Mama to be JP

she won’t remember

smiling before drinking my milk or falling asleep after still latched

the way she grabbed my hair or my finger or my shirt or my necklace

my too-frequent kisses or our midnight cuddles

Okay, so, I know that most of these comments are made on a whim, and mostly, excitement due to pregnancies, and that they mean absolutely no harm. However, has anyone actually heard themselves and how absent minded it sounds?

"Holy Crap! You’re huge!"

Welcome to Motherhood

One of my friends from high school is pregnant, due in just a few weeks. We aren’t really in touch any more, aside from a few comments here and there on social media, but I feel so excited for her.

I was just sitting here thinking about what I would say to her of she were to ask me for advice. I’m sure she won’t, and I’ve only been at this parenting thing for three years, so I’m still pretty green myself, but if she did ask me, this is what I would say:

Welcome to motherhood! You’re going to cry a lot. Especially in the beginning. It’s ok. It’s normal. You’ve just been through something completely earth shattering—giving birth—and it will take some time to adjust to your new reality. Even after you have found your footing again, you’ll still cry much more than you used to. You feel things more deeply now. You are connected to the rest of the human race in a more meaningful way. You can imagine every child on earth being your child, and feel the pain of every parent. Everything is now filtered through this lens of radical empathy, and at times it will seem like too much to bear, but I know that it makes us better than we were before.

Parenting a newborn is intense, but it gets easier by degrees (and then harder, and then easier again, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves). It’s normal for your baby to wake up a lot during the night to eat, particularly if you are breastfeeding. Three times a night is normal. Every two hours is normal. Every hour is normal. Don’t fret about it, don’t overthink it. They are just tiny babies, and this is what they do. If you are responding to your baby’s cues, you can rest assured that you aren’t doing anything wrong. You will freak out about your baby’s sleep habits, or lack there of, but try your best not to. They will work the sleep stuff out eventually.

Keep your baby close. Wear him next to your heart. Sleep with your body wrapped around him like a cocoon. Let him nap on your chest. That is all babies want, to be near to their mothers, to know she is right there. Give it to him. He will be grown and asserting his own independence soon enough. Just keep him close while you still can. There is no such thing as holding your baby too much.

You will second guess everything. You will obsess over everything. You will Google how long your baby should be napping and what color your baby’s poop should be. You will buy parenting books in search of the right answers. But here is the big secret: there are no universal right answers. We are all writing our own from scratch. Each of us are raising new, completely unique individuals, and that means there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. Do your best to tune in to your gut, and follow your heart. I don’t believe in much, but I do believe in mother’s intuition. Even from day one, you know your baby better than anyone else. Listen to your gut, it won’t lead you astray.

When you are in the thick of babyhood, the decisions you make will seem so important: breastmilk or formula, cloth or disposable diapers, baby led weaning or spoon feeding. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. These choices will define you for a short period of time, and you will feel passionately about them, but they don’t really matter in the long run. We never asked our friends in high school, “So, when you were in infant, did you mom breastfeed or bottle feed you?” No job applicant was ever asked if they were cloth diapered as a new born. These topics are hot for the first year or so of your baby’s life, and then they never come up again. New parents tend to forget this, but it’s true. It really doesn’t matter. Do you know what does matter? That your baby is loved, fed, warm, clean, and has a safe place to sleep. You can accomplish that in a myriad of different ways, each one as legitimate as the next. Try to keep that in mind if you find that the decisions you made before your baby was born about how you will parent don’t work out the way you imagined they would.

You already know that parenting is a hard gig, but you’ll find it’s even harder than you thought. That’s not to say that you aren’t ready for it—you’re as ready as any first time parent can be—just be prepared to be humbled by its challenges. Your child will frustrate you—enrage you even. You’ll sometimes feel trapped and bored. Your cleanliness standards will go right out the window. Your marriage will take a hit. You will constantly have annoying kids songs stuck in your head. But it’s worth it. It’s so, so worth it. It’s worth it for that first smile, for hearing a little voice call you “Mama,” for the countless hugs and kisses, for the giving of unconditional love—the privilege of which is really a gift itself—and of course, the joy. There is so much boundless joy.