How Does Life Change Once You Have Kids?

Before I became pregnant with my daughter, I had a lot of questions.  One thing I wanted to get a handle on was how my life would change once I had a child.  Now, I find it funny.  There is no way I could have figured out how my life was going to be after having a kid.  I had no frame of reference.  

If you are thinking about having children yourself, but are afraid of how your life might change, the following is for you.  Here are some of the ways I found that my life changed, and you may find that these are true for you, too. 

1.  Your life will change completely, but not in the ways you might expect.
I can't tell you exactly HOW it will change, but you will have a small, helpless person to whom you will need to attend.  This is a real person, with real needs.  It seems obvious intellectually, but it is a whole different ballgame once you are actually there.  Being a parent is a completely different experience than not being a parent.  I enjoyed not having children, and I also enjoy having a child, and I don't think that one is better than the other.  They both have their strong pros and cons.

2.  For awhile, your life might be unrecognizable.  This is temporary.
Becoming a parent has a way of turning your old roles on their heads.  You will wake up in the middle of the night a lot.  You will probably be doing a lot of laundry and managing a lot of human body wastes.  You might wonder where the "old you" is.  The answer: the "old you" is still there, although changing and evolving.  Your new role as parent will be your top focus for awhile as you learn to integrate it into the other roles in your life.  However, as I discovered recently in taking my first overnight trip away from home since my daughter was born nearly 2 years ago, the other parts will still be there when you are ready and able to focus some attention back on them.

3.  You may become more deeply aware of your mortality.
Many people don't like to think much about their own death.  We all know it's coming sooner or later, but having a child brings your attention to the passing of time in a sharp way.  As you watch your child grow, and marvel over how quickly this happens, you become more acutely aware that time is passing for you, as well.

4.  "Your Life Is Over Once You Have Kids" does not have to be the truth.
I overheard someone say this the week before I gave birth, when I was hugely and obviously pregnant.  A group of attractive younger people were talking with one another over Margaritas and salsa a few tables over from us in the restaurant, and I can only assume I was the impetus for the conversation, given the dearth of pregnant women in the vicinity and the fact that the restaurant TVs were playing NFL games.  They were not quite right in their assertion, however.  Life as you once knew it is over.  It will often take you several hours to do what used to take you one hour (for example, writing a blog post).  Like I said above, your role as parent will take center stage, especially at the beginning, and almost to the exclusion of other things.  Part of being a parent, though, is finding a path that makes you available to your children and ensuring their needs are met while making sure that you maintain your own self-care.  You might not be able to spend hours meditating, or take off for a last minute trip to Europe for three weeks.  However, you will learn how to integrate these parts of your life-before-kids into your life-with-kids.

5.  Certain things bother you less.
It's almost as if something happens and you wind up with a secret decoder in your brain that is able to empathize with kids and parents everywhere.  You start to realize that that child yelling in the produce section is overtired.  Your dealings in the comings and goings of human waste become less loaded with squeamishness: it's still kind of gross to deal with loaded diapers, but it's balanced with a certain perspective, especially if you were the parent who gave birth and went through the labor process.

6.  Speaking of labor...
Yeah, it hurts.  The first few days after birth, you will likely feel like a zombie.  You will be in completely new territory.  This is not the time to try and keep a stiff upper lip and power through alone, nor is it a time to let yourself be pushed around.  Go into pregnancy with a good sense of your limits, but do not be surprised to find out that you change your mind about some things.  The entire process of labor and childbirth is a growth process and a transformational process in and of itself and can lead you to access a sense of self-trust you may not have had before.  Do not underestimate its power, and try not to judge yourself if childbirth doesn't go the way you expected it to, because it probably won't.

7.  You may find your life expanding, rather than contracting.
Related to the myth of your life ending is a common sense that you won't be able to do anything, have a life, or do any of the old, fun things you used to do.  While personal growth isn't a reason in and of itself to have children, the journey of becoming a parent will take your growth in directions you wouldn't have imagined before.  It will inform other areas of your life and shift your perspective.  I have found myself becoming more thoughtful in my words and actions, considering what I want for my child to learn from my example.  It has meant I have had to confront my own fears and weaknesses in order to be a role model for my daughter on how to live well.  You may find your emotional life takes on a whole new texture, as you share in your child's joy and delight in discovering the world.

Solitude and the New Mom

I wrote this post many moons ago about the reasons why solitude is such a great and useful thing.  All of these things are completely true, and are major reasons why I think solitude is so grand.  Of course, I was not yet a parent at that time, and looking back on it, I imagine that parents in the know may have wanted to laugh me off the face of the Earth.

"Solitude," I imagine some mother scoffing at me via her computer screen circa three years ago, hair greasy, wearing pajamas, and getting up for the third time in five minutes to deal with some child-related catastrophe before vacating the vicinity of her computer screen for six hours, finally coming back after the kids have gone to bed, sighing, and shutting down the computer while throwing a load of laundry into the washer.  

Now that I'm that mom, I get it.   I continue to need to adjust accordingly.


One of the most challenging things for me about solitude as a new mom is that my opportunities for it have dramatically decreased since the birth of my daughter, especially once I returned to work.  For some people, perhaps this lack of solitude would be a welcome relief.  For me and for others, the demands of being involved with others in a continuous way -- even those we deeply love and care for -- creates a practical challenge to a vital aspect of our self-care.  In my case, lack of solitude makes it difficult for me to approach the tasks of my everyday life with the clarity and connectedness that I'd like to have.  From there, it's only a matter of time before I wind up a sobbing mess on the kitchen floor, hair in a Medusa-esque pile on my head.  

