Unfortunately, I was totally unprepared for the postpartum depression. I should have been prepared somewhat, as it was discussed in our birth classes, but when I was in the middle of it, I had no idea what was going on. There were some really dark days; I clearly remember standing in the living room, in a nightgown I’d been wearing for days, unshowered and totally overwhelmed, and very calmly thinking I could just take the baby to the firehouse that was down the street from us and leave her. The thought didn’t make me happy or sad; it just seemed like the only rational thing to do at the time.
Although I didn’t want to ever hurt the baby, I also clearly remember thinking one night that maybe she just wouldn’t wake up in the morning and that would be okay by me. Again, the thought didn’t make me happy or sad.
Thankfully I started feeling better within a few months and I was completely better by the time she was 6 months old.
On the flip side, I have been totally shocked at how much I have actually enjoyed her at 2 years old. I braced for the “terrible 2’s”, but it has not been terrible at all!
Yep. Others have commented on the Sherpa-loads of gear and the broken sleep (ours first started sleeping through the night at 7 months), and fear (hospitalized with a UTI at 3 months that required a year of preventative medication)… but postpartum depression… that’s just unexpected crap. My wife was diagnosed about 9 months after birth – should have been sooner – and has not recovered (9 years now). A major contributing factor to the lad remaining an only child.
The first time The Kidlet drew on the wall with a crayon, his mom was about to fly into a rage when she got a tug on her clothes. It was The Kidlet’s dad, whose eyes were sparkling with contained laughter.
She opened her mouth.
She closed her mouth.
She opened her mouth.
She harrumped.
And then she calmed her kid down (her deep intake of breath having been enough to trigger his own panicked reaction) and explained that You Are Not To Do That. He wailed “but it’s preeeeeetttyyyyyyy!”
The next day, my brother finally got to buy and stick in place those two stick-on whiteboards he’d wanted to put in when they were painting The Kidlet’s room and she’d refused to consider. They were not prepared, but she couldn’t say she hadn’t been warned about our family history of Painting On Cave Walls (apparently it’s another one of those things one side did and the other one didn’t).
I wasn’t prepared to be having transition-strength contractions every two minutes less than an hour after labor started. And then the hospital wasn’t prepared for me to dilate in three hours, so the anesthesiologist was in no hurry with the epidural.
And then she was born and the hard part started.
But, two and a half weeks later, she’s starting to give me proto-smiles when I kiss her face. It’s all been completely worth it. I can’t believe I’m so lucky.
Just wait until she’s giving you real smiles! And, at some point, the baby kind of catches on to the idea of kissing, and the very first time your baby kisses you, by surprise and unprompted, well, you can’t buy that kind of joy! :)
I still remember the first time the kid really ‘got’ that it was me on the other end of the phone and got really excited. “That’s *you *mummy, I love you I love you!” Brilliant feeling, but made being away for a weekend parenting course ironically horrible.
I always thought that if I didn’t drink, smoke, or party that my kids would see the Shining Example that I set and would of course never do such things. Boy, was I dumb. My husband and I aren’t into those things at all and it came as quite a shock when we found out our daughter was a heroin addict. But we were such a nice family! :rolleyes:
Now I know that our kids make their own choices in life and I can’t change who she is or the decisions that she makes any more than I could jump over the moon right now. All we can do is our best and hope that some of it sticks.
I remember how I went through a lot of stages when all of that was going on, and it was terrible. Guilt. Grief. Denial. Anger. Pain beyond anything I had ever known. You want to know pain? Have your wedding ring stolen and pawned by the girl you love more than your own life. Good times.
Now she is living in another state and doing well. Her skeevy ex boyfriend (and the one who got her hooked) is in jail until 2012. Good riddance. She has only been gone for a couple of months and the last time she OD’ed was October, so we’re not out of the woods yet. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t worry.
Our son is shy and borderline depressed, which I never would have anticipated when he was a little guy. It’s an effort to get him to leave his room and he has no social life. None.
When they were little I never would have imagined how things would be today, but I try to make the best of what is. I’ve gotten over blaming myself; my kids have made their own choices and all I can do is love and support them.
What did I never anticipate? That I would feel jealous of other people and their more functional kids.
My son is now about 8 months old. My wife stays at home and is about the most marvelous mother a child could have. I work quite a lot and have no boundaries between work and home though I do what I love, so she does the majority of the caretaking. I spend a lot of time working from home, so I am available almost all the time and definitely do my part.
I wrote a long post about my highly mixed experiences as a new father. Instead of posting it, I made a few pots of tea and had a long talk with my wife.
It is enough to say that I was not really prepared for this at all, nor do I think I could have been if I had another decade. I love my son, but so far, I really do not love parenting. I know it’s no picnic for anyone. My son is very difficult but healthy, so I could have a much rougher row to hoe. But at the same time, I do not really take pleasure in the sorts of everyday parenting things that seem to motivate fathers everywhere. I have an especially hard time talking to my own father about it, whom I can tell really loved fatherhood. I’m 33 and he still talks about how much fun he had bathing me every day when I was an infant. Here bathtime is an execrable chore for me.
