Raising small children is a terrible and wonderful experience
/
My daughters are transforming from little girls into little woman before my eyes. And with the passing of time the Facebook memories and old photos and videos on our phones are becoming more and more emotional to watch. I hear those little voices and am transported to another lifetime.
It is interesting that all those photos and videos are of beautiful memories. Little songs being sung while strapped in the car seat. Adorable. Dancing their hearts out to some or other Disney movie theme song. Too cute for words. And snippets catching them saying the darndest things. It’s enough to melt your heart.
The question is, where are the videos of the dirty nappies, the sleepless nights and the terrible twos? As my wife and I concluded, one does not typically grab your phone to record those moments. The challenges of raising small children are instead hidden in plain sight. If you look carefully at the old Reinecke photo albums there is one common theme...
My wife and I look tired in most of them.
That is why my advice to new parents is emphatic: Get and take all the help you can. Lean on parents, siblings, aunts and uncles as much as you can. Your mom’s offering to come stay with you for the first couple months? Bite her hand off! Someone’s offering to babysit? If you trust them, then for goodness sake go for it! Think you can afford a nanny or au pair? I guarantee you it will be some of the best money you ever spend.
Enjoy every moment they say. Well, you can love a toddler every moment but it’s near impossible to enjoy every moment of a child’s life. That’s something you say to people when you’ve forgotten how hard it can be to stay sane while being sleep deprived. So instead I have a different bit of sage advice: Stick together and remember it gets better.
I still hear of too many dads who are unwilling to change nappies or do the 10pm and 5am bottles. Let me be clear, it really does take a village. I didn’t contribute enough with our first baby and I regret it to this day. I redeemed myself somewhat with number two and all through the rest of the toddler years. In my experience it really does make a difference. The saying “many hands light work” comes to mind.
So where does that leave us? For me, having kids was simultaneously the hardest and most wonderful thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. You might think there are going to be difficult moments. But you don’t know the half of it. There will be teething nappies, midnight fevers and at least a few tantrums that will cause you to question every decision you’d ever made up to that point. But at the same time, however much you think you are going to love and enjoy having children, I promise you, you are underestimating how incredible it is. My daughters are not just my life, they are my universe.