Guilt issues, I guess

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Sometimes when I put the kid down for a nap, instead of cleaning up or taking a nap myself, I get stuck watching trash tv. I got sucked into dr Phil today. It's amazing to me how many parents just tend to let their kids run wild and then are SHOCKED when their kid becomes an unmanageable teenager.
My parents went the opposite route: they were much too strict, too unreasonable, and so I ran away at 16 a few times and ran away for good at 17. I was exhausted by the lack of control I had over my own life, and there was no appeal process to work with, so I left.  It's daunting to try to think about how to walk the line with my kid(s). How do you give them appropriate balance between making their own decisions and giving them the guidance necessary to make those decisions? How do you begin to trust your child to make good decisions? How do you keep them safe while allowing them to develop into their own person?
I know my son is 17 months old and the other kid isn't even born yet...I've got a while before any of this is remotely relevant, but it already worries me. Then again, everything worries me. I worry that I give kiddo too much playing alone time. I worry about the fact that it's just the 2 of us 99% of the time. I worry that I cut his food too small. Am I stifling his growth? It seems neurotic as hell, but hardly an hour goes by that I'm not momentarily paralyzed by fear. I wonder if other mothers feel the same way, or if I just over think things...

I trolled the Internet earlier, for some reason obsessed with finding an Elizabethan-era recipe. I have no clue why. I haven't found anything yet, but I have high hopes!  I already have an awesome Medieval meat pie recipe that I make with some frequency...dear GOD it's this amazing burst of flavors...but I'd like something more...ah..."modern?"  Can it still be considered modern if it's patterned after something written in the sixteenth century?  Everything's relative, I suppose...so it's modern in regards to the meat pie recipe from the fifteenth century...

The kid is getting his molars, I think.  In any case, he's a little bundle of clingy, whiny insomnia all of a sudden.  It makes me sad for him and increasingly frustrated for me.  He slept most of the night last night, but the night before was about 8 steps beyond miserable.  For all of us.  The hub took two turns trying to get the kid to settle down, and out came the housewife guilt, so I took kiddo into the living room and let him stagger around and drink milk for about 2 hours until he started to slow back down again.  Unfortunately, my husband's guilt kicked in, and he didn't manage to sleep even with me doing that, so both of us were just total train wrecks yesterday.
It's amazing how touchy I get about this whole SAHM thing.  On the one hand, I get ENRAGED when I feel like I'm stranded in the house, alone, with no reprieve.  I get annoyed as hell when I have to scoop up bread crumbs off the counters 25 seconds after scrubbing them down.  I fail to understand how one man can go through THREE wardrobe changes in a single day.  But on the other hand, if I get to a point where I break down and have to ask for help, I feel guilty that I'm not "doing my job" or some bullshit like that.  Even though on an intellectual level, I know that if I were in an office, and I got backed up, I could ask a co-worker for a hand.  If I were in an office and I got a cold, I could call in sick.  If i were in an office, if I felt like fucking off all day and catching up on personal emails, reading articles on www.cracked.com and playing solitaire while my boss was at lunch, I could do that, too.  I'm not in an office, though.  So when I get backed up, I stay backed up until I have the energy to catch myself up.  If I get a cold I do my best to not snot on my kid's head or sneeze into his food and struggle to get shit done with a fever (or God help me morning sickness.  THAT was a rough 3 months of absolute hell...) I can't really fuck off all day, because that'll be the day that my kid figures out how to take the plug guards out and shoves the cat's tail into a socket or something.
So I know that I'm holding myself to an impossible standard, but I drown in guilt when I have to beg off for an hour or two every couple of weeks.
I think about my grandmothers, both of whom had 4 kids, and I think that I'm somehow just a shitty person for feeling like I can't manage with the 1.5 that I have.  But then I remember that both of my parents grew up in this roiling cauldron of cousins, aunts and uncles.  Although My great-grandmothers had at a MINIMUM 8 children each, they had other family and a community to HELP them in some capacity.  I'm stranded.  It makes me crazy, but I still think that I should be able to do this as well as those crazy women.
I'm sure that one day I'll be able to relax enough to not freak out about my ineptitude, but until then I get the heebie jeebies when I ask my hub to WATCH THE DAMN KID FOR AN HOUR SO I CAN GO STARE AT THE OCEAN AND LISTEN TO THE QUIET!!!!  but I do break down and ask on occasion...so that's progress on my part, right?
The kid's awake now.  Back to work!  :)