The words “Congratulations! You’re pregnant” are uttered, life changes. No, this is not about those words. But life indeed changes with those words, as well. Nothing is ever the same after those words.
For me, those words were uttered four times. The first three had sad ends. I miscarried them all, but the fourth was the charm and I was blessed with a son. Not a day goes by that I don’t get some kind of flashback to his life, our life, as a family. I am sure, parents reading this can attest to that.
It is a full on adventure right out of the gate, and it does not ever stop. It is a lifelong career. That’s right single people and newly marrieds. Life long. So think wisely about everything. You won’t regret a single minute, if you wanted to have a child, but then again, you won’t have a single minute to regret anything. You’re going to be busy. Even in your sleep, you parent.
I remember bringing this little creature home, after the several years and failed attempted pregnancies. I was so happy, to finally have the little bundle, the only true joining of two different people into one, hybrid of my husband and I. I was tired and sore and still unsteady from the c-section, but I was so fulfilled and at peace. We had finally gotten there. I was thirty eight.
I carried him into our room, and placed him in his crib, at the foot of our bed. We had his bed in our room, because it was the only bedroom on the main floor, and we both wanted him close. I didn’t want him upstairs where I might not hear him. And yes, I had a baby monitor, but you literally worry about every mundane thing when you are a first time parent. So the monitor failing, or one of us not hearing our crying baby, was a concern, no matter how senseless it seems now.
So, I laid him down and sat down and I balled my eyes out, being careful to be completely silent. I was worried, there is that word again, worried that my husband or my dad, who we had flown in for the birth, might hear and think I was depressed or miserable. I was neither of those things.
I was scared out of my mind. Horrified, might be a better word. I remember the exact memory of what went through my head, “What the hell did we just do?” I thought maybe we were insane for begging to have a child, and now I was terrified of what comes next. How was I going to do this? How were we going to do this? I think it is truly normal to have that reaction or feeling, as a new parent.
We didn’t have family close by, not that we wanted our parents nearby or helping to raise our son, but it would have been so nice to have that as a comfort. If anyone reading this, has close family that supports you and helps you, be grateful. You have no idea how much relief it will be to have that help.
We were free falling on our own, for the most part. Realistically, that was what we wanted. But idealistically, we wanted the Walton’s family support system (that’s an old timers show, for the fledglings out there). We just didn’t want to have them influence our son. We wanted to break a cycle of poor parenting.
Everyday was a new experience and a new facet to living. Responsibilities are what normally comes to mind for most, but fear is a daily experience when you have a child.
Will he stop breathing in his sleep, will I hear him cry, will he be healthy growing up, will he be a good kid or a naughty one, and so many more thoughts, flash at lightening speed into the parent mind. You see horror stories about babies left in cars, and kidnappings, or children with incurable diseases, addictions, and you worry about that being your lot. It’s morbid, but it’s not just you anymore. You have this little bundle of gas and belches, smiles and giggles, completely dependent on you for literally everything. And so you begin to think about those things. They don’t teach you that in sex ed.
You eventually, find a groove, and move on day by day. You grow in confidence and the years move onward. Protection, precognition and making judgement calls on the fly, are all things you learn as you go. The parent’s superpowers are always heightened. As the super hearing and foretelling of future events become part of your thought process, so does the new alarm system, you didn’t know you have just received. Hairs on your neck, arms, maybe legs, if you don’t shave them (ew), all raise on alert when something has gone or is going amok.
The next, scratch that, the rest of your life, you have that alarm system, though it does update regularly, to the latest version, as you get to know your little stinker(s) and their propensity for trouble, mischief, or fibbing. I was a master detector. I prayed, early on, that if our son, was about to get in trouble or if he ever lied, that I would be informed or find out somehow. That prayer was granted.
Oh, my son, didn’t believe me when I told him that over the years, but in high school, he finally, did. Over the course of his life, I always knew when something was not right, and he would be skeptical when I’d say that to him, but he did finally accept it. I told him that little story after something he did in his junior year and, he looked at me and said, “I believe you, finally, I do.”
Finding out the hidden things of a child’s mischief, is only one thing to deal with. Discipline is the thing parents, don’t like, but that is essential in raising children into adults, that understand right from wrong, boundaries, and manners, and a slew of other dos and don’ts.
As a parent, expect to have many disagreements, fights, cold shoulders, maybe even an, “I hate you”, from your children. It is the exercise in growing pains for you as a parent, and the spreading of their wings, in order to one day take flight and leave the nest, to make their own. All normal. It will at times, be tenuous. It will produce anger and maybe resentment, and maybe include a side of distance, between parent and child, but that is the normal process. Completely normal.
