Parenting: not for the squeamish!

Disclaimer: Parenting is not for the faint of heart!

When my first beautiful child landed in my arms six years ago, I knew it was the beginning of a whole new ball game.  I had read the books, went to a breastfeeding course at the hospital, and gotten enough baby stuff to supply a small nursery school.  But, in spite of all of that preparedness, I was still blown away at how challenging parenting could be!

A new baby pits you against yourself; testing your ability to stay calm and focused through the crying, late nights, figuring your little one out, and learning to live with infrequent showers, eating while standing at the counter, and letting go of the tidy order your life once had.  You are introduced to the perpetual state of worry that you feel as a parent.  It starts out as worrying over making sure you’re caring for your baby in the right way, evolves into worrying about making sure your child is developing into a great kid, which gives way to making sure your kid is becoming a decent person as a teen, and finally the worry about releasing your now adult-ish young person into the world to fend for themselves.  Talk about scary!

But we parents do more than worry: we heal boo boos, dance silly dances to make our teary-eyed babies smile, stay up until three am to make sure holidays are perfect, create costumes out of bath towels and string, sew holes in favorite loveys, sing special songs, make paper airplanes, catch vomit, clean pee (and sometimes, poo!) off floors, jump on trampolines, tell elaborate stories at bedtime, cuddle with scared little ones that wake us up at two am, and so much more.

We give all of ourselves to our children, our families, and all without a guarantee that everything will turn out as we’ve dreamed of or hoped for.   When researchers or people attempt to monetize the work we do as parents (typically mothers), it trivializes the commitment to the work, because it comes from a place so much deeper.  We do all we do out of the infinite love to make sure our families are cared for and have the best we can give them.

I can only speak as mother, but I know that parenting has put me one the steepest learning curve than any formal education ever has.  Parenting is an experiment of trial by fire.  None of us are perfect, and all of us are doing the best we can do.  Parents unite!