When Chris and I left the hospital after Jack was born, I thought, “How can they let us walk out of here with a BABY? We have no idea what we’re doing!”
I read a lot of blogs/journals by people who have kids, and oftentimes they’d write things like “Susie’s favorite food is Greek yogurt,” or “It was time to switch Jimmy from two naps to one,” and I’d think……… How do they know? How will I ever learn these parts of parenting?
I’ve read some parenting books, but on the whole I don’t think they’ve guided much of my behavior. Talking to my mom and sister, and my friends who have kids, certainly has influenced me. But a lot of it just seems to happen of its own accord. It turns out a lot of my opinions about how to raise Jack, and how our daily lives should go, was already in me.
I certainly don’t mean to say I have it figured out, or that I never think “What the heck are we going to do about this?” or “Boy, that was the wrong thing to say.” It’s just that some of those little things that filled me with anxiety before I had Jack, have largely been non-issues. We learn as we go.
How did I know when Jack needed to go from 2 naps to 1? He told me, I guess. He stopped taking his afternoon nap; he had trouble falling asleep for his morning nap; we tried some 1-nap days and it seemed to work out. It didn’t happen in one day, and there was back and forth, but it happened.
Thankfully, so far Chris and I have been pretty much on the same page about the day-to-day raising of Jack. I imagine that we’ll have conflicts as the years go by, but that’s ok. We’ll learn it as we go!
