Are you Mom enough?

That is the question screaming from the latest Time magazine and causing a furore in the international parenting world as it raises - yet again - the breastfeeding bogeyman and essentially who decides who is a 'good' parent.

The breastfeeding fraternity (or should that be sorority?) are upset, the formula feeders see it as yet another bashfest and even the tube-feeders see it as as a 'you think that's extreme? Try what we have to do!' gauntlet to throw down.

But to my tired and sleep-deprived wandering mind it ambles into all sorts of territory.
I'm not even going to try to get into the this parenting school says this, that one says that and if you don't subscribe to my one then you are automatically a bad mother kind of thing.

I just think about all the received wisdom about parenting - everyone has an opinion even the single person on the bus - and everyone seems entitled to give you the benefit of that opinion once you are pregnant or a parent.
Everyone says parenting is not for the faint hearted, people talk about the preemie roller coaster etc and so many parents bemoan their child's tantrums, early morning starts or fussy eating.
There was a discussion recently on a group I'm part of where a mother said she was really over hearing about these everyday woes of parenting but felt awful just feeling that and certainly couldn't say that to any of her friends.
John Key, our Prime Minister in New Zealand, recently said during a school visit that if one of the kids wanted his job they could have it. He commented on his long hours, of often not getting to bed until midnight and up again a bit before 6am and the work load.
Here in New Zealand there has also been talk of needing to sort out safety standards for adventure tourism.

I've said before that the kind of parenting P and I are called on it do is more like extreme parenting, maybe adventure parenting where the roller coaster could lose a wheel any time.
I'm also awake for nearly as many hours as John Key - not running a country, just simply doing what I have to do to keep my child thriving. The rewards are possibly larger than those financial rewards for running a country - but the grind is none the less unremitting.

Parenting is hard yakka - no question.
Those days when one kid after another throws up, those nights when you just get one kid settled and another needs your attention and all you want is to get to bed, those days when you run out of coffee and everything you touch seems to turn to custard - as parents we all have those days.

But special needs parenting is a whole different ball game - and who is mom enough for that?
We don't get to choose to engage in this 'adventure parenting', it gets landed on us and for the most part there simply is no choice involved. We do what we do because we have to, because it's our child, because opting out is not an option.

So often the received wisdom is also not an option either - on the 'are you mom enough' stakes those choices just aren't there.
I have a friend whose blog updates arrive in my email box regularly - recently she posted about one of her children successfully baking a cake by themselves, often it's full of the fun, newsy things they've been doing, outings, school events etc.
I can't grudge her that. I feel bad even thinking about that.
But the day the cake post came through we'd had another tough one with N. Her child is younger than N and all I could think of was "Bugger being able to bake a cake, I just want a kid who will EAT a slice!"
The school hijinx one came in as we were preparing for a specialist appointment for N and trying to explain yet again how his difficulties in eating and frequent sick days actually meant we couldn't even enrol him in school.

Another friend posts of the horrors of having kid after kid come down with a tummy bug - and I can certainly sympathise - but the very next day N has one of his puky retchy events and apart from hating it when the house rings with the sound of his retching - it also means that the dietitian's current plan is an epic fail - again.
And I just wish, just for a moment, that it were something as simple, as benign, as short lived, as a tummy bug - this one's been going for 4 1/2 years and counting!

And so I find kindred spirits with other 'adventure parenting' parents. When my friend with a kid with Type 1 diabetes posts about just wishing she could go to bed but it's going to be a long night monitoring blood sugars I understand some of that worry and exhaustion. When I find myself doing a complete bedding and pj change for T at 1am because the medicine port on his tube has opened and we have a bed of 'tummy junk' to clean up I find other parents who know what it means when you say you 'fed the bed' that night.
When the house is alive with the sound of retching then there's probably someone else out there who knows what that's like - or even wishes her child could retch!

Normally we just keep on trudging forwards, one foot in front of the other. But I'm usually thankful for the fact that while we might be constantly fighting fires it's only one kid at a time.
But right now we're fighting fires with all the kids.

W is struggling with the increase in workload that secondary requires of him - more to the point he's struggling with the changes in routine that entails! Because of other factors I haven't managed his transition at all well and he's been very distressed at times.
We also continue to battle bureaucrats, many of whom appear to be unable to read as they don't apply the documentary evidence we supplied - or even acknowledge it's existence!

N has significantly deteriorated in the past months and every time we think we might be getting somewhere with him or for him - another door slams in our face. We are not only going round and round the medical bush but it's requiring extensive research to actually try and get some handle on what options there are to help. Right now we're holding our breath to see what another doctor says, a doctor it seems who is probably the only person in the country to be able to help him otherwise we'll have to look overseas.

Through all of this I've said thank goodness T is going well, T is fine. Until last week that is when I got a call telling me his iron levels are an issue again. He ought to be getting way more than enough iron in his feeds never mind his food he's eating - so why is it so low?
In the past it's happened alongside reflux - so bleeding in the oesophagus; his complications from his previous surgeries - so probably something to do with the adhesions, tearing in his stomach round his tube etc.
 But this time there's no obvious reason. I will find out soon if they've dropped since December's tests and if so by how much and thankfully he has a routine paed appointment coming up this week - but we wanted to use that to push things along for N who sees the same paed!

And so, these days I am simply overwhelmed and worried much of the time. For the first time it's spilling over into my dreams, in the few hours of rest I have I'm arguing with doctors, composing letters or consulting with people in my sleep. I wake up just about as tired as I was when I went to bed.

There needs to be safety standards in 'adventure parenting' I think!
Things like the country running out of N's formula yet again and finding out there's a 6 week delay in supply ought to be against the safety standards.
Sometimes, like John Key, I wish I could give this job to someone else.
So, rather than extended breastfeeding being the bar to jump, I do sometimes wonder - am I mom enough for all this? Is anyone?