Thoughts on Parenthood

It’s amazing what you don’t know and what no one tells you when having a baby. Your life changes beyond your wildest dreams. It’s all good, in the end, because the baby is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen – of course it is, it’s yours! But no one really tells you the small things that change, but that mean so much (probably because, if they did, DINKs may never have kids). The “having a baby” part is kind of like “having a wedding” – that’s just the beginning to a very big change in your life. Sleepless nights are just the tip of the iceberg. No one really tells you – or if they do, you blow it off like that will never happen to you – that it’s not just the first few months, but really for the rest of your life. Newborns need you every other hour to eat. Toddlers need you to rid their closets of ugly, scary monsters, or to soothe them in a thunderstorm, or from a bad dream. Then teenagers stay out past their curfew and you don’t rest until they come home – and this continues when they’re home from college for the holidays. No one tells you all of that.

But parenthood is also a wonderful experience. Everyone does tell you it’s tough, and a change, but they wouldn’t change it for the world. To DINKs there never seems to be a good time to have kids so people tell you, “you just do it and it all falls into place.” And they are right.

What I’m most amazed of is that before this, everyone I knew who had kids seemed so unshaken by the experience. Is it that I just didn’t see them in the first few months? No. I saw plenty of them early on, and they all seemed so calm, so together. Meanwhile, I have bags under my eyes which, if I forget to cover up with make up, look hideous. (And I’ve been caught off-guard w/o make up a few times.) But I continue to wonder how so many of my friends have made it look so easy, so painless....cuz it's hard work.

And then I hear stories of how they’re lives are a mess – spilled paint or food, mud tracked inside, more than one kid crying at the same time – and I think, they have it tough too. But they look so normal. How will I ever survive?