This is an old article I wrote a while back when I only had one kid (titter! titter! Oh the ease of every day life with only ONE CHILD!). Written from the perspective of a new young mother of a little 13 month old boy. It's dated, but I hope you enjoy it, nonetheless:
Before I had a baby, like many of you, I had lots of opinions and notions about parenting. I held firm beliefs on many topics of how to "properly" raise a child. There were things I would NOT compromise on, things I would DEFINITELY do, and things I would most definitely NOT do once I had my very own bundle of joy. In short, I had a long boisterious, self-righteous TO DO list on how to be the perfect Mother.
Then, I had a baby. And I realized quite quickly what a jerk I was to even THINK those things.
Now, whenever I see a Mom in the mall offering her baby a sip of Pepsi, or a frustruated Dad dragging his child by the arm out of a grocey store, I no longer look on with distain and critisicm and judge them harshly to myself. Instead I look on in wonder and awe, and ask myself if they at one time, too, had illusions of how to "properly" parent a child as I once did.
My amusing list of pre-baby Parent-isms:
1. I will NEVER give my child a pacifier. This comical notion was blown out of the water when my precious 7 week old cried so long and so hard, he broke capillaries in his eyes. Up to his room I bolted to find a package of pacifiers that I had recieved as a gift for my Baby Shower (at the time I laughed to myself and put them away with the intention of giving them as a gift to someone else - what a fool). Giving him his first taste of pacifier was like watching the sun set, or waves roll gently over a beach, the SERENITY on his face was amazing. A lesson learned, big time. Some babies have a need to suck. Let them!
2. I will make all of my own baby food. This is probably the worst thing a new mother can promise herself. Not because it's a bad idea - in fact my 13 month old now eats 99% homemade babyfood and can't get enough of it. The reason that this is a horrible idea is because some babies new to eating solids can be extremely sensitive to not only taste but especially TEXTURE. Heinz has it down to a SCIENCE how to puree and strain carrots and peas JUST RIGHT so that new eaters will devour the stuff. YOU, my friend, do not. I took his rejection of my food like an arrow to the soul. Point learned? Start them out right on a wide variety of bottled baby food, and give you both time to adjust to this huge and FUN change. Then give your baby food making skills a whirl. Don't bash your heart against your blender when all your efforts in food preparation end up on the front of a onesie.
3. My baby will never leave the house with dirty hands, face, or clothes. This is probably the biggest Parentism I held. I would look at dirty-faced babies in stores and practically vomit all over myself, thinking "How could ANY mother let their child look so gross in PUBLIC?" How? Well I'll tell you how. YOU DON'T SEE THE DIRT WHEN IT'S YOUR CHILD. Or, more specifically, you don't notice the dirt until it's too late and you're already at Sobey's with a cart load of grocieries, no wipes handy and heck, you really don't care at this point in the day anyways. I can't count the number of times I've looked at my darling boy at the zoo or playground only to see a clump of peas dried behind his ear, or a ring of dried cereal residue circling his delicious rosy lips, even after lovingly cleaning his hands and face before we left the house. When it's your baby, all you see is a beautiful child, and you find it hard to notice such tiny things as dirt. It's true!
4. If MY baby ever screamed or cried in a restaurant, I would leave with them immediately. Well well, how's the view from your high horse now? When you take your baby to a restaurant, it's like leaving a glass of red wine on a white couch and hoping the cat won't knock it over. It can be risky. But it can also be a great, EXTREMELY RARE opportunity to get out of the house for a nice meal that you didn't have to cook yourself. Joshua is a great kid but even he has his moments where he's fussy, arching backwards, and completely uncontrolable in public. So what do we do? Shove a soother in his mouth, give him something to play with, and ignore him, mostly. We need a night out, too, and if you don't like it then stop going to Swiss Chalet for supper at 4:30pm, jerk.
