From Friday Mom – Erin:
Editor’s note:
With this post, we say farewell (or more precisely, “See you later…” ) to Jaime, who has been our faithful Friday Mom since this blog began several years ago. We are delighted that Jaime’s voice will reappear in a few months in a series of parenting articles on our newly refurbished TeachersAndFamilies site. We also welcome Erin, who takes over the “infant mom” slot that has been vacant for the past year. We’ll say no more and let you learn more about her in the following introductory post.
My husband and I are two months into our adventure in parenthood. Our son will turn two-months old next week. In reality, our adventure began last spring when we first learned we were expecting our first child. It is difficult to characterize the range of emotions we felt on learning that we would soon be parents. While my pregnancy was very much planned, the news was surprising, nonetheless. We both felt a combination of excitement, apprehension, and anxiousness, all at the same time (albeit, perhaps in varying degrees).
You see, I have always been a planner. To a fault.
I make lists, obsess over details, and am a control freak. My attention to detail and my time-management skills have always been assets in my personal and professional pursuits. However, as we began telling our family, friends, and colleagues our big news, the one remark I heard over and over again was that no amount of planning or preparation would prepare us for the change we would experience once our son arrived.
In those initial months, we dealt with the range of jitters by reminding ourselves that we had nine months to reach a point that we felt truly “ready” to be parents. Nine months seemed like plenty of time to read all the books, ready the nursery, have a baby shower, plan for the grandparents to come visit, buy the clothes, pick out the right equipment (car seat/ highchair/ playmat/ bouncer/exersaucer /etc), interview pediatricians, and sign up for day-care. Nine months was also plenty of time to check off the things we wanted to be certain to do while we were still just a two-some: movies to see, vacations to plan, and college football games to attend. Ever the planner, I made lists for each, and began checking things off, one-by-one.
Our focus in those early days was on making certain our little nugget was healthy, and ensuring that we were doing everything in our power to ensure he/she/it received the best possible prenatal care possible. Then, as the initial shock wore off and we learned that I was carrying a little boy, we found ourselves wondering just what kind of parents we would be to our son. Would we try to fit our new child into our own routine? Would we shift our lives entirely based on his routines? Would we still go out? How long would I breastfeed? How would we deal with my transition back to work? What would we do for childcare? What would our parenting philosophy be? How would we handle holidays—would we still travel? How would we make certain our son got to know his relatives? How would we know whether he was progressing properly—socially, intellectually, physically? How would we know whether we were doing things “right”? And whom should we trust to know what “right” is?
I thought that by the time the little guy made his debut, we would have come to some conclusions or felt “prepared.” Basically, I thought that if I read enough books, attended enough childbirth/child safety/child care classes, scoured enough websites, and loaded my iPhone with enough apps, I would prove all those people wrong who told us that nothing would prepare us for the pending monumental shift in our lives. After all, if hard work and preparation had gotten me this far in life and in my legal career, those things should work here, too, right?
Wrong.
I could try to make excuses about the fact that our son, Rory, was born ten days early (thereby cutting out the final two weekends before my due date and precluding my ability to read those last few books), but the truth is, as much as I had visualized, planned, studied, and reviewed, there really was nothing more I could have done to prepare myself. I know that I may be stating the obvious to my fellow bloggers, as well as those of you who started your parenting journeys ahead of me: being a parent is hard. Each day comes with remarkable highs and lows. It is, almost by definition, a lesson in learning to deal with the unexpected. Parenting is often a barrage of self-doubt, concerns, struggles to try and figure out what each cry means, and the emergence of new cries right when you think you’ve finally got it under control. And the exhaustion—oh, the exhaustion.
I take comfort in knowing that, as poorly prepared as I may feel some days, some degree of self-doubt is natural. After all, I’ve never done this before. And, importantly, my husband and I are surrounded by a phalanx of supporters ready to assist should we need it. So far, in addition to relying on the books, websites, and advice of friends and relatives, I try to remind myself that each day is just as much about my own learning experience as a parent as it is about monitoring my son’s early development. Like any learning experience, it is a process—a skill one develops and refines overtime. Indeed, parenting is more of an art than a science, if you will. Right now, I am still very much in the early days of honing my craft, learning how to work my way through, and I look forward to sharing my journey with each of you in the weeks and months to come.