Being one of those people that researches and tries to be as educated about everything as possible, including having a baby, here are things I have learned from Gus about having a baby in the last month.
1. Sometimes babies cry for no reason and there is nothing you can do about it. Sometimes they cry for hours and there is nothing you can do about it...for hours.
2. You wanting them to sleep in their own bed is a nice theory, but if the baby doesn't agree you better have a good set of earplugs, a heart of stone, and no desire to sleep. Or, alternatively, you could be a man and have an amazing ability to tune out the sound of a baby's screams.
3. You wanting them to sleep at night is a nice theory, but if the baby doesn't agree you will learn to love stores that are open 24 hours so that you can sleep all day or see No. 2 above
4. You can go without sleep or food but not both (learned this in college but have definitely gotten a refresher course the last few weeks).
5. If you are cloth diapering, you will do laundry every other day whether you or the baby like it or not.
6. Zebra cakes only get you so far in fulfilling the need for food.
7. Your spouse volunteering to spend time away from you will seem like a really romantic gesture when he keeps the screaming child with him so you can sleep.
8. Someone else's poop on your hands isn't nearly as gross as you thought it was.
9. Someone else throwing up on you isn't nearly as gross as you thought it was.
10. There is something endlessly entertaining about watching a baby sleep.
11. You really can cry from happiness.
12. Sympathetic rocking and bouncing when someone else is holding your crying child makes you look like a loon, but is uncontrollable.
13. When you find that one thing that makes their face light up with a toothless grin, you will do it over and over and over again until they want to do something different even if that means you clap their hands together and swoop kisses on them for an hour. I find that it makes me grin too.
14. Stretch marks really aren't that bad.
15. Being organized really really really helps...you think you are going to get more done than you will in actuality.
16. It really can take an hour to run to the store for milk, it is better to ask hubby to pick it up on the way home .
17. Find a really great Chinese place that delivers or you will end up having Zebra cakes, crackers and coffee for dinner more than you will admit to other people.
18. Hairy ears are really cute if you aren't considering the person as a potential mate.
19. Even though you may hate vacuuming, you will do it every day if it puts your kid to sleep.
20. There are really only five household chores that really need to be kept up with, the rest can slide a little: laundry, dishes, taking out trash, keeping the living room picked up, and feeding the furry creatures.
21. Allow three times as much time as you will think you will need to do anything...and get used to being late.
22. Crying because your one month old is 'so big' also makes you look like a loon but people tend to understand.
23. You can, living in a house with multiple mirrors, manage to go a week without ever looking in one and not realize it. You can also leave the house and not realize until you are somewhere that you have slippers on and you forgot to comb your hair but at least the kid is wearing a really cute outfit and has his hair is combed!
24. You have deeper levels of love than you thought. I thought that I loved my spouse with every fibre of my being, but I have never cried because his belly hurts, I have never gone a week without sleep because he needed to be held, and I have never panicked over every minute that passes because it is one less minute I will have with him. I'm not saying it is more than what I feel for Rob, but it is completely different and the magnitude and depth of it takes my breath away. It is like the first time you feel the Holy Ghost in you and your previous conceptions of love are blown away, not made insignificant, but you realize how much more of you there is and it enriches your existing relationships. Hard to describe but I thought I would try...
25. You realize the true meaning of words. Like when your parents said "You were a colicky baby," colic, which you have heard is terrible and exhausting, really is terrible, exhausting and mostly heartbreaking because this baby is obviously hurting and there is nothing I can do about it. And then there is people telling you that childbirth is painful, which may be the biggest understatement ever, but there really is no way to convey that to another person with words. While this is what I have always wanted to do and I am so happy to finally be on that path, there are things that I never blinked at before, I am suddenly terrified of. The gross magnitude to which I underestimated innocuous sounding words like 'childbirth' and 'colic' leave me scared to death of other dreaded stages like 'terrible twos' and 'teenager' and 'free will' and 'independence.' And from what I can tell, none of these things utilize skills picked up in previous trials. I don't think my rock and walk skills will help much with terrible twos. I do have hope that we will figure it out when it comes and in the meantime I am trying not to borrow trouble or think about it too much.
Books lull you into thinking that you can have and raise children with competence and dignity. What I have learned in the last month is that this is a lie.
There is nothing I can say here which can convey how deeply I understand each and every single word here.
ReplyDeleteTrue. Every word of it.
Fabulous! I LOVE #12 & #24!
ReplyDeleteYou should be a columnist!
an addendum to #12, comes when you start feeding him! Your mouth will open and close - yes, even when someone else is feeding him.
ReplyDeleteYou are amazing and hit the nail on the head about parent hood. I even have waved down my child watcher while praise singing on the church platform to convey a point! And yes cherish the time right now. toddler hood if horrible and amazing all at once!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, on #20.... laundry, dishes, and living room can slide, too. (Laundry, less so, if you're using cloth diapers.)
ReplyDeleteIf dishes are going to be able to slide, we need more of them...or more nights of takeout. Living room I put on there because, after three nights of no sleep I start tripping over laundry baskets and bouncy chairs left in the middle of the floor and got tired of stubbing my toes. Besides, after discovering that vacumming puts him to sleep, I need one room picked up enough to vacuum! We learned the hard way that just letting it run while sitting there burns through the belt. I thought pay bills should be on there too, but I really only do that two times a month or so.
ReplyDeleteWe run out of spoons, oddly enough, before anything else, and my egg skillet needs to be washed daily, I think other than those things we could go three or four days without doing dishes.
ReplyDeleteI know exactly what you are talking about. As I read this, I can't help but see myself in those shoes 5 years ago.
ReplyDeleteBut I must comment on #25. My dad told me that babies do not come with instruction manuals, you have to write your own. I think that was one of the best things that has helped me in preparing for certain stages. What works for one parent, will most likely not work for another. Once those stages begin, you will have a better grasp on how to deal with them because you will know them pretty well.