There are moments of ephemeral joy. I do genuinely love my son, though I hope more of an emotional bond will be formed in the future. I always figured I would be a good father before we had my son since my role models were so good. I was not at all prepared to be as honest-to-god uncertain about it as I am now.
I don’t actually have any friends who are new parents. This is in part due to the fact that here in Manhattan, new parents are generally fucking insane. But I also just don’t like to talk about the minutiae of parenting all the time, and I just don’t feel that I have any more in common with other parents than I do with complete strangers. I am especially grateful to my child-free friends for being so supportive to my wife and me on account of our child. We are the first among our friends to have a child, so I think everyone is having a good time of it.
He’s playing and giggling on the bed. I’m going to give him a tickle while he’s in a good mood. There’s nothing else that needs to be done tonight.
I admire your honesty enormously. Not to us, but to your wife and most of all yourself. By being so honest I think you stand a much better chance of being a good father and enjoying it as time goes on.
I wasn’t prepared for any of it. I thought I was prepared for some of it, but I was wrong.
Least well understood in advance was how long it lasts. Kids outlive you. But even after you can’t do anything about them, for them, or even to them, they, and their lives matter a whole lot.
A young mother I know was wailing about teenagers being more difficult than young children, and asked, “Doesn’t it ever stop?!”
I told her, “No, but after your youngest gets paroled, it lightens up a bit.”
You sound a lot like my hubby. He loved all three of our children right from the start, but the ‘chores’ of caring for a baby: bathing, diapering, and especially feeding, he didn’t enjoy at all. He despised having to spoon-feed a baby, though of course he’d do it if he needed to, and would do it with a smile on his face so as not to let the baby in on the fact that he was not having fun!
He enjoyed things a whole lot more when the kids were old enough to talk and to go do stuff. He really enjoyed it when, on our third time out, we had a kid who was like him. Not the boy he’d hoped for, true, but he takes her roller skating, target shooting, they play chess, they take care of her pet snakes together, they discuss books and U.S. History. He’s really enjoying this phase of our youngest daughter’s life.
Maeglin, my father was one of those “please bring it back when we can have a conversation” guys. So’s Littlebro. We have a picture of Littlebro with the newborn Kidlet, absolutely terrified to break him. He asked his parents to lean on him for anything they needed around the house, groceries or whatever but “please don’t ask me to hold him again until he can hold himself up, if I had a heart attack I’d never forgive me for dropping him”.
Just last Friday Mom was telling me what a wonderful time the Kidlet (now aged 4) and Littlebro had had playing with the pirate ship last Wednesday (Littlebro eats at her house every weekday, the Kidlet on Wednesdays).
You may simply be one of those. They make wonderful parents, big brothers, teachers and uncles - once the kid is big enough to have a conversation.
The obvious stuff has been taken care of, so I’ll mention a new one: the constant sickness. If your little one is in day care, expect 10-12 colds a year. They’ll have a runny nose, at the very least, as often as not. And you’ll get most of them. I’m now suffering from my first cold since January, and I enjoyed the three-month break.
I didn’t get the sickness when the kid was a baby, but I went to motherhood from a public contact job, so my immune system was charged up already.
The loss of friends - I’d assumed they’d drift away as we grew apart, but it was like more than half of the people I knew ran in terror from the very thought of being in the same room as a baby.
On the other hand, I’m still amazed at how easy it is to strike up a conversation with someone if you both have kids - so many parts of parenting are universal, you will have something in common. A friend of mine gets quite bent out of shape when the people he’s known for twenty years or more can be chatting away to me within five minutes - and it seems like I have more in common with them than he does.
Thanks for the encouragement. Thankfully my wife said very similar things; she expects I will hit my stride when our son is able to talk, read, etc. Until then, it’s one day at a time.
Maeglin, I think my husband and oldest son started to bond most at about sixteen months, walking, talking, playing. He was a good Dad before, but not sure what to do and not being as good at playing or comforting the kidlet drove him nuts. They’re good buddies now.
Yes. We’ve just been through a hospital roller-coaster because of diabetes and stomach flu, and he’s still not recovered, and his food intake increased insanely today and he was with my parents who can’t carb count and he went to bed at 33.4, which is not good. And I’m tired and sick and so is my husband and so’s the baby.
I was not prepared to be so into butting heads almost from birth with my oldest. I had no idea what I was doing and I had no experience with babies and it was really hard. The second one is much easier (although I had to hold him all day yesterday while he threw up into a towel, and all day today because he Feels Sick and Wants Mommy. Fun).
A major contributing factor to the lad remaining an only child.
