What I Didn’t Expect About Parenting

The first six months…

I’m not sure what I expected from the first six months. People love telling you things like ‘you’ll never sleep again’ (not true for me), or ‘you’ll love them beyond anything you could have imagined’ (1000% true!) They’re big, sweeping generalisations and you sit there with your belly, feeling the little human growing and moving around inside you, and you try to imagine what it’s going to be like. Other parents tell you things and you nod along, pretending to get it, but in my experience, you just can’t grasp it. Not fully. It’s like trying to imagine what flying in a plane is like before you’ve ever flown anywhere. Or what liquorice might taste like before you’ve ever tried it. Or bungy jumping, or getting a tattoo, or having an orgasm or meeting one of your heroes. You imagine how these things might feel. What reactions you’ll have. What thoughts will cross your mind. But until you’re actually experiencing the thing, you can’t know. They’re all just thoughts colliding around up there in your brain without any lived, tangible proof in your senses.

What has surprised me most in these first six months is that there have been more things that I didn’t expect than things I did.

Here are a few of them…

She’d be grumpy for about 6 weeks.

“She hates being alive,” I said on more than one occasion in those first weeks. “She’s not enjoying her life at all.” I expected her to look and act like a baby. Babies are cute, smiley, playful things. Newborns are not babies – they’re little alien-like creatures with no neck and the posture of an old man. Their hands rarely open from little fists, seemingly ready to lay one on you at any moment. There’s no smiling, no laughing, no warmth. You look at them and think I love you more than anything in the world. You’re everything to me. I’d move mountains for you. I’d cross oceans for you, and they just stare blankly at the wall. Spew on your face. Scream at you for food. Majorlypissed off to be in the world. “Should we send her back? She hates it here.”

But then that first smile appears and it’s like pure sunshine.

How physical it is after the birth.

All you hear about is how physical the labour is. What you don’t think about is now you have a real life human who needs you to do absolutely everything for them – the rocking, the holding, the feeding. It’s a full body workout every single day.

The toe licking.

Ummmm. No one warned me this was a thing?? Her circus-level flexibility is astounding. Full toes are plunged into the mouth and sucked on like lollipops. Who needs teethers?

The constant creeping around while she sleeps.

I know, I know, you’re not “meant” to do this, but we live in a single-level house with creaky floorboards and the few times we’ve tried to be normal, she’s woken up. Soooo… creeping around it is. It’s a sight to behold, really – my husband and I leaping over known floorboard-offenders like nimble ninjas, silently preparing meals, whispering to each other or sending texts from room to room, eating most meals outside on our deck so we might, just for a few minutes, actually speak like normal human beings. Oh yes, it’s a barrel of fun, our house. You should come over some time – but don’t flush the toilet, don’t use the taps, don’t excite the dog, don’t drop anything, don’t laugh, don’t cough. In fact, don’t even breathe, ok? Cool.

Re-visiting picture books from my own childhood.

It wasn’t long before the “A is for Apple”- type baby books bored me to tears, so out came the picture books with actual stories. The simpler books will have their day once she starts reading for herself and recognising words, but for now it’s mostly about her hearing language. It’s surprised both Darcy and I how much we’ve enjoyed re-visiting some old classics we hadn’t set eyes on in about 25 years – Hairy Maclary, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Are We There Yet, Uno’s Garden, Belinda the Cow (a true masterpiece – I’d forgotten about my friends Bessie and Old Tom!), Bad Jelly the Witch (gloriously unhinged), Fancy Nancy and all the Shirley Barbers. With two trained actors for parents, well, the girl has no choice but to listen to a daily array of silly voices and impassioned readings.

The Bluey soundtrack.

We have not yet watched a single episode of Bluey. I hear it’s life-changing stuff. But that soundtrack, my goodness. It’s pure joy.

Feeling closer to the other women in my life.

Not only the women in my friends and family, but random strangers on the street. As you pass by each other, pushing your pram or carrying your bub, there’s an unsaid connection. A silent knowing. All it takes is a smile, a nod, a friendly glance and it conveys so much – I see you. I get it. You’re doing great. It’s a beautiful secret society I was oblivious to before.

Her bodily fluids don’t bother me in the slightest.

I expected it all to be more, well, gross. It’s not. When it’s your own child, the array of things coming out of every part of her really don’t bother you at all. When she’s come from inside your literal body, it all just feels like your own. And a note on the poops – no one told me they look like mustard and smell like yoghurt (for now at least – we have just entered the wonderful world of solids!)

I care less about how I look.

She doesn’t know about beauty standards yet. She doesn’t care that my hair is in the world’s messiest bun every morning when I go in to pick her up out of her cot. When she grins up at me, I grin right back at her without caring about the lines that form around my eyes as I do. I make silly faces when we’re playing, I dance around the living room like a weirdo just to make her laugh. It’s completely freeing. She just sees me, her mum, with zero judgement. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could feel this free with everyone in our lives? To see right to the core of each other, instead of constantly focussing so much on our appearances?

Breastfeeding: the most unexpected love story of all.

“But I don’t want to feel like a cow”, was what I retorted every time my mum talked about breastfeeding.

“It’s the most wonderful thing”, she’d say in that wistful, sing-song voice laden with nostalgic memories of feeding her own three babies. “When they’re suckling away, it’s just the most amazing feeling. There’s nothing like it, darling”.

With the freedom of a twenty-something with time on her side, I’d roll my eyes, “yeah, yeah, OK Mum. Whatever.”

