A Mother's "Sixth Sense"

                                                                                                                                                      

Don't forget about yourself.  In my last blog I quoted a lot of parents/ people. Almost everyone in my life has said to me or someone else i know, "You have to take care of yourself, so you can take care of your kids." When I first heard this I thought, that isn't really true is it? After years of parenting, I now know that it is very true. For a while I put my kids ahead of me in almost every way. They had better clothes than me, they were bathed regularly, they had everything I thought they needed. I have since come to find out that Need and Want are two very different things. What I thought my kids needed they only wanted. What I thought they wanted they needed. I know I know I sound like Dr. Suez, but trust me it makes sense. I had started buying things that we didn't need. I was buy things that no one needed because deep down I wanted something. I was to guilt ridden to admit that it was okay. In my head it was only kids, this is my only job because I don't have a "real job" (or so i thought). It took so many people telling me that parenting was a job, one of the hardest jobs you can ever do. So many told me this, until one day I thought back on everything I did for my kids and my husband. I realized a few things.......

1) I don't have regular hours. I work all the hours of every day....until they move out that is then I'm on call. 

2) I am a chef, I cook home made meals everyday and bake from scratch cookies...does it get any better?? 

3) I am a cleaning lady! I clean up everything from spilled milk that is cried over to puke off the floor (if you know you know!)  

4) I am nurse. I clean and treat everything from that tiny scratch to the stitches I have to clean and dry because some broke her ankle very badly! 

As mom's we learn to do almost everything, But we forget about ourselves way too often. Most times we don't learn it the easy way either, we seem to think that we know everything from the day they are born. This is not the case. We learn everyday with our children and some times from our children. We learn to keep it as simple as we can, because other wise we are making more work for ourselves. Listening is a big first lesson I learned. Not to my kids but to my "Sixth Sense." Every mom out there has one of these and if you are very good at listening to it, you will find that it serves you well. As they say "Mother knows best." It's so true that some times it is scary. The story I am about to tell you is a lesson. If you take care of yourself you take better care of your kids too. 

My eldest daughter recently broke her ankle at school. I came home to a 12 year old who was not crying but limping around. You might a need a bit of context to this story. Rienette is not a girly girl, she is tom boy, she doesn't cry for almost anything but she does get even. She has rolled her ankle many times in the past and every time within hours she is back to normal. So this time when I got home her ankle and foot looked like a balloon. Like any parent I gave Advil, and had her put it up while we iced it.  By the next day all the swelling had gone down but something about the ankle didn't look right. My husband and my mom were sure it was it just a bad sprain. So on all this "advice" I went on with my day. I got my nails and eye browns done, and went home to check on her. Sure enough when I got home it didn't look any better. After having some lunch I took her in to Out Patients(emergency department). When the doctor came and looked she thought it was a bad sprain too. Being the good doctor she is, she did a x=ray anyway. It turned out she was wrong, it was badly broken. My daughter had broken her tibia, she had ripped her closing growth plate off. Before we even left the hospital the paediatric orthopaedic surgeon had called. She was telling us when and where to show up. The next day in the morning she was taken in to surgery to fix her broken ankle. She now has two screws in her ankle for life. 

Trust your "Sixth Sense!" Or as I like to call it my Mom Gut! 

Do you have any stories of when your "Mom Gut" was right?  Drop then in the comments below! I can't wait to hear your stories! ;)