Milestone Guilt

This post is dedicated to all the Mams out there who have, at some point, been a victim of ‘milestone guilt’.

I was watching Loose Women a while ago and they were talking about Mams who feel guilty when their kids don’t hit the milestones on time. I kinda poo-pooed it, but now that Evie’s almost 4 months old, I’m starting to really feel it.

I have an app on my phone which tells me what Evie is supposed to be doing and by what point in her development. It says that by 16 weeks, she should be able to push herself up from her tummy while lifting her head up to look around.

Yeah, she can’t do that.

Everytime we put her on her tummy time mat, she lays there, face flat on the floor with her arms spread out. And that makes me feel so bad! I mean, she can sit up and support her own head, but as for lifting it up from the floor, that’s a big fat no. It’s as if these apps and websites are saying “if your baby can’t do it by this time, then you’re a bad mama!”.

It’s got me thinking, back in the day when I was tiny, my parents didn’t have these apps screaming in their faces, and I turned out alright (well…kind of, haha!). I feel like I’m not doing enough for her because she’s a little late with certain things, when really, she’s just hitting her milestones when she’s ready to hit them. I mean, she’s just shy of four months old and she’s already teething so she’s hit that milestone earlier than most babies!

I think, us Mams and Dads need to give ourselves a bit more credit.

Put the apps and the websites away! Stop bringing up our babies according to what they say, otherwise we won’t enjoy being parents because we’ll be too busy being paranoid. I don’t wanna look back in a few years time and only be able to remember being a stressed out, overthinking Mother. I want to remember enjoying parenthood and celebrating when she does learn to do things, which will be in her own time and not when a god damn app says so.

They’ll get there eventually with our help! I’ll be kicking myself when she’s crawling around trashing my house!

Written by Bekka Louise Forsyth for her blog, andthentherewasthree.