A friend once told me that before she had babies, she never thought about the fact that newborns wake up multiple times a night. “I brought him home from the hospital, and all of a sudden he was awake every two hours wanting to eat, and I was shocked,” she told me. “Somehow I just didn’t know that babies are up all night. How did I not know that?”
I definitely knew babies wake up multiple times a night. I knew I would be exhausted for the first few months, that I would spend a lot of time feeding them and change a lot of diapers. I knew I’d be busier than ever before, but in a different way. I knew I’d experience some sort of different love.
But there are ALL SORTS of things I never thought about before becoming a mom. I didn’t know my life would be completely turned upside down, that I’d be the same person but have totally different priorities, which is a cliche but it’s a cliche because it’s true. But … I also didn’t know how badly my back would hurt or how bored I would be a lot of the time.
So without further ado, here is my non-exhaustive list of things I never knew before becoming a mom:
How much time I would spend clipping fingernails.
How much time I would spend clipping toenails.
How difficult it is to clip someone else’s fingernails and toenails, particularly if that someone else is thrashing around like a shark trying to escape its cage.
How much time I would spend wiping other people’s noses.
How much children HATE having their noses wiped by someone else.
How much time I would spend bending over: To take off a kid’s shoes, put on a kid’s shoes, put a kid’s shoes in the closet, pick up toys, pick up bits of food a baby has thrown from their high chair, pick up coins that have somehow landed on the floor and are a major choking hazard, pick up the children themselves, and the list goes on FOREVER.
On a related note, how much my back would hurt!
That I would need a back massage every night because my back is sore but my husband would also need one for the same reason, and that we’d both be too tired to give each other back massages.
That it would be really nice to go outside and hang in the yard with your baby but there’s nowhere to put her because she’ll just crawl around and try to eat grass and pine cones and put rocks in her mouth until you give up and go inside where there are no pine cones or rocks except the ones your toddler put on the coffee table yesterday.
That I would feel judged a lot of the time even though people probably aren’t judging me at all; I just feel like the woman looking at me in the grocery store is thinking, “why would she let her son eat graham crackers in the store he’s going to grow up to be spoiled and entitled.”
That so much of parenting is simply being PATIENT: Standing there until your kid decides to be done coloring/putting masking table on the kitchen table/organizing the books/trying to unlock the door with the wrong key/stacking the blocks/eating chicken nuggets slower than anyone has eaten chicken nuggets ever.
That sometimes you simply can’t do what you want to do because if your kid sees you put an emoji in a text message, HE needs to find the truck and airplane emojis and spend 15 minutes sending them to all your friends, or if your kid sees you drink hot tea, HE needs to drink “mommy’s water” and nobody wants to be responsible for a child burning their mouth.
That being a mom can be boring.
That when you have two small kids they’ll never nap at the same time.
That breastfeeding is really, really hard.
That when they’re little, you spend more time at home than you want to. All those families you see out at the farmers market with a toddler in a stroller and a baby strapped to dad’s chest? It took them an hour and a half to get out of the house, and they’re leaving in five minutes because the little one has to nap and the big one is getting grumpy.
That seemingly simple things like “getting a babysitter for the night” become very complicated, sometimes too complicated to actually DO: find a babysitter you trust, make sure your kids trust them too, coordinate schedules, teach the babysitter about the kids’ routines, worry that they won’t eat or sleep, worry that they WILL scream and cry and have separation anxiety and the babysitter will never want to come back…
And on a related note, that taking care of babies and little kids is actually pretty complicated. Eating and sleeping and playing and schedules oh my!
That you won’t actually want to potty train your kid because changing diapers is easier than finding a public bathroom.
…And I’m sure I’ll discover much more as my kids grow older.