For women who dream of becoming moms, they may believe they have put so much thought into what it will be like that nothing can surprise them. They have read all of the parenting books, thought out how they will deal with every situation, and have their parenting style decided months before they give birth. In their minds, they already understand parenting and don't expect to be surprised.
However, parenting is not a role that anyone can fully understand until they become a parent. There are components and emotions that we can't imagine dealing with or feeling, and realizations about the parenting experience often reveal themselves over time when we least expect it.
Becoming a parent is one of the most delightful, exhausting, and surprising experiences a person can experience, and most of what we know about parenting we learn along the way. Sure, we may have understood a few things about the experience before having a child, but not much. There is no training for this role, and no matter what everyone else tells us it is like, each parent has different feelings connected to parenthood.
There are some universal truths that most of us overlooked until our kids arrived, and then all of a sudden these truths were evident. Parents agree that none of what they came to understand about parenting was exactly what they expected, but it helped them along the journey when they realized these facts. When mom has her first little one, she will be able to relate.
15 We Wasted So Much Time Before Kids
One of the most common questions asked by parents after their children are born is, "What did I do with all the time I had before kids?" The answer for most of us is we have no idea.
When it finally comes time for us to be on call for a person 24 hours a day with no vacations or sick days, we find ourselves trying to sneak in hobbies, sleep, and showers on the sly. There is no surplus of extra minutes in which to be bored or simply veg. We suddenly become extremely intentional with our free time and able to accomplish tasks that used to take us days in a matter of minutes because we have to.
Often parents look back on their pre-children life and wish they had done more with the time they had, like cure a major disease, write a book, or renovate a home. We had the time, but for the foreseeable future with kids, we don't.
14 We Had Undiscovered Anger Management Issues
Most parents would never have said before their children were born that they were angry people. For the most part, we view ourselves as reasonable, and we wanted to bring a child into our loving home and shower them with adoration. We definitely never planned on raising our voices or being in a bad mood with our child. Only calm meditations and snuggles for us!
Then we had kids and realized that one of two things had happened: we either had deeply buried anger issues that popped to the surface when our child turned two, or our child turned us angry.
Look, we all love our kids like crazy, but sometimes they drive us crazy. Loving someone with such intensity means they have the ability to obliterate our calm with a few well-placed moves of disobedience. Suddenly, we are the Hulk but have no idea when the change took place.
13 We Can't Have Nice Things, Or Just Things
Baby proofing a house is one thing, but having nice things once that baby can cruise or walk is another. Infants generally decorate our house with feces and spit up, but toddlers really do a number on the paint on our walls, our carpet, and any breakable item that wasn't quite out of their reach.
For people who wonder why many parents' homes look like war zones decorated with Legos, it's because we don't try anymore. Sure, we just thought those parents before us were lazy and letting their kids get a bit out of control, but now we understand there are only so many hours in the day and we absolutely cannot pick up every mess before a new one arrives. Now we understand.
One day mom and dad can repaint and tidy the house so it will look like more than a hyperactive pack of children live there, but in the early days, we settle.
12 We Will Always Be A Parent
This should probably seem obvious, but most of think of parenting as the role we play in our kids' lives when they need specific guidance. When they are tiny and helpless infants, our role is to keep them safe and nurture them. As they grow into tweens and adolescents, we help them learn to make decisions and understand the consequences of those choices.
However, before actually having kids, most of us thought of our major worries and work ending when our kids turned 18. This is not the case.
After having a child, expect to constantly be attached to another person by a heart string that cannot break. This is a wonderful gift, but it means we never stop worrying about our kids or longing to guide them on the path we see as the best. The age of 18 may mean the state sees them as legal adults, but we will always look at our children and see the baby we held on the day of their birth, just in a bigger body.
11 We Will Lower Our High Standards
Maybe we know that mom who only feeds her cloth-diapered child organic, homemade baby food while she nurses him until he peacefully self-weans and gives him relaxing massages to make bedtime a time of peace and love. However, it's more likely we know someone who thought this is who they would be and then actually had a baby.
All of us had a whole lot figured out before the children actually arrived. That's why when things don't work out as planned, we can either fret and feel like failures or lower our standards and live to see another day. Most of us go low.
That's not to say that we compromise our basic parenting values. It's just that our kids may view slightly more screen time than expected, eat a bit more sugar than we'd like, and drag bedtime out so long we just let them co-sleep. It's fine as long as everyone is still alive.
10 There's A Reason Sleep Deprivation Is Used As A Torture Technique
Mom and dad hear throughout the pregnancy that they need to be storing up sleep, as if that is possible. This advice comes from well-meaning parents who know the sleep deprivation coming is going to be intense, long, and hard to manage.
No matter how much we think we understand the idea of waking up to feed an infant every couple of hours all night, we don't. It's also difficult to understand that even when a child has a clean diaper, is full, and is tired that they can still cry just because they want to be close to mom. That means we are always on call, and our need for sleep means nothing to a baby.
Parents will realize early how important it is to tag team the sleep situation and to let everything else go as much as possible to sneak in any extra sleep.
9 We Realize How Much Our Own Parents Love Us
Before becoming parents, we may have a vague idea of how much our own parents care for us. However, once we have children, our whole childhood and our parents care for us comes into a whole new light. We suddenly understand why they set down rules, called to check on us obsessively, and had a very hard time the first time we drove away in a car on our own.
The birth of our children often causes a ton of phone calls back home to our own parents to say thank you and that we finally get it. It's a time of connection that is made even sweeter by watching our parents become grandparents.
