31 Mom Fail Confessions: You are Not Alone, Mama

As a mom, I mess up about 1,000 times a day. I must admit, I’ve had some crazy “mom fails” in my few years of being a mom.

I’ve smacked my kids head with the car door, pinched their legs in the car seat buckle, left scissors in the reach of my toddler, set my kid on the bed only to have roll off moments later, and found my deodorant half eaten. (Not really, but you get the point).

They’ve fallen, they’ve cried, and they’ve had some near death experiences all because of me.

And don’t even get me started on all the guilt I feel when I don’t read to my kids enough, they watch too much TV, or we eat massive amounts of cereal to feed all of Africa.

As much as I try, I will never be a perfect parent. And that’s okay!

But it’s also good to know that I’m not alone!

We all screw up. Working mom, stay at home mom, part-time working mom, foster mom, the mother figure, whoever you are!

We have all fallen. We have all used the #momfail

Mom Fail: A mom who momentarily, regrettably, and accidentally forgets how to parent most likely due to mom brain.

Mom Fail Confessions: You Are Not Alone

When my oldest daughter was almost 3, she had her own room with a bed and the changing table for her baby sister. We would lock her in there during nap time. One day, I open the door to discover that the room was COVERED IN BABY POWDER–on the floor, bed, changing table, all the toys, and herself. It took ages for my husband and I to clean it, and we spent the next few days praying she’d have no adverse effects from breathing in all that stuff. (She didn’t!)

Didn’t buckle infant in car seat before taking baby for walk in car seat travel system stroller. After walk, forgot baby was not buckled. Baby fell out of car seat, onto paved driveway. I was so ashamed, so thankful baby cried right away. That baby is now a 13 year old honor student so I’m thinking she’s ok?!

My son was probably about a month old and I had him in his car seat and was trying to simultaneously put something in the driver side passenger compartment. I put the car seat down on the base perpendicular to how it should lock in and the car seat just flipped/rolled out of the car and landed upside down on the driveway. I looked under and my son was just hanging in his car seat. I flipped him over quickly and checked to see if everything was okay. Luckily he was so small that none of his body actually touched the driveway but I obviously felt pretty terrible and dumb.. haha

One time my toddler was throwing a fit cause we told him he couldn’t get in the shower with his dad… turns out he was crying cause he was stuck in the toilet. He was trying to get something off the counter and climbed up on an open toilet. In the process I guess he lost his balance and ended up sitting/getting stuck in the toilet.

Biggest mom fail, letting my toddler ride in my lap down a slide, which ended in a broke leg. No one tells you as a mom that riding down the slide with your kid is a bad idea!

The other day my baby was playing with her favorite toy, which is this little giraffe. She stuck it’s leg a little too far in her mouth that it made her have the gag reflux. I laughed at her… and then when I was walking over to pull it out of her mouth, she barfed all down herself and all over her little chair. Shouldn’t have laughed, should have acted like a concerned mom.

I have driven without buckling my baby into his car seat a couple times ? also, my newborn once peed on our bed sheets and I didn’t wash them for about week. Husband is not aware of either incident..

I was carrying my son on my shoulders. He leaned back and I couldn’t completely catch him before he fell on the floor. I was able to catch his foot a bit, but not fast enough. No more shoulder rides from me.

My daughter wet her bed one morning. I didn’t have time to change the sheets before leaving for work. I had completely forgotten about it when bedtime came around until the next morning.

Having a big lunch and not being hungry come dinner time and I forgot to feed my children dinner until around bedtime.

Husband was out of town and I spent the day pregnant and sick on the couch while my 2.5 year old just watched PJ masks all day long. I never want to watch that show again.

My son (1yr) had socks stuffed in the front of his shoes, but I didn’t realize it until he came home at the end of the day. He had been walking funny, but I didn’t have time to check why. 🙁 He must have been so uncomfortable.

That time I lost my cool while holding a hand broom. I marched into the room, yelled at the toddler who had hit her brother, and chucked the little broom as hard as I could against the floor, breaking the handle. The target of my fury burst into tears, and all the way to her room she kept saying “But you broke it! You broke it!” A couple apologies later, everything was fixed but the broom.

