Motherhood and Migraine: How I Cope with Mom Guilt

My name is Sarah Rathsack. I have two kids, a six year old and eight year old. I'm living with chronic migraine.

I feel guilty that maybe the smallest things like dinner isn't made that night or they have to help themselves to go get things, and I feel guilty about missing out on things. I feel guilty about not being well enough. I feel guilty about teaching them that I'm not perfect, you know, that I may not be well enough to do everything, and it's hard. I don't like to see my mom sick or sad, and I don't want them seeing me that way. So that's like the hardest thing for me.

I wake up every morning, I go to bed every night with some form of migraine pain and nausea and sensitivities to light and sound and everything else, so ... On a normal day I wake up with my kids, and we eat our breakfast, and I drop them off at school. Then I prepare a lot of foods. We do lots of fruits and vegetables. Keeping an eye on nutrition is super important, and incorporating it into our lives is really the way that we want to live.

Mom guilt I think is for everyone. I don't think there is a mom out there that does not feel guilty every day. You probably aren't doing it right if you're not guilty about something. I didn't tell them ever that I was sick. I didn't talk much about it because I just wanted to be this superhero mom that could do it all.

Sound wise, it's very difficult with children. They are loud people, so even when they were babies, I tried not to have a lot of the toys that had the blinking lights or the sounds, like the annoying sounds constantly going.

 They're understanding more, and they are learning through my advocacy. I talk about it a lot and I explain my story, and that kind of gives them power to understand what's going on.

When I'm laying on the couch, they get to snuggle with me. Now that they're learning how to read, they get to read me bedtime stories. So we have some times that even migraine have changed for us, but still are those times that every parent should enjoy.

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NPS-ALL-NP-00191 OCTOBER 2020