I Feel Like I’m Failing At Motherhood In Quarantine

"I am desperate for words of comfort — that I am doing this right, that when we return to whatever we return to, she will be OK."The day after the World Health Organization declares COVID-19 a pandemic, my husband and I quit using pacifiers with our 2-year-old. The timing is purely coincidental. We’ve spent the last few days talking up the “pacifier fairy” and she is slated to come that night, taking our daughter’s binkies away to give to babies who aren’t big girls yet.

I was not built for the newborn stage. Far removed, in the safety of toddlerhood, I look upon those first three months — known as the fourth trimester — affectionately and with a kind of fearful reverence, like the final girl in a horror movie realizing she’s somehow survived. But week two dawns, and the cracks in our facade are showing. The novelty of being home together has worn off. Her toys are declared boring. The activities I plan take too long to set up and too long to clean up to justify the scant few minutes she’s occupied. She is increasingly cranky from the lack of structure, becoming more annoyed at my husband and me, who are continuously descending upon our laptops to check emails or hop on Zoom meetings.

“You’re the mother. You set the tone,” my sister scolds me when I call her on the cusp of week three. When she says it, I know it’s true and unfair in the way all things about motherhood are true and unfair, that moms get penalized at work for their children while dads get promoted, that moms handle the majority of domestic tasks, that moms get judged for each effort while dads get lauded for just showing up.

Fear that I can’t do it, at least not in the way mothers are supposed to. That even with the sky falling and the world crumbling, I can’t be the mother I so want to be, the one who can sacrifice herself for her child with the ease everyone assumes all mothers have.

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