I had a two year old and a week old baby at home. I decided I was up for going down and doing some laundry. Baby was sleeping, two year old was napping on the couch. Perfect time to get some things done. When I went downstairs I left the door open so I’d be able to hear the kids as I sorted laundry. The stairs to the basement were wood and the floor of the basement was concrete. I looked up and saw my two year old begin down the stairs. He got down about three before flipping as he fell down the remaining 10 or so stairs. He almost immediately started crying but I was so scared I’d been the cause of some irreversible damage. I took him to the ER where we say for hours while he ate Popsicles and played. He ended up being completely fine but I knew better than to leave that door open and I know it could’ve turned out much worse. That’s just one of my biggest mom fails.

While cleaning up some of my son’s spit up from his crib sheet, I totally threw up all over the rest of the his sheet. Like…a lot. I ended up having my husband just wrap up and throw the sheet away.

I left my son naked on the changing table because his poop was so bad I had to go throw up in the toilet. Thankfully he didn’t roll off or touch himself but he was sitting up when I finally came back. Let’s just say smell and texture aren’t my strength.

My daughter had a habit of waking up through the night and not going back to sleep. We decided to let her cry it out one night. She eventually fell back asleep, but turns out we should have checked on her because when we went to get her in the morning, poop was everywhere and her butt was so red. I felt so bad. Now I always make sure they haven’t pooped before I let them cry it out.

While I was driving one day, we took a big turn and my son’s car seat started falling over. I had buckled him in the car seat, but I didn’t buckle the car seat in the car!

We got too smug with our Hauck travel system. We could fold it up, get the pram and stroller on and off like pros, securely fit the car seat in. We headed out on a big shopping expedition and outside of Homebase, in the blazing sun, we discovered that while we could put the car seat in the car and on the travel system base, we could not in fact take it off. Nor had we brought the instructions to help us figure out how to do it. We tried to download the instructions online but 20 minutes later we were still trying in vain to get the car seat off in the Homebase parking lot, as the people parked beside us came and went and gave us sad looks and my little girl got more and more annoyed. In the end we gave in and called Hauck customer services who kindly gave me a step by step on how to take it off that I shouted out to my husband. The release switch is nicely hidden in the back of the car seat and takes a seriously strong grip to pop it off. I’m still practicing how to do it so I don’t end up in another public place looking like someone who’s stolen a baby/car seat and is desperately trying to get it off and make my escape before her real mother realizes.

Not me, but my BFF- packed 2/3 kids up in the car and drove away. She thought her 8 year old was in the car and didn’t look back to check. She drove for 15 min until her daughter called from a neighbor’s house!

I was under a ton of stress with work: two MASSIVE projects had the same deadline and I was working around the clock to get it all done. I dropped my daughters off at preschool and, three hours later and several miles away, I realized that it was my youngest daughter’s special helper day. Not only did she not get to bring her show-and-tell surprise, but I completely forgot she was supposed to bring a snack. I felt terrible and apologized endlessly to the school and her teachers. But, guess what? I did THE SAME THING when it was her older sister’s turn to be special helper TWO DAYS LATER. Now, all their special days get added to a shared calendar so my husband can remind me.

Oh, oh. What a sore topic! I often think that the way I parented my older daughter, especially around the time when my second was born, was really a failure! I had a very short fuse and would snap at her for no reason. Sometimes I would grab her and she was really scared. I wish I could go back in time and get more support -the truth is, I was exhausted by sleep deprivation, caring for my step-kids, household chores and work.

While trimming my son’s nails when he was a baby I cut little bit of his skin accidentally, he bled a little, cried a lot . I felt so bad , now it’s his dad’s job to trim his nails.

I chose not to stop my son (for the 10th time) from jumping around in the dry bathtub, thinking, “If he falls, he will just have to learn his lesson.” And he did fall. Big time. Hit his front teeth on the edge of the tub, and the top four became loose and wiggly. He will probably need to have all four extracted if they don’t heal in two weeks. =(

About 2 days after baby was born I put him upstairs to sleep in his crib and I was next door. He never used to sleep more than 45 minutes before fussing so after an hour or so I seem to have forgotten about his existence. I remember I had to go to the post office and I had already put my shoes on and found my bag when I remember I had a BABY upstairs… oO Total New Mum fail.

