“Why did you put my shirt in the shower?” “Why are there wet footprints leading from the dog bowl?” “What is that smell?” These are just some of the questions moms ask everyday. Of course most of these questions are rhetorical but sometimes we ask real questions too. “Do you want a muffin or goldfish for snack?” “Do you want the blue pants or the grey pants?” Some days it feels like all we do is ask questions, and never really get an answer.

From the moment you find out you’re expecting, you start to have questions. “What can I eat? What activities can I keep doing? Why am I craving ketchup?” And then when baby is born you find yourself asking, “why aren’t you sleeping? What’s making you upset?” Sometimes, a lot of the time, we ask the questions of ourselves, “am I being a good mom? Am I making the right choices?”

As kids get older the questions change slightly. “Why won’t you stay asleep? Did you hurt yourself? What do you want to eat?” But the questions we ask of ourselves stay the same. “Am I being a good mom? Am I making the right choices? Am I raising you right?”

I think it is only natural to have so many questions. There are dozens of books written on the topic of parenting but none of them will ever answer all of our questions. Parenting is like groping in the dark, searching for the door to the bedroom after finally getting your kid to sleep and praying you don’t step on a lego on the way out. So much of it is trial and error and feels like we are living in the dark. We ask ourselves what our child needs and then do our best to answer the question.

Moms feel the pressure to answer the questions correctly. It’s somehow ingrained that we have to cure every illness and make everything in their world “right.” That’s our job right? I often feel this way. We want so badly to hover, to referee every situation, to catch them before they fall. But we can’t do that. And we can’t second guess ourselves when they do fall. We can’t question all of our motherhood choices and jump to the conclusion that we are “bad moms.”

We love our children, love them like a mama bear. And the fact we worry about being a bad mom is what makes us a good mom. We don’t need to question ourselves at every waking moment, especially when those waking moments happen in the middle of the night.

While it’s important to reflect on some of our decisions and offer apologies when necessary, we also need to remember we are human. We can’t be perfect. We won’t have an answer to every question. Especially questions like “why did you dump a cup of water onto the floor?” Sometimes there simply aren’t answers.

So the next time you find yourself sitting and questioning every parenting decision you have ever made, stop! Think instead about how far your child has come, from the tiny baby you brought home to who they are now (even if they are running around terrorizing the dog). Then hug them and tell them you love them, because you can’t question that. Some days we don’t always like our kids but we will always love them.

And in the end that’s the real answer to our mom questions. We don’t always like the job (meal planning, laundry, vacuuming, explaining for the 106th time why the dog doesn’t eat Cheerios) but we do love it. We love our kids, we love our spouse and we love the family we are building. So don’t question that! The world is full of too many unanswerable questions so focus on the answer you do have.

“Am I being a good mom?” Your answer: “I love my kids, care for them, and do my best to keep them safe. So while I may not be perfect or Instagram worthy, I am doing my best. So yes, I am being a good mom.”