5 Things I Did Not Know About Having A Baby When I Was A Childless Person Who Slept In and Went to Movies and Wasn't Especially Nice to People
It's taken me about three years to like Joni Mitchell. Maybe four. She keeps coming up in the iPod rotation, with her very specific yellow-at-the-edges songs about 1970's times and places, and I usually wave it off, oh musty patchouli boomer folk-angst, but today I finally came around when I heard The Last Time I Saw Richard while sitting in a traffic jam on the way to the grocery store in the rain, behind some idling produce truck, while the baby threw bagel chunks around in the backseat.
Right, the baby. Back to my point here. Which is to enumerate the:
5 Things I Did Not Know About Having A Baby When I Was A Childless Person Who Slept In and Went to Movies and Wasn't Especially Nice to People
1) All that bad stuff that you read about generally isn't going to happen to you. There is a glut of information out there suggesting that pregnancy destroys your body/looks/mind, and that your pregnancy is very likely to go horribly awry if you eat tuna, pass a smoker on the sidewalk, or use a laptop. Of the 74,098 horrors that I meditated on month after month while pregnant, 0% of them came to pass.
2) Your friendships get weird. Especially if you have tons of avowedly childless friends. By weird I mean, your friends stay exactly the same. They spontaneously go out to late dinners in random locations without notice. They jaunt off on road trips. They saunter abroad. They see every new movie the weekend it comes out. They take bike trips to the winery after five minutes of cell phone planning. These are things that come to a dramatically dead stop for you the day the nurse hands you seven pounds of swaddled offspring in that little ubiquitous pink and blue striped hospital blanket, and I am not sure if it ever starts up again exactly as it was for the rest of your life. You may catch yourself feeling bitter about this, but as the husband is wont to say, "you buy the ticket and you take the ride." Bonus: Many of your friends embrace your new state with a lot of grace.
3) People will like your baby more than they like you. Friends and relatives will quickly exchange whatever enthusiasm they once had for your sparkling personality for the more rewarding pastime of giving your baby rides in the laundry basket, or trying to get her to say passe slang terms like "sweet."
4) You may suddenly have a greatly expanded sense of empathy for other people. I used to hate people, basically. I thought having children was an uncool, self-indulgent and earth-hating undertaking, and families made me vaguely claustrophobic. I may have shot anyone with more than three kids a dirty look in public. I passed up countless opportunities to make new friends in favor of glowering at home or hanging around the same three people I've known since I was 17. Now I instigate random conversations with people at parks and cafes. I organize social outings with people from work. I smile at other moms and wave at their babies as they ride by in grocery carts and cry at child abuse stories on the news. If a kid fell on the sidewalk, I wouldn't stand there and stare and not know what to do. If you have a baby, I will want to hold it. I am not scared of diapers. And mom, I am sorry I was such a jerk when I was 13.
5) There is going to be something about parenting that tries you every single day. It won't be diapers. Trust me. But there will be something that will kick you in the ass more days than not, no matter how zen you try to be about it. For me it's sleep. I'm a sleeper. I sleep eight hours a night. No exceptions. If I don't, my eyes burn and I think very angry thoughts, and stumble around and say and do stupid things. And yet: if you have a baby, I am here to announce that you're going to be sleeping less than 8 hours. You're going to go to bed late, you're going to be awakened at random hours after midnight, you're going to get up real early seven days a week unless you make specific arrangements ahead of time. I've never gotten used to it. But then, it keeps me humble. It's a daily reminder that my own care and comfort is not the most important task on my agenda, and I am the sort of person who needed to be taken down a peg. So it's OK.
Right, the baby. Back to my point here. Which is to enumerate the:
5 Things I Did Not Know About Having A Baby When I Was A Childless Person Who Slept In and Went to Movies and Wasn't Especially Nice to People
1) All that bad stuff that you read about generally isn't going to happen to you. There is a glut of information out there suggesting that pregnancy destroys your body/looks/mind, and that your pregnancy is very likely to go horribly awry if you eat tuna, pass a smoker on the sidewalk, or use a laptop. Of the 74,098 horrors that I meditated on month after month while pregnant, 0% of them came to pass.
2) Your friendships get weird. Especially if you have tons of avowedly childless friends. By weird I mean, your friends stay exactly the same. They spontaneously go out to late dinners in random locations without notice. They jaunt off on road trips. They saunter abroad. They see every new movie the weekend it comes out. They take bike trips to the winery after five minutes of cell phone planning. These are things that come to a dramatically dead stop for you the day the nurse hands you seven pounds of swaddled offspring in that little ubiquitous pink and blue striped hospital blanket, and I am not sure if it ever starts up again exactly as it was for the rest of your life. You may catch yourself feeling bitter about this, but as the husband is wont to say, "you buy the ticket and you take the ride." Bonus: Many of your friends embrace your new state with a lot of grace.
3) People will like your baby more than they like you. Friends and relatives will quickly exchange whatever enthusiasm they once had for your sparkling personality for the more rewarding pastime of giving your baby rides in the laundry basket, or trying to get her to say passe slang terms like "sweet."
4) You may suddenly have a greatly expanded sense of empathy for other people. I used to hate people, basically. I thought having children was an uncool, self-indulgent and earth-hating undertaking, and families made me vaguely claustrophobic. I may have shot anyone with more than three kids a dirty look in public. I passed up countless opportunities to make new friends in favor of glowering at home or hanging around the same three people I've known since I was 17. Now I instigate random conversations with people at parks and cafes. I organize social outings with people from work. I smile at other moms and wave at their babies as they ride by in grocery carts and cry at child abuse stories on the news. If a kid fell on the sidewalk, I wouldn't stand there and stare and not know what to do. If you have a baby, I will want to hold it. I am not scared of diapers. And mom, I am sorry I was such a jerk when I was 13.
5) There is going to be something about parenting that tries you every single day. It won't be diapers. Trust me. But there will be something that will kick you in the ass more days than not, no matter how zen you try to be about it. For me it's sleep. I'm a sleeper. I sleep eight hours a night. No exceptions. If I don't, my eyes burn and I think very angry thoughts, and stumble around and say and do stupid things. And yet: if you have a baby, I am here to announce that you're going to be sleeping less than 8 hours. You're going to go to bed late, you're going to be awakened at random hours after midnight, you're going to get up real early seven days a week unless you make specific arrangements ahead of time. I've never gotten used to it. But then, it keeps me humble. It's a daily reminder that my own care and comfort is not the most important task on my agenda, and I am the sort of person who needed to be taken down a peg. So it's OK.
Labels: Momblog
posted by Strikethru at
3:35 PM
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