Mommy Guilt

I'm not sure what it's like for other mommies.  Am I really so different from anyone else?  I've heard my girlfriends comment on how hard it is to leave their children at daycare when they're leaving for work...but how far does "mommy guilt" go?  Maybe I'm abnormal (not in a good way), but it feels like every single day, I'm guilting over my daughter.
At first, when Madison was born, she was "sick."  I trusted my doctors to give me sound advice and alert me the instant something was wrong...and I feel like one of the women delivering my baby did not stress to me how dire her situation was at birth.  When I was in labor, somehow or other, her sac tore.  During labor and delivery, my daughter inhaled and digested meconium, a tar-like waste substance.  The doctor told me her sac had torn, but she made it sound like it was no big thing.  We went about delivery in a normal fashion.  She did not impress upon me that my baby was in any danger.  Because she didn't make a big deal about it, I relaxed.  She told me it was a common occurrance.  So when Maddie was born at 8:oo am on the dot (natural birth with a delightful epidural that made the whole procedure as "enjoyable" as possible), and they placed her in my arms and she was a beautiful wrinkly little raisin with Tyler's nose, I was crying and joyful and ecstatic as any mommy would be.  I felt accomplished.  She was so tiny!  But she was the most gorgeous thing I'd ever marveled over.  And when they wisked her away and said they'd bring her right back, I was elated and overjoyed.  I did it!  I made a baby!  I didn't hurt anyone in the delivery room!  I was actually really nice to everyone!
And then...hours went by.  My elation began to evaporate.  I began asking family where the baby was.  Tyler left and went out of the room, and he came back with tears in his eyes.  He told me, in front of our family, that Madison Carollynn McIntyre was in NICU.  And that she had lung problems (from inhaling tar!) and that we wouldn't be able to see her for a while.  I immediately dissolved into hysterical tears.  She'd only been out of my body for a few hours, and look where she was!  I felt like a failure as her mother.
Sparing the horrible agonizing details, it was three days before ANYONE could hold my daughter again.  It was three days before she had anything but sugar water.  It was almost a full week before she was allowed to spend the night with me.  Guilt consumed every fiber of my being.  From the second my epidural wore off, I spent every spare second hovered over her little plastic incubator.  Every four hours, after she could eat, I would get up to give her her bottles.  I could have had the nurses do it, but I was horribly afraid she would think I'd left her.  I wanted desperately for her to know that I would NEVER LEAVE.  I wore myself down into a puddle of hot mommy mess.  It was two months before I went to the grocery store.  It was three before I went back to work.  I hated myself for what happened to her.  I know (mostly) that it was nothing I did, but it seems the guilt of her birth will never leave me. Every time she's sick, or she sobs, or I head off to work (even though she is kept by her grandfather who provides the best care ever), or something happens to take the smile off her face....I have a flare up of that insanely hellish guilt that she left my belly and entered the world in that condition.  I will never forget seeing her hooked up to all those tubes, and her clawing her face to get the tape off her cheeks, or her hungry wail in NICU as they flooded her with sugar water.  My baby girl is a FIGHTER.  I don't worry about her making it...my Maddie can do anything!  But if I continue to feel this ridiculous guilt every time she catches cold or I go have a half-day without her...will I make it?  How do I make it go away?  I think I'm a decent mother.  I play in the floor,  read endless stories, satiate sobs when no one else can, know all her shows, cuddle her just the way she likes...why can't I drive away the guilt?  I hope I am just an abnormal case and that all mommies don't feel this way.  I do the best I can do every day, sometimes even when I'm running on empty and am at the bottom of the barrel...I make it work for HER.  Why isn't that enough? 

Mommy guilt.  ~sigh~