My biggest mom fail was leaving my beer in reach of my toddler ??‍♀️. I thought I had put it out of reach until my son comes walking into the kitchen trying to drink it. He didn’t get anything in his mouth but ended up smelling like beer because as I was taking it away it dumped on him.

My daughter (2 at the time) kept asking if she could eat Goldfish she found and I kept telling her she could. I assumed she found them on the table that hadn’t been cleaned off….I finally asked her where she was getting them. Turns out….the trash. ?

My daughter went through a stage of changing her pajamas every night before going to sleep and I was getting really tired of the extra laundry. She came down one morning in different pajamas once again. I reprimanded her and she said she didn’t change them. I kept telling her u knew she was lying and disciplined her for lying to me about it. Turns out my husband changed her when she was too hot during the night and she didn’t remember him doing it. ??‍♀️

My biggest mom fail is never having enough money to provide for my kids. That’s my shame I carry with daily.

Last week I buckled my 4 year old in his car seat in the last row of my Sequoia and headed off to run errands. I had my 6 year old in the car with me as well as my nephew. All morning these boys had been arguing and whining and very quickly diminishing any sanity I had left for the day. I told my youngest if he didn’t told yelling and crying I was going to have to pull the car over, well instead I did a little break check hoping that would honestly get him to be quiet. Instead it played out completely different, I had forgot to secure his car seat with the seat belts and the seat the row In front of him was folded down so when i tapped the breaks oh so lightly he and his car seat went flying into the front passenger seat forehead first and he is hysterically laughing while laying suspended in the air staring at the floor. I had a mini heart attack and he’s laughing like he just rode an amusement park ride. But he stopped crying so mission accomplished. #completemomfail

One time my daughter got into my grandma’s room without me knowing. I looked away for like 2 seconds. She had gotten into her pills and ate one. We were all freaking out. We finally discovered that she had only eaten one of her Vitamin C pills, not her blood pressure pill. That could have been way worse!

One day when I was out running errands, I accidentally locked my toddler in the car. I can’t remember all of the details, but essentially I was going to get her out first, so she was unbuckled and all of my stuff was still in the car (phone, keys, purse) and as I was walking around to get to her side of the car I realized I had forgotten to unlock her door. So I went back around to my door, but it was also locked. At first I didn’t think it was possible, but it finally hit me that I had actually locked my daughter in the car. The worst part though, was that I felt paralyzed. There was no clear direction of “This is what you do when your kid is locked in the car” so I was just standing there, in the middle of the parking lot, too scared to take any action. I felt stupid that I was too shy to even stop any cars driving by and ask for help. As I was looking around, wondering what to do, thankfully a woman pulled up and asked if I needed help. But even then, I was too scared to call 911, because I was embarrassed and I wasn’t positive if that’s what you were supposed to do (it is, by the way, especially in Arizona). So I called my husband and asked him to bring keys since he was fairly close by, but he had to get a ride from his brother, so that took extra time. While we were waiting, I was trying to get my daughter to unlock the door, but she was too young and couldn’t reach and didn’t quite understand. After a while, we could see that she was starting to get uncomfortable and she started to cry. The lady who had stopped to help suggested that I call 911, because she said it can turn bad really fast, and I felt even more embarrassed for having kids and not understanding how dangerous the situation really was. But I still couldn’t bring myself to call 911. Thankfully my husband arrived a few minutes later and saved the day. I’m still not sure how close we were to real danger, but that is definitely one of my most shameful Mom Fails to date.

When my son was a couple of months old, the first time he rolled over was when he was on my bed. He rolled right over and fell off right in front of me, perfectly within arm’s reach, and I couldn’t stop him hitting the floor head first. He cried, and I consoled him, feeling like the worst person ever. Then I put him back in the bed and went to tell my husband about what just happened and I apparently put him close to the edge again because he rolled right over and fell again!