5. I'll let my child have trips and spills, how else will he learn? I used to imagine letting my child play on the stairs by himself and "letting" him have the occasional fall from 1 or 2 steps up so that he would realize where danger lay and how to avoid it. Yes, this is 100% true, I've spoken that thought aloud. Then what happened? I endured 38.5 weeks of pregnancy, 26 hours of labour, more stitches "down there" then I like to remember, 2 bleeding nipples, 10 weeks of consecutive sleepless nights, and 13.5 of the best most rewarding months of my entire life. I've learned my boy is the most precious thing not only in my life, but my husband's and our parent's lives as well. And am I about to let that precious gem fall down even one tiny stair?? I do not think so!! I don't smother him with safety by any means, but I'm no idiot, either. You touch one hair on his beautiful blonde head so help me.... okay, reeling in the Mother Bear instinct now...
6. I'm going to dive right back in to exercise after giving birth and leave my baby in the gym daycare. Well this was another amusing thought. I actually visited my gym daycare on MULTIPLE occasions, trying to get a feel for the strangers with whom I'd be leaving my baby boy, but I had a nagging, crazy-lady like feeling in the back of my mind always that someone, ANYONE could come into this place, claim my baby as their own, and leave while I was stair-mastering! In hindsight, this is a ridiculous thought, but try telling that to a post-partum sleep-deprived Susan Taggart! JUST YOU TRY! And, to be fair, I did give it a shot, once. And only once. Two days after that my baby caught his first ever cold, which I blamed on leaving him at the germ-infested gym daycare, felt incredibly guilty and self-indulgent, and never did return.
7. I will never be "angry" with my baby. Okay, this is going to be a tough pill to swallow for you non-but-will-be-in-the-future-parents. There are moments, albeit rare and lasting mere split seconds, where you will HATE your baby. It may happen at 2:30am and you've been trying to get them to settle to sleep since 8:00pm yet they refuse to settle and scream and wail. It may be 1:00pm and they nip you while breastfeeding. Inevitably there will come a moment when you are so frustruated that you think to yourself "You are doing this on PURPOSE!". Hopefully at this point, like me, you will laugh at yourself because babies don't have the ability to do these diabolical actions "on purpose"... or do they?
8. I will jump at the chance to have a night away from my baby. I used to think that when the opportunity arose, I would leap at the chance to have a night away from my baby and that after weeks and months of caring for them around the clock, it would be an opportunity I would seek out and embrace. I would pump milk and prepare meals so that even in my absence he would not notice that I wasn't around. Then I realized a few things. First, pumping THAT quantity of milk is a HUGE ordeal. Second, when you're away from your baby you have to continue to pump and store your milk and pumping takes WAY longer than actual breastfeeding. And lastly, even though the umbilical cord has been cut, I feel so attached to my baby that leaving them even for a few hours is hard, let alone overnight. I'm working on it and WILL do it, but it's not the "opportunity of a lifetime" that I envisioned, that's for sure.
9. I will be NOISY around the house at nap and bedtime so my baby will learn to sleep through noises. This probably the most innocent and most recommended tidbit of advice given to parents from people who do not have children. In theory it's BRILLIANT - climitize you baby so that nothing will wake them from their sweet slumbers. HOWEVER, in real life, once you get your baby down for a nap or for the night, you will do ANYTHING to keep it that way. After the first 10 - 15 weeks of not getting any more than 2 or 3 consecutive hours of sleep at a time, you think, nay BELIEVE that getting a full night's sleep is the holy grail of parenthood and basic survival. God help the moron who rings the doorbell or blasts music while working on their deck during this sleeping time! A curse upon your house and all who dwell within!!
10. My pet will always be a beloved member of the family, baby or no baby. Believe it or not, once you have a baby, get this - YOUR CAT TURNS INTO A CAT. YOUR DOG TURNS INTO A DOG. No longer do they have "kitty feelings" or "doggie emotions". If they get fed and petted everyday, then you're doing good. Sure, you still love them, but not to anywhere NEAR the degree to which you doted upon them before your baby was born. And god help them should they WAKE a sleeping baby with their noises (see point #9). I knew that this would probably happen to us and our cat, but actually had to live it
to believe it. Hey look at that, our cat is just a dumb cat! Wow!
-TDW
