Parenting

You’re going to have a baby and it’s your first. You’re both overjoyed with this news and can barely contain yourselves with happiness. This is natural and the reaction of most new expecting parents. What comes next is also natural and not something to worry about as you will already have your hands full with other worries as well. Almost immediately after the first euphoria passes you’ll be left wondering how on earth you ever thought you could handle being parents. And that’s when you’ll dive into the stack of parenting magazines and material and start reading all the b and information that you can.

You’ll go through each article carefully the first time around and hand over your stack to your partner and snatch hers when she finishes going through her parenting articles. You’ll read through each of these parenting articles diligently noting down everything you might conceivably need to know. And by the time you’ve finished, you’ll have ended up with a stack of notes that’s almost as thick as your wrist and from which you could also probably spawn your parenting articles!

That said, you probably don’t need levity in your time of personal crisis so you’ll want to do the next thing on your list and call your mothers for advice. You had called them earlier to tell them the good news but that was it. It was only sometime in the middle of the night as you were reading through your stack of parenting articles that you both decided that calling your mothers might be even better than reading all the parenting articles. But it was close to midnight and you didn’t want to wake them.

This is why you continued reading through the stack of parenting articles because by the time morning came around and you got on the phone you would at least have calmed down somewhat. You call both your mothers and ask their advice, separately of course. And you’ll find that they both have almost the identical thing to say to you.

Starting with the first thing you need to realize, that parenting is never easy. The next thing will be to realize that although parenting articles and books and information sheets can give you help, there’s only so much help they can give you. Everything else you’ll need to learn through your own experiences and mistakes.