Ethan was born a month ago. The most remarkable thing about this time is it has mostly felt unremarkable.
It’s not that the moments that’s I’ve shared with my family during Ethan’s first month after being born, haven’t been special or meaningful. It’s just that we’ve fallen into a groove of how to function as a family, and while Ethan has had moments when he has disrupted moments in our lives (e.g. staying up last night from 11:30pm-2:00am), he hasn’t disrupted our lives.
My life is focused on my role as being a parent more than anything else. While I do mourn the freedom that was lost when children entered my life at times, more than not the life I’m living in the one I chose. You can see it in our house. In every room, there are books and toys stored in different corners for Ollie and Ethan. There is no space in our house, like a formal living room, that the children aren’t allowed to play in. Our weekends are focused around doing things as a family, whether it’s going to a children’s museum, or children’s play. While there are things that I do by myself, like running, part of the motivation to do this is so that I can be in better physical and mental health as a parent.
As Ollie has gotten older, we started to feel some of the freedom come back that we lost when Ollie was a baby and a toddler. Around the house, he doesn't need our constant attention, and we are more comfortable with him spending time away from us because of his ability to advocate for his own needs. However, we still chose to spend most of our time focused on Ollie because we enjoyed sharing our livee with him.
Ethan coming into our lives hasn’t felt like it has dramatically changed our lives. Instead it’s like we are simply adjusting back to the way things were when Ollie was younger, except in many ways it feels easier. Yes, it’s really hard to get out of the house with a baby, but we know that, and we plan for it. While this is difficult, it’s not as frustrating as it was when Ollie was a baby, because we know that it’s not that big a deal if you are late carrying a baby in tow for the most part.
Ollie’s feeding schedule as a baby never bothered me. We chose to stick by it closely for Ollie’s own good and it meant that we didn’t do certain activities, or avoided certain places to make it easier for us to care for Ollie. I find myself in the same place with Ethan, scheduling what we do around Ethan’s needs. At this point, I don’t really mind it. One reason, I'm okay with this is because it was the adherence to a schedule that led him to having good sleep habits (which in my book, is totally worth leaving parties early, and going to events late).
There have been experiences in the past month that I never thought I would be a part of that Ethan’s needs have brought us to. There are emotions that this little one has stirred up in me that I have never felt before in the past month, and there are situations, that have challenged my creativity, endurance, and skill as parent.
In most ways, this has been every single month of my life for the past four years. If you choose to dive in and make parenting a central part of your life, you are choosing to be on that roller coaster, to experience new things all of the time, to feel things deeply, and to work hard for your child.
One more baby in the mix? It’s the same roller coaster ride, it’s just more of everything that makes that ride so much fun, so hard, so absurd, and so meaningful.
No comments:
Post a Comment