When you get pregnant you start to hear it. “Just wait” they say. Wait until you don’t sleep, wait until they pee on you, wait until they get into all the cabinets. As a mom of an almost 6 year old and 8 year old I can say so far with certainty, babies are the easy part.
I Think Babies Are The Easy Part
Sure there is the initial shock to your system with your first baby and I will die on the hill that the transition from 0-1 is way harder than 1-2. You question everything. You doubt yourself 100 times a day. Then they start to sleep and you calm down a little. Every hiccup doesn’t startle you, every sneeze doesn’t send you into a panic of when to call the pediatrician nurse line at 2 AM.
But come closer when I tell you this: the bigger the kids the harder it is. Not because they require more, or even that they get more expensive (THEY DO)! It’s that they ask harder questions, have bigger problems, and the daily decisions you make are shaping them into the people they will become. That right there will fuck you up a little. Just thinking about whether or not to let them walk home from school with friends, go to that play date, that sleepover etc. These could be life altering decisions. Should I let them play video games? Should I let them hang out with that one friend? Do I let them play that sport? It’s endless, it’s exhausting.
I remember the first time Liam asked me a hard question. He was 4. We were driving home one day and he saw a homeless person and asked me about it. It really began the snowball that is hard questions and conversations. It definitely has only gotten harder since. Now with Charlotte in the mix we get even harder questions.
Not just the questions but friendships, cliques, all of it. It comes at you hard and fast and you think back to that baby stage. A thought goes through you “what was it again that was so hard?”
All this to say all the phases have their hard points and challenges and all have their fun and excitement.
