Everything’s perfectly all right now. We’re fine. We’re all fine here, now, thank you. How are you?

5. My child loudly proclaiming, “My mama has hair on her BUTT!” Thanks, kid! You’re welcome, fellow Walgreens shoppers!  (Also, I refuse to confirm or deny this allegation.)

4. Having the nurse at the pediatrician announce loudly (so loudly! Why so loudly?!) to the receptionist (when asking her to quickly scan the documents into their record system that they’d forgotten to give back to me from my daughter’s previous ER visit), “She left the kid in the car.” In front of the whole waiting room. The whooooole waiting room full of parents with raising eyebrows and judgy eyeballs. Looook, my child was very sick and traumatized by the doctor; like heck I was dragging her back in there once I got to the car visibly outside the door when I could run back inside with her locked in there and visible from the waiting room that was now…giving me the evil judgy eye. Everyone was fine! I had to make a cruddy decision between two cruddy choices! I stand by my choice, judgy people.

3. Someone at my job told a customer (a customer who was repeatedly someone who grated on my every nerve, so it wasn’t like I liked them that much!) that I was indisposed because I was pumping. And while there’s nothing embarrassing about feeding your child, it also was deeply humiliating to me to have this stranger I didn’t know suddenly know I was busy pumping. It seemed like such an intimate thing to have someone know, in terms of why I couldn’t help them with a computer question at the moment.  The whole thing made me sad that the mechanics of being a working mom who’s trying to breastfeed can be so fraught with a thousand little difficulties and indignities, even when it’s supported by one’s organization as a whole.  (I did get an apology after the fact, but I always felt like this stranger knew something they didn’t have the right to know about me whenever we interacted after that.  Sigh.)

2. Failing to keep my child from being whacked by a playground swing, and having another mom swoop in to comfort her before I could get there. I mean, I appreciate the other mom caring! But oof.  It’s so hard to feel like you’ve failed your child, and failed your job as a mom, but then to fail at being there to comfort them in that split-second after the shock of impact too…yeah.  That was rough.  I beat myself up over it for a long time, even though minutes later, my daughter was happily playing again.

1. Everything my child has basically ever said about me to her preschool teachers, probably, that I hope they have the grace never to repeat a single one of them so I can remain blissfully ignorant of my reputation. (My legendary hairy butt is probably very popular, though…knowing my luck.)