So I am in no position to offer advice on fatherhood since my wife and I’s first child was born five days ago. That hardly makes me an expert. Haaa. So I will be posting just some thoughts and musings as I stumble my way through it.
But one of the things that I find amazing is just how little we sometimes know about things unless we actually experience it ourselves. For example: When I was engaged my wife and I were often told by married couples that marriage was hard and difficult. They prefaced it by saying,”It is wonderful…and fun…and amazing…..but it’s also very hard.” For my wife and I we knew that marriage had its ups and downs and would be hard as we learned together what it meant to be husband and wife. And after being married for two years we can look back and say that marriage is hard, but it is also amazing and wonderful. But it took the experience of actually getting married to know the difficulties, the challenges, the wonderful experiences, etc. Nothing that our good intentioned married friends told us impacted us like doing it ourselves.
This is how having a baby feels. Everyone says how wonderful and amazing it is. But they also talk about the lack of sleep, the challenges of being parents, the difficulties focusing on your marriage, etc. And before the baby your typical response is, “yeah, yeah, yeah…I know…it’s going to be hard.”
But there is nothing like those last moments when the hospital discharges you and you are sent home with the baby for the first time. Now that we are at home I can say that no matter what my friends told me it wouldn’t have made sense until we actually experienced it ourselves.
How can one convey what it’s like to sleep off and on through the night…a couple of hours here…feed the baby…a couple of hours here…feed the baby…change the baby…bathe the baby….repeat cycle?
They can’t! It has to be experienced. And after only five days I can say that all the things I was told were true. “It’s wonderful. It will change your life. That there’s nothing like looking into the eyes of your child for the first time. ” And it’s also true that “It’s hard….that you don’t sleep much…etc., etc.”
So after five days it is true….being a parent is hard, but it is great. And it’s something that can only be conveyed through experience, because no matter what anyone tells you, it doesn’t compare to walking through the process yourself.
Have any of you rookie or experienced mothers or fathers had any experiences such as I describe? Was it easier or harder than you thought in the initial stages?
Thought this was hilarious!
