No matter how many times a parent told me that raising kids is difficult, I never truly believed them. I always thought, “come on, how hard can it be?”
Until I had kids of my own, I never really respected the job of being a parent. What a shock to my system this whole thing has been! I had PPD after my son and being a mom is literally the hardest thing I have EVER done in my life and I’ve done some pretty remarkeable things.
I just never expected motherhood to be such a difficult job. I love being a mom, but boy…the lack of personal space/time, patience, rest…it just gets to you sometimes. The exhaustion some days…OMG!
I can also imagine how rewarding it must be to watch your children grow up and then when you look back, you will have life long memories of love and togetherness (hopefully with God’s help).
My husband and I talked this question over during one of our drives up north to see my dad (who is dying of cancer).
Don’t mean to sound like smart-alecks, but honestly, we didn’t think it was that hard. I’m not posting this to brag, but to convince people that children won’t ruin their lives, but instead, will enhance their lives.
We truly enjoyed being parents at all ages of our daughters’ lives.
The hardest time for me was in the first few months after the girls were born. I’ve mentioned before on CAF that I cannot function without sleep and that I actually get sick to my stomach and throw up if I am overly-tired, which means that I can’t do much of anything. So those first few months were pretty grim, and I really don’t like tiny babies very much.
This is one of the reasons why I deliberately chose to sleep-train my children. It wasn’t about what was “convenient” for me. It was about what was necessary for me to be able to function.
But once we got through those first few months, and once the girls were sleeping through the night (8 hours straight or more), things were pretty wonderful. Of course we had bad days, especially when one of the girls was sick–so hard to see your little one sick. But truly, honestly, we had so many joyful moments.
We didn’t have a difficult time with discipline. Our older daughter was a live wire (the pastor called her “Energizer Bunny”), but we didn’t know that until we had our 2nd daughter, who we thought might have something wrong with her because she was not nearly so energetic as our first daughter! (We later discovered that our first daughter was way off the scale when it came to energy, and still is, while our 2nd daughter is more in the “normal range”!)
Our younger daughter had problems with change–any change in her environment or caregiver or food or dress or anything caused her to scream. But we learned ways to deal with it. She’s still like that at age 27.
So we didn’t have “angel children” by any means. And we certainly were not “angel parents.”
I think what helped is having a “plan” before we had children, and being willing to stick with that plan, and make adjustments when things didn’t work out (although most of the time, things worked). I’ve mentioned many times that we went with Dr. Dobson’s methods, and this worked for us. I don’t think that parents have to choose Dr. Dobson–they can go with whatever is best for them and their children. The important thing is to not just “wing it,” but to develop a plan IN ADVANCE. Parents should discuss their “philosophy of childrearing,” and make sure they are on the same page. Again, it doesn’t matter if it’s AP or some other philosophy–the main thing is, both parents have to buy into it.
I think it was immensely important that both my husband and I were a single, undefeatable, strong UNIT when it came to child-rearing. We worked together, side by side, and no job (other than breastfeeding) was “My” job. It was all OUR job. I really feel for parents who are trying to raise children alone due to a spouse’s job or even more sad, because of a divorce. This makes child-rearing very difficult.
I hope these suggestions are helpful to those who are hesitant about having children.
Again, we loved raising our daughters and we did a good job. As Serap said, it gives us great pleasure to look back and remember all those happy days. We are enjoying the fruits of our labors now that the girls are grown up. The older they get, the more fun they are!
