Being a parent is so hard. The newborn phase, the infant phase, the toddler phase, they’ve all got different names but oh they are all so hard. As a second time mom there’s one piece of knowledge I’m armed with this time around that makes parenting a little easier: everything is hard until it’s not.
When my daughter was born almost four years ago everything was hard. Forget the obvious hard things like learning to breastfeed. There were other seemingly simple things that were insanely difficult. She would scream when we gave her a bath. Full on hysterical cries. We couldn’t understand. I had seen 100 cute youtube videos of babies getting baths. Why didn’t our baby love taking a bath? No sooner did we figure that out when she started crying every time she was in the car. She hated being strapped in. We’d hold her little hand from the front seat. I remember twisting into acrobatic feats trying to calm her. Just about every time we solved one issue another one appeared.
I’m more than four years into motherhood and now I see the challenges like waves in the ocean. At first the water was freezing and the waves crashed over and over on me. I lost my balance with each one. I’d need time to adjust, fix my bathing suit, get the water out of my eyes and nose. And before I felt sturdy and balanced another wave would crash and knock me again. But now, we’ve got a rhythm. We’ve been in the water long enough to know the waves will keep coming. I sway and bounce with each of them as they hit and can see the next one coming in the distance.
At the beginning of 2017, our son was born. And wow, we forgot a lot of things. How old are they when they start rolling over? When do they start to eat real food? But what I didn’t forget was the knowledge that each phase was just that, a phase. I knew sleepless nights wouldn’t last forever. I knew breastfeeding would get easier if I kept with it. I knew we could solve each puzzle that came our way.
We’re in a flow with two little kiddos. It often looks chaotic and messy. Sometimes if I don’t bounce along with the rhythm of the waves I get off course, sucked under, and have to adjust. But I’m armed with the knowledge that we will figure it out because, everything is hard until it’s not.
