Melissa's Place

What no one tells you about being a new parent….

Being a new parent is tiring (understatement of the century) and folks will tell you this. And if you’re pregnant when they tell you this, you’ll think, “SURELY it can’t be as tiring as lugging around this 30 pound belly.” Then, when you have your little one in your arms, you’ll shake your head and think, “I was so SO naïve.”

Here are some additional bits of information that no one told me, but that I also wouldn’t have believed if they had.

There is a REASON my mother always moves so quickly (we lovingly call it Mommy Mode). When you become a mother, there is always a random number of seconds of peace and tranquility before the next bout of crying chaos. In that unpredictable number of seconds, you learn to shovel food into your mouth, pee at lightning speed and shower super-sonically. The knot in your stomach, always anticipating the next cry, slowly fades with time. But the fast-forward gear, I suspect that stays with you.

Keep everything useful at waist-level or higher. While carrying around your newborn for at least the first three months of his or her life, you will not be able to bend over without waking him or her (and that is the ultimate demise), so you will simply forfeit eating or drinking if the thing you require is, say, at coffee-table height. I’m sure this subsides with subsequent pregnancies, but new-moms find a way to survive on only the crumbs they can scavenge within arm’s reach (or what is prepared and served to her by someone loving and supporting).

You’ll learn to do everything with one hand, slightly reclined and bobbing from side to side and up and down. You will eat cereal like this, read books like this, Stephenie Meyer wrote her award winning four-part Twilight novel series like this! You may not publicly admit it, but you will even learn to use the toilet like this (well, possibly no bobbing side to side).

You will speak to your baby in the embarrassing and idiotic way that all other parents speak to their babies. With dumb-ass smiles on their faces and cooing and repeating themselves stupidly. You will also make crazy happy faces at your baby when they smile at you. You will smile as if you’ve just won a million dollars. And when your baby cries, you may cry as well.

No matter how frugal you were before the baby was born, money becomes no object when it comes to the promise of a “cure” for sleeplessness. You will purchase every book, every mobile, every sling, swing, carrier, rocking chair, anything if the label promises it will: a) make the baby stop crying or b) make the baby sleep (and, consequently, allow you to sleep. You would gladly sell your own kidneys for the promise of a five consecutive hours in the land of Nod.

And finally….

You will suddenly not remember the last time you had a bowel movement. This kind of thing requires some time, and you just don’t have that these days!