What No One Told Me About Being a Parent

Guys, I'm going to level with you.  This is hard.  I had no idea that being a mom would be this hard.  Being a parent is an exhausting, demanding, often thankless job.

When I got pregnant with Katie, my oldest, I devoured every pregnancy book I could find and pored over stacks of books on parenting.  None of them even remotely prepared me for the reality of being a mom.  Sure, friends and family try to warn you what it's going to be like to have a baby, but until you are there, in the trenches, there's no way you can truly know. 

No one told me just how much poop, vomit, and other body fluids I would deal with as a parent, a lot of it with my bare hands and a few baby wipes.



No one told me that I would learn to survive on 3 hours of interrupted sleep and still get up and keep the kids alive the next day.  And no one warned me that I would live like that for 6 months straight after my youngest child was born.

No one told me that the constant demands from four kids all needing something from me at the same time would be enough to make me want to curl up in a ball in a corner somewhere while my blood pressure skyrocketed.

No one told me that I would have to learn to swallow my pride and ask for help because it takes a village. 

No one told me that I would cry when my babies got shots or how much my heart would ache when my 5 year old tearfully told me that kids on the playground were making fun of her beautiful but crazy hair.

No one told me about the endless messes that kids make or that they would repeatedly clog the toilet.

No one told me that there would be days when I would sit down to eat supper with Hubby after the kids went to bed and realize that it was the first time I'd eaten or even sat down all day.

And seriously...if someone had told me that I would have a medically complex baby with a feeding tube who would scream almost nonstop for his first 6 months of life, I would've run crying from the room.

When you read all of that, being a mom sounds awful.

But here's the secret...no one tells you how your heart explodes with love when that tiny newborn baby is placed in your arms for the first time.  No one tells you that one ounce of the good stuff in parenting is so amazing that it cancels out 2 tons of the bad stuff.  No one tells you that no matter how hard it gets, you'll just keep on going and know in your soul that it is worth it. 

Honestly, no one could have told me because until I became a mom, there's no way I could've understood.

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What no one told me about being a parent. #thetruthcomesout @sunshineNspoons #momlife #parenting

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What's something you wish you would've known before becoming a parent?

 


This post is linked up at: 1. Cornerstone Confessions
 2. Sweet Little Ones Blog