I love my kids, I just hate parenting
Everyone is always talking about how having kids changes your perspective on things.
They say that when you experience life through the eyes of your innocent children, you appreciate the little things so much more. And I suppose it’s true.
But kids change everything in your life, not merely the way you look at it.
Have you ever been curious about what I was like before I had kids? Or what I thought about kids when I was single and carefree? Well today is your lucky day!
Like most of you, I had a bit of a different take on kids and parents and parenting before I became a parent – I was not yet a part of the collective – and perhaps nothing I wrote encapsulates that different take better than this piece.
Referring to the months leading up to the Hammer’s arrival as “stressful” is a massive understatement.
I was out of my mind with anxiety, from worries about future restrictions on money and and sleep and time, to concerns about both the baby’s and Mom and Buried’s health, to wondering how I would possible survive the post-delivery ban on sex, my mind was overwhelmed with fear and uncertainty.
Now, of course – exactly as I kept telling myself it would be all along (to little avail) – everything is fine.
In its darkest moments, parenting boils down to two emotions.
Once you muffle the laughter and the joy – and let’s be real here, in the face of the day-to-day grind that is raising children, the laughter and the joy are already often muffled by the frustration and the exhaustion – two feelings come to the fore over and over again. Two feelings that, on your worst days, overwhelm everything else.
Being a parent is largely about guilt and fear, even when it should be about neither.
Babies aren’t trying to be jerks. They just can’t help it.
There’s no better proof of babies instinctual ability to mess with you than the uncanny manner in which they always seems to time their sleep schedule for maximum disruption of your life.
To prove this theorem, I spent some time monitoring my son.