Throughout my pregnancy, it was the thing I was least keen for – the breastfeeding. I knew I’d give it a go, and if I could do it, great. If I couldn’t, I wasn’t going to be too hard on myself. But honestly, the thought of it completely weirded me out.

So it’s been the biggest surprise of my life to find how much I love breastfeeding. I’ve been lucky – from that first moment, she latched perfectly and we’ve had a dreamy journey ever since. Mum, as usual, was right. It is the most amazing feeling. Something I never could have anticipated. The hormonal rush of oxytocin that floods through me each time she feeds blows my mind. It’s still just as strong now, six months in. The fact that I can keep her alive with just my own body, fuelling her with all the nutrients she needs, is astonishing to me.

There are so many things wrapped up in the breastfeeding journey I couldn’t have expected: the extreme hunger and thirst it brings, not caring at all about being seen doing it in public, how skilled I would get at eating/typing/drinking with one hand, the beautiful sounds she makes, our quiet moments together, the intimacy of it, how it forces me to slow down, how it grounds me in moments of frustration or overthinking or panic. I don’t think there’s a better or more fulfilling feeling than when she’s drinking, pauses to look up and smile at me for a few seconds, then goes back to it.

To my own (and Mum’s) greatest surprise, it’s been one of my proudest achievements in life, feeding this little baby.

Most used phrase #1: “Awake Windows.”

A year ago I’d never spoken the words “awake” and “window” in the same sentence. If you’d said it to me, I probably would have replied with are you for real? Doesn’t the baby just go to sleep when they’re tired

Hahahahahaha.

I didn’t realise there was some Goldilocks-level science to getting it juuust right… make sure they’re not too tired, but make sure they’re tired enough. We now say, without irony, “sorry we can’t go to that café on the other side of town because it won’t fit into her awake window.” And “this awake window has gone on way too long.” And “which awake window should we go out to the shops in today?” Cringe city, I know.

Most used phrase #2: “Check the TOG guide.”

Similarly, not too long ago I remember saying to a friend “what on Earth is a tog? Don’t they just go in pyjamas?” She smiled patiently, knowing one day I’d understand. If we thought the awake windows had some crazy science to them, the Thermal Overall Grade is some next-level-Einstein-s**t. “What TOG are we dressing her in tonight?” has become a nightly catch phrase in our house, as we try to figure out the exact right clothing layer to match the exact right sleeping bag layer to match the ever-changing temperature. Our nightly conversations are no longer about our day, or the state of the world, or what TV show we’re watching, but “what if the temp drops too much overnight?” / “Do you think her hands should be in or out of the mitts?” / “It’s too warm in her room for the 2.5 tog!” / “Let’s go with an extra singlet layer and the 0.2 tog wondersuit and the 1 tog bag with the arms in and overnight we can change her into the 2.5 tog and oh man, she’s been sucking on the hands of her 2.5 tog and they’re all wet so maybe we can just layer her up and leave her in the 1 tog?”

Like I said, it’s a barrel of fun over here these days.

How much I’ve thought about death.

This one has shaken me. Very early on after she was born, I remember crossing the street and having the unwelcome thought appear in my mind – I can’t get hit by a car. I can’t die. Similarly, when I started driving again, it was with a touch more caution than ever before – I have to get home in one piece. I’m her life source right now. Every time Darcy leaves the house, I find myself thinking, just for a split-second – please make it home again. She needs you. I need you.

There’s nothing quite like holding an entire, tiny, fragile life in your hands and realising it is completely dependent on you for survival, to make you feel confronted with your own mortality.

I want her to be lucky enough to grow up with both parents. I want to be here for all her life’s moments. It’s not just me, myself and I anymore. I’m someone’s mum. The only mum she has. I’m needed in a way I’ve never been before.

I’ve even, at times, thought about her death. Looking at her little body and imagining it becoming an old, wrinkly lady one day. It’s almost inconceivable to picture right now, but it’s an inevitability for us all, if we’re lucky enough to reach old age.

Be in the present with her, I often tell myself. Look how quickly the time is passing already.

I find myself feeling all the realities of life at once – equal parts beautiful, terrifying, bittersweet, nostalgic, magical, alarming, heart-wrenching, painful, joyful, complicated and completely, perfectly uncomplicated.

The intensity of the love.

Before she came, Darcy and I would go on walks together and talk about how we knew, cerebrally, how much we were going to love this child. But it was all anecdotal. We had no idea how it would actually feel. We’d hear people talking about the intensity of the love, how it was unlike anything they’d ever experienced. I even once said – which seems laughable now – “I mean if we can love our dog so much and she’s a completely different species to us, surely the love you feel for your own human child is wild.”

My best friend sent me a message after finding out I was pregnant – “You are about to experience joy beyond your wildest imagination” (except that because she’s the world’s most terrible typer, she wrote “you are abot to experience job beyond youth wildest imagination”) While she may have been, in fact, talking about the job I was about to receive and it having something to do with youth, I chose to interpret her message as the former.

And she was right.

The joy is beyond anything I could have ever imagined. It’s in every single tiny moment. It creeps up on you when you’re least expecting it. It’s in her perfect smile, her perfect nose, her perfect little hands. Watching her experience the world for the first time. Knowing you’d do anything for her. Wondering how you got so lucky. Being so overwhelmed with the love you feel you might burst.

Thank you for reading this essay.
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