However, for moms who had difficult childhoods, it can also bring up complicated feelings about family since it may be impossible for them to understand how their own parents subjected to them abuse or neglect. Having a child takes us back to childhood memories, and for better or worse, we have a completely different perspective on them.
8 We Finally Realize What Vulnerable Is
During our lives pre-baby, we may have felt vulnerable or experienced fear. However, having a child opens us to a completely different vulnerability that is both beautiful and terrifying.
With an infant thrust into our arms, we see the risks all around us because they don't just affect us; they affect our child and can put them in peril at any time. Germs, electrical outlets, and choking hazards are our worst nightmares, topped only by the ongoing fear of SIDS the first year of our child's lives.
As parents, we control what we can, but it becomes painfully obvious very early on that we cannot control everything and our children are now in the world exposed to all the sharp edges and dangers it offers. For some women, this feeling has been a sign of postpartum anxiety since it can be overwhelming and difficult to keep in check.
7 Why It's So Tempting To Be Strict
For children who grew up with strict parents, it can be hard for them to understand why their parents were so hard on them all the time. Why the strict curfews and constant questions about where we would be and who with? And why was it so hard for our parents when we showed an interest in the opposite sex?
Once we have kids, it's pretty obvious. Being strict is a way to keep expectations high and to grasp onto a bit of control in hopes of keeping our kids off the wrong path.
Though most of us dreamed of having the lenient parent who just trusted we would do the right thing but not hold us accountable, as parents we realize being a strict parent was its own way of showing love and putting forth limits meant to keep us safe. We also hope our kids will see that when we finally let them start dating at the age of 35.
6 Kids Will Make Mistakes
A very famous but false belief is that if we raise our kids a certain way using all the right techniques, they will avoid mistakes and follow a perfect path. Part of the reason we convince ourselves of this is because it's too hard to imagine that after all our effort to raise our kids well, they will make mistakes and suffer the consequences, both large and small.
Our children are people, and they are imperfect. They will have to test their limits, fall on their faces, and figure out what to do next. Whether they are children or adults, this is going to happen. Watching it will be hard for us, but avoiding it is not an option.
Parents have the opportunity to offer grace and guidance throughout a child's life, but they can't make them avoid every bad decision. Hopefully, kids will learn from their mistakes and not repeat them in the future.
5 Planning Around A Baby's Schedule Makes Sense
Remember when we were those friends who didn't understand why our friends who had babies were such flakes? I mean, why couldn't they just load their infant into the car and meet us whenever in crowded public places to hang? We thought they were just using that baby as an excuse to be selfish, right?
Yeah, we were idiots. Before becoming parents, there is no way to even slightly comprehend what it means to base life around the eating, sleeping, and pooping schedule of another human being. Our friends didn't flake; they were living in the trenches trying to survive while we didn't help them because we didn't know how.
This reality is harsh and usually results in a lot of conversations that start with the words I'm sorry. Now we know, and we will never forget.
4 Kids Are Their Own People, Too
Kids throwing tantrums in public places is hard to watch and especially hard to stomach when we don't have kids. We wonder why the parents can't just get control of the child and make him stop losing his mind. The answer we find very soon after having our own kids is that children are their own separate people with their own feelings, and we have very little control of how those feelings come out sometimes.
As embarrassing as it will be, we will be the parents standing next to the child in Target who is acting like a boneless creature slouching over while screaming on the floor for a reason we cannot fully discern. Our kind words followed by harsh threats will not automatically stop our child's feelings or the way they are reacting, and we will be forced to do the hard work of staying calm while wishing we could disappear.
Kids are their own people. We don't control their emotions, but we can help them manage their reactions, and over time it will get better.
3 Empathizing Can Be Painful Experience
Before having children, we may have thought we understood empathy. Some people are gifted at understanding and feeling the pain of others. However, when we have children, most of us go into empathy overload.
It's almost impossible not to feel the pain our child does, whether it's the physical pain of a vaccine or the emotional pain of having their feelings hurt by friends. As parents, we feel our emotions move with the feelings of our child since the parent/child connection is so intense.
This empathy keeps us in tune with our kids and makes us better parents, but it can also make parenting an extremely emotional job. Being constantly tuned in to the needs and desires of others is daunting, but it helps us to see that our kids aren't trying to make our lives hard when they cry or throw fits. They are just dealing with an unmet need or desire, and as parents we can tune in and try to help them come to terms with this.
2 Parenting Is Exhausting In Other Ways
Parenting is beautiful, forever, and a gift. It is also exhausting, mentally and physically.
The mental and physical exhaustion are strong in the beginning when infants need us all the time to meet their most basic desires. Between using our bodies to feed them and worrying about all the possible things that could go wrong, our minds and bodies never truly rest.
As children age, some of the physical exhaustion lets up, but the mental never really does. However, it usually comes from a good place. We research and contemplate the best approaches to parenting because we want the best for our kids. Even when things are going well, our minds are still running, helping us make conscientious decisions that are in our kids' best interest.
When our child is having issues and we are in problem-solving mode, the exhaustion can feel even heavier. Luckily, it's all worth it.
1 All Aspects Of Our Lives Will Change
To some parents-to-be, parenting will only turn them into a mom or dad. They imagine that their work life, personal life, and extra hobbies will not be affected by the fact that they have another person living in their home. However, nothing could be further from the truth.
Becoming a parent affects our marriage, our friendship, and our relationship with our work and hobbies. To put it mildly, it affects everything. Our views change based on the fact that we now have a child, and our priorities shift to accommodate the needs of our little one.
This change is not all bad. In fact, many parents report feeling more connected to their spouse when they see them as parents, as well as having certain friendships deepen when the baby comes along. However, some of the changes will come with growing pains. It's a natural process of transitioning into our role as parents.