6 Things I Didn't Know Before I Was a Parent

6 Things I Didn't Know Before I Was a Parent (the mostly not so fun stuff)

1. Never say never. There was a lot of things I thought I would never do or say when I was a parent. I am sure I previously judged people before for parenting decisions that I have now made.
     For example, I said that I would never co-sleep. It is unsafe and why would I want them invading my bed? Norah does not sleep with us every night but she has found herself there. When it is 3:45am and she's been up four eighteen times already and I know if she lays down with us she will be out as soon as she touches the bed, it's very easy to do so. Sometimes you just do whatever makes the screaming stop.
      I also thought I would never nurse a baby past 6 months old - for some reason 6 months seemed like a normal time to stop breastfeeding. We are now at almost 8 months and it's still totally normal. They have to have either breast milk or formula until they are a year old and thankfully I am blessed to have the option to feed her for free :)

2. People will want to touch my child at the store, and I will want to scream. Now I know people love seeing a baby. I of course think our daughter is the most beautiful little girl in the world and I get why people want to stop and say hi in the middle of the aisle at Kroger. I really do get it - I am unable to walk out of the room to get something without loving on her a bit. The thing I don't understand is why complete strangers will want to touch my daughter's face in the middle of flu season in Indiana. Prior to being a parent I would never have thought a grocery store bagger would think it was appropriate to touch my child's hands. Um excuse me Sir, didn't I see you just bag that lady's raw meat with the juice dripping out? Gross.

3. I won't love every minute of it. For the first 8 weeks of Norah's life I dealt with a little bit of postpartum depression. A great deal of it had to do with bonding (that's another story linked with my infertility issues I'm sure I'll post about at some point), but some of it was because I thought I was suppose to be over the moon so excited and happy 100% of the time. I mean come on, I had a BABY, the very thing we spent thousands of dollars trying to get and over a year praying for.
     I remember several times thinking, I'm suppose to feel happy - and I just don't. I was putting way too much pressure on myself to be happy, which in the end just made it harder for me to be happy. I had it in my head that I would be happy every minute of every day when I was a mom. Some days suck. Sometimes she doesn't sleep and has poop everywhere. I'm not required to be happy during those moments - no one judges me for not skipping down the hall laughing when I am washing myself off because she pooped on me. Speaking of which...

4. It's messy. Messier than I imagined. I used to laugh at the people on AFV when their cute little baby peed on them. Now it gives me flashbacks. It's all fun and games until you are in the middle of a diaper change and realize what just got on your hands.
      It's isn't just diaper changes though. In the beginning I would walk around with spit-up on my shirt and not even realize it care. I didn't realize that I would be okay with thinking that rubbing it in somehow made it disappear. It's true, and if you have had a baby you probably know what I mean. Spit up? What spit up? That was just some lint...

5. It is possible to function on 25 hours a sleep a week instead of the recommended 56. Norah was a REALLY good sleeper the first 4 months of her life. Month 5 started our sleepless nights. Some nights she would be out cold and as soon as she realized we were leaning over the crib to put her in it, her eyes would shoot open, her back would arch and she would scream. That was our life for about 8 weeks straight - even putting her on our bed didn't keep her asleep. The whole "sleep when she sleeps" thing was a joke for me, just doesn't work out that way - even though I'm a stay at home mom. I don't get any more sleep than I did as a working mom.

6. That none of that would matter. Not the lack of sleep, not the poop, not the being annoyed with people, not the realization that I was doing things I thought I never would, none of it matters. At the end of the day they aren't the last things going through my head. It isn't what is going through my head when I leave her with someone. I didn't know that when she wasn't with me I would be thinking about her the whole time. I wouldn't trade the messy diapers to get a full night's sleep. Well instead I might just pass her to Matt if I catch a whiff of something a bit foul...