid swim. Well she survived the team got their highest score ever (it would have been much higher if Rachel had been able to swim the rountine instead of just treading water) and she thanked me for letting her swim. I still couldn't help feeling like some terrible stage mom.

Oh and there was the time I let her go to the beach with friends for the first time alone. She had a surfing accident requiring 50 sticthes. I went back and forth about allowing her to go alone and decided in the end that not only was she responsible but that her frineds were also very mature and most importantly all REALLY strong swimmer with lifeguard training. They all did junior lifeguards together at that beach and the lifeguards all knew them. I told her that before they took their boards out to check in with the lifeguards so that they knew that it was kids they knew and taught out in the water not just some random strangers. I came home really worried if it was ok for her to do this at her age, she was only 11 and her friends were all 13 and up. I was't home a half hour before I got the call that she had been injured.

lisa

lisa

[traceyk]

ok, mind you that when you hear my story, I am sad to admit I am a seasoned Mom of 15 years, I had been at the mall with my teen daughters and the baby all day. So when I got home I came inside, brought the baby in and put her down. I proceeded to take the dog outside for a bit. I then came back in and made my lunch and sat down and was eating it. I was almost finished when my oldest daughter Bretta comes in and says "um, mom, are you going to leave Drihan in her carseat for the rest of the day?!?!" I said "oh sh*&, I forgot" then my daughter says "great, we have only had her 2 weeks and you are going to leave my new sister somewhere aren't you?" I was so embarrassed!

[honu]

I'm not yet a Mom, but I've got a story from when I was 11 involving my Cousin. It was Easter and we were all at my Grandma's house. All the kids were outside playing when it started to rain. We all took off running towards the house when my 2 year old Cousin started screaming and crying. The backyard was big and had this huge hill, which he was standing at the top of. The nice young lady that I was I went back out into the rain to get him. He refused to walk so I had to pick him up and proceeded down the hill. It was muddy and I slipped while holding him, but landed on my rear and thought he survived. Well, we get into the house and his Mom takes him and he keeps crying. Everyone tried to calm him down, but he wouldn't walk and they ended up in the ER and he had a broken leg.

To this day I have a very close relationship with my Cousin, he's like a Brother to me. Well, everytime I get a little snotty with him or something he reminds me of the time I broke his leg. He doesn't even remember it, but of course insists on reminding me to make me feel bad. I just remind him that I was the only one willing to go back out into the rain and get him, lol!

Great stories everyone!

[Poolside]

I'm laughing at all these and it's given me the confidence to post a bad daddy story: I have so many bad mommy moments I have to think more on it.

DD was about 5 months old and had just started eating a little baby cereal. After a couple days she wasn't pooping so we got a little nervous. I looked up a recommendation to give her a little bit of diluted prune juice to help, and I'd mentioned casually to DH that we might need some prune juice. My DH took it upon himself to give her the juice without asking me. So 4oz of undiluted prune juice later we had a dehydrated and very messy, smelly baby It lasted several days !

[2boysmom]

I was so excited when my son was about 6 months old I took him to the mall. Up until this point he pretty much had sat in the stroller and enjoyed the ride. I was walking through the mall feeling very proud of my baby, when all of a sudden a women with a stroller comes running across the walkway. I thought she must be having some kind of a problem, so I slowed down. When she got close enough for me to hear her, she said stop, your baby is falling out of the stroller. I look down and to my horror, my son had wiggled his way down the bottom of the stroller, and I was just walking along my merry way. The kind women told me not to feel too bad the same thing had happened to her once. Moral of the story- always strap them in tightly!

[ajjhmf]

For the first anniversay of our son's finalization, we decided to take a trip to the US Air Force Museum. So we get there with the 2 kids, not really worried about a thing. My son was 5 and our daughter was 4 months. Well, we knew the baby wasn't going to just be in her stroller all day, so we brought our Snugli. We'd never tried it before, but hey, how hard could it be. So I'm holding her trying to get this contraption adjusted on DH. I need 2 hands so I set the baby in her stroller. 5 seconds later, my son screams and I turn to see the baby sliding right out of the stroller onto the concrete floor. Thankfully, she had incredible head/neck control for her age and just curled her self into a ball and saved herself from serious head injury. That didn't stop her from screaming though. Which in turn started me crying and us seriously considering heading for the local ER. She was fine though and more scared than anything. She didn't even get a bruise, but that didn't stop me from beating myself up about it for the next 2 hours.

So the moral of the story is, always try baby equipment out at home before you take in on the road.

[honu]

I thought I'd share one more about me this time.

My dear Grandma was watching me once and had put me in a walker to move about the kitchen while she was doing the dishes. Well apparently she got a phone call and I was able to slip away towards the basement door. Of course the door was not completely closed and I was able to pry it open with my little fingers. The story goes, my Grandma heard the door squeak open and rushed over to get me, but it was too late. I bounced down the entire flight of stairs (no carpet) and continued on across the concrete basement floor as if nothing happened. She was freaking out and did not tell anyone about it for a long time. That is why they say walkers are not safe.

[Sarah0518]

A coworker and I were comparing baby stories today. This is a funny one she had to tell. Her first night home from the hospital her daughter slept almost completely thru the night. In the morning, she hears a "mewing" noise. Still in bed, she nudges her husband and tells him the cats making noise could he please let it out. She said he got a big kick out of it, and didn't let her forget it for awhile.

[Mom2J]

These stories are hysterical. I thought I'd add my husband's bad Daddy story. (Thank goodness he's not on here to see that I'm telling this.)

Our daughter (oldest child) was 3-months old and I wanted to get her the first pair of shoes. We went out and tried on the cutest little pair of pink/white Nike tennis shoes. (Still don't know why they made them with actual soles for that age, but I digress.) We got the size and took them home.

The next day, we're getting ready to go out and my hubby offers to dress our daughter. I walk in the room to see him trying with all of his might to get the shoes on her. He tried one foot after the other and neither went on. She by this time is crying. He looks at me all upset, saying I thought you tried these on, did you grab the wrong box? I picked up a shoe and realize he still had the paper in the toes of the shoe. Of course, he still hasn't lived that one down. (He now checks all shoes that are bought, for it. LOL)

We won't go into all of the times he put her cute little outfits on backwards (and went out that way) , because the buttons he thought, went in the front or him trying to pull up her hair only to have her look like someone did it in the dark.

I just know she's going to be in therapy for life, because of us. LOL.

Mom2J