I left my career when I finally saw I would have a successful pregnancy. I wanted to be an at home mom, and be there for our son, at all times. I DO NOT ever regret that decision. I had a new career. Mother. There is no greater job or responsibility than to raise a child into an adult that has honor and integrity. Our son is that. He is a man of the highest order, and second only to his father. Both men are an enigma in today’s world. The reasons for that is for another story.
Being home with our son, was not without challenges. We did not always agree on things, obviously, but we managed. High school was the toughest part. That is when the envelope gets pushed to its limits. He was angry with mom, a lot. He often seemed like he didn’t love me, because I was not lenient in many things. I was strict but not cruel. Though he thought I was Cruella Deville or Maleficent.
Children think anytime it’s a “no”, that you are a cruel and horrible parent. I accepted that. I was the bad cop, my husband was the good cop, so to speak. We were always together on decisions, but since I was the one handling the punishments, owing to being the stay at home parent, I got the brunt of the “hatred”.
I always told him, that I was fine with him hating me because the lessons I was teaching him were for his own good. I said that I would rather he hate me for my parenting now, then hate me for not parenting him later in life, if I did not equip him with what he needed in adult life.
I am his parent, not his pose, or his “friends”. I had a job to do. A serious one, looking at the way kids are behaving these days. I did my job well, I believe. Posterity will judge me on that later, but I know what I know. I know my son is an amazing man and fully capable at age twenty, because he is.
He went off to school, and a month before graduation, he was recruited by a company in another state. He literally came home, and two weeks later was gone to start a career and a new life on his own, at age nineteen. He had an impeccable resume already, and he was a valuable catch, for any employer. They knew it and grabbed him up.
His dad drove out there with him, to his new home, got him set up and came back afterwards. Then the fear gripped me. I was afraid for our son. He was alone, he had never lived without us, barring school, and he had no one out there, in Colorado. That is a fear you can’t even imagine. Fear, however was soon replaced with awe.
I had imagined that after he would move out, we would not hear from him much. I thought maybe he would be angry at his upbringing and distance himself to the point of only intermittent calls here and there. Boy, was I wrong.
The thing that shocks me to this very moment, is that my son calls me every single day. He isn’t calling to ask for anything, or to gripe about his childhood, or even because he is lonely. No. He calls me because he feels completely close to me, in a way I never anticipated. Our parent child relationship and changed into a parent adult relationship and with that comes appreciation, He wants to talk to me. All the time.
He gets frustrated or upset when I don’t have time to chat, because I may be in the middle of writing a piece, or some other important chore. That is an incredible feeling, when your child, loves to talk to you, values your input, wants to know how you made such and such, so he cant make it, or when he just wants to hear your voice, because he is homesick.
But that is not the moment “it” happens. What is “it”? I’ll tell you.
It is the moment, when you realize, your child got “it”. When he finally understands every chore he was given and why, when he finally knows why you punished him and why you rewarded him, when he finally recognizes that you sacrificed in order to be there for him, or to give him everything you could, so that he would not go without.
That came about a two weeks into his new life. He called me up, like he does every day, and asked if I had a minute. It was important he told me. I was a bit concerned and I asked if he was okay. He said he was completely fine. Then he hit me with “it”.
Our son said, “thank you.” My eyes are watering up just thinking about that moment again. I asked him for what? I thought he was thanking us for finding him a nice apartment or for furnishing his home, with new modern and man cave like furniture, but no. “That was not the “it”. I asked our son for what and he replied,
“For everything you did for me, my whole life,” his words, verbatim, “I didn’t know why you did the things you did, why you were strict in some things and not others, or what you were teaching me, but I get it now.” “I have been here, for the last couple weeks, and I now understand that it was so when I moved on, I would be confident in my ability to do it.” He went on to say, “I know now how much you sacrificed for me to give me everything I had, and I want you to know that, I am grateful.”
That is the “it” moment. When you as a parent, know you have done your job, when you know, you have succeeded. That is the moment you will remember the rest of your life, like it’s on replay over and over. Those are the words you will never forget. I can’t even remember my wedding day vows verbatim, but those words, yes. It’s like a melody that never gets old, that breaks your heart and mends it in the same instance.
That is when you know the sleepless nights, meant something, the giving up of something for yourself in order to give something to your child was worth it, the fights you go over and over in your head, wondering if you were too harsh or two angry and regretting that it caused a rift between you and your child, were all worth it and meant something beautiful. We raised a beautiful man, handsome beautiful, yes ladies, but beautiful inside his heart and most importantly, his mind. He is successfully, adulting.
That is the “it” that makes every single thing worth everything. I hope you all get to experience that one day.