Once a week, I take my toddler to a music class 25 minutes from our house. It seems like a small thing, taking a two-year-old on a simple outing, but it triggers one of my biggest fears— being out with my child and unable to find a bathroom when I need it.
That might sound like a strange thing to worry about. After all, it’s usually the toddlers who have bathroom accidents, not the parents.
But I have a form of inflammatory bowel disease called ulcerative colitis. This means when my disease is active and I have to go, I have to go now. Having to find a bathroom at a moment’s notice is crucial and panic inducing, and having a little kid to wrangle at the same time adds an extra level of stress to normal activities.
I’ve worried about bathroom access for well over a decade now, before I was even diagnosed with this painful chronic disease. It started in high school and persisted throughout college, when I finally went to see a gastroenterologist and received a proper diagnosis. What I’d always brushed off as just lactose intolerance was actually a serious disorder.
Even though I was diagnosed 10 years ago, the only time I’ve been in full remission from my UC was when I was pregnant. According to my doctor, one-third of women go into remission during pregnancy, while another third see their condition stay the same, and the final third actually get worse. Not a single medication has helped me feel as healthy as I did then.
The relief was short-lived, though. My symptoms came back after my son was born, in early 2017, and for the last two years, I’ve been doing the dance of caring for him and for myself and trying to do both things well.
I still remember the first time I had to cut him off mid-nursing to set him in his bassinet so I could dash to the toilet. He was only a couple of months old and screamed at the top of his little lungs until I came back. It was the first time I ran from him to get to the bathroom in time, but not the last. He’s gotten so used to it now that he just follows me in there (because, toddlers).
Some days, we don’t leave the house because of my stomach. We rarely go out to eat (something my sweet husband has learned to shrug off, even though he would love it if we could try new restaurants together). We don’t go on outings that take us far from a restroom. Whenever I go somewhere, the first thing I do without even thinking about it is locate the toilets.
It hasn’t been easy parenting a small child while managing a stubborn disease, but I’m learning one important lesson in it all: extreme self-compassion.
I can be irrationally hard on myself, always wanting to be better in one way or another. But life with both a toddler and UC has shown me that surrendering is the only way to really be happy. I can fight against my reality when my kid is having a meltdown and I’m rushing to the bathroom, angry that I can’t just scoop him up and take him out somewhere fun—or I can accept things as they are and feel compassion for myself.
And not just placating or phony self-compassion, but a genuine sense of mercy and kindness. I started to think about what I’d say if a close friend had a small child and a health issue that made her feel lousy. I would never tell her to suck it up and get it together before she ruined her kid’s childhood by not leaving the house enough. I would never tell her she wasn’t trying hard enough to be well or make her wonder if everyone in her life thought she was just lazy. So why would I do that to myself?
It can be hard to give ourselves the same gentleness we so easily give to other people. We don’t think twice about comforting our friends, yet our own problems rarely elicit the same response.
My son is always watching, and I want him to see me making good decisions based on care rather than unnecessary pressure. So I show him that we go to our music class because it’s fun and we’re committed to it, but I also won’t hesitate to skip a week if I feel unwell. I show him that I can let myself be where I am, whether I feel great and want to take on the world one day or can barely get off the couch the next.
And truly, the gift of self-compassion is not just for me: it’s also for my child, so he can see that we treat one another and ourselves kindly and with love no matter what.