I am one of those people who cannot care well for my kid, my home, my job, or my relationship with my spouse without a little time to myself to fill my own cup, as they say.  Otherwise, I have nothing to give.  At first, trying to find time to myself was a daunting task, but I've managed to find it in a few places I wouldn't have expected before having kids.

1.  The Workplace
Not every mother goes back to the workplace, nor had outside employment to begin with.  However, for some women who relish solitude, going back to work in whatever capacity -- if you have the means and comfort to do so -- provides you with opportunities to be by yourself.  Whether it's in the car, a few minutes with a cup of your favorite (work-appropriate) beverage, or the time between clients, a little downtime can be found.


2.  Night Owls
For those who can wing it (ha ha, get it?  Wings?  Owls?  What a hoot!), grabbing a bit of time after the kids go to sleep and before you go to sleep can help fill your own cup.  Of course, if you'd just prefer to go to bed early, I'm certainly not going to blame you.


3.  Early Birds
If you're this type, go ahead and get up before your kids if you like.  Again, if you want to stay in bed, I won't judge.


4.  The Car
For whatever reason, the car seems to work magic for my daughter, and for other small kids I know.  You aren't exactly all by yourself, but a drive can give you a chunk of quiet time and space.


So I realize I'm not the first mother to ever walk the face of the planet, and I'm certainly not the first to come up with the above ideas.  I have found, however, that you can do all of the above and not feel like you've really had any solitude.  There are a couple of things I've learned about that, too.

1.  Be Present!
I define presence as the quality of bringing your full attention to the task at hand and resting there.  I have found that being by myself doesn't quite cut it -- I also need to be aware of the fact that I am in solitude and to fully engage it.  I check the clock, maybe put on a timer or alarm, and let go of my to-do lists or other activities until the alarm sounds.  By doing this, I get more out of the moments I do have, which leads me to...

2.  It's Not the Time, It's How You Use It.
Even if you were accustomed to spending tremendous stretches of time in solitude pre-kids, as I was, the length of time you have available for solitude doesn't necessarily matter.  Bringing presence to your downtime makes any time you do have -- whether it's three minutes or three hours -- more restorative and filling.

3.  Solitude Is An Inside Job
One of the major lessons I've learned about solitude in the past four months is, by and large, solitude is an inside job.  You can actually build a place of solitude within, like a wellspring or a reservoir, that you can draw upon to sustain you when even those brief pauses are difficult to come by.  I imagine this ability is really helpful once you come to parenting toddlers, but I'll let you know if that's my experience when I get there.   

I love solitude!  I think it's great, and my consistent experience is that it helps me to stay calmer, more competent, and more sane than I would be without it.  I am so glad to discover that I have been able to maintain some solitude in my life post-childbirth, although it looks different than it did before.

 

Musical Memories #1: "Operator" by Jim Croce

Musical Memories!  We all have them: a song comes on the radio, or over your favorite web music channel, and it brings you right back to a certain time.  I share some of my own musical memories here in this special series.  Click on "Musical Memories" in the sidebar to read them as they're posted.

The room was dark, and I was exhausted.  Thankfully for the gift from medical science known as epidural anesthesia, my body had finally relaxed enough that I was able to progress through active labor to transition after being stalled for over 12 hours.

At some point in the early morning, the spouse had hooked up his iPad and asked what kind of music I wanted.  I don't remember how the music was picked out; I eventually found out that he had set up "Moody Blues Radio" on Pandora.  This indicates that my mother had something to do with the choice of music, the Moody Blues being far and away one of her favorite groups. 

I had had my epidural placed for about three hours and was at that point where I would have to start pushing.  At some point in this whole process, I had a brief, lucid moment and tuned into the sounds in the room.  I heard "Operator" playing and said to the spouse, "Hey, this is a good station."

"Yeah," agreed the others in the room.  "It really is."


The lyrics to "Operator" have nothing to do with childbirth, as far as I can tell.  They seem to be a song about the one that got away, a long-lost love.  It's the last song I remember hearing before my daughter was born and, when it came on over the oldies station today, it brought me back to that moment just months ago when she was about to come into the world.  For that reason, it has landed a spot among my musical memories that I'm sure will last until the end of my life.
   

Born to be Wild!

My stepfather had been outside for what seemed like hours while I had been inside, dragging my camping stuff out of the closet and packing for the weekend. My younger sister and brother and I lugged our stuff downstairs to the kitchen, overtaken by mom, chaos in the form of coolers, and the classic rock station playing some song by Bad Company, which my sister switched to the R&B station on the way out, my brother switched to the Country station on the way in, and I switched to the Indie station as soon as he went the other way.

At some point, we began to drag our gear out to my stepfather's pickup truck, and I was startled at what I saw. He had taken the back seat out of the Dodge Caravan and was hard at work binding it to the back of the cab. He was using rope, bungee cords, and there may have even been some chains and padlocks involved.

"What are you doing?" One of us asked him.

"Well, you guys need a place to sit," he said, "and it's against the law to ride without seatbelts, but we've gotta take the truck to go four-wheelin'," he said. "So you're gonna sit back here."

The three of us looked at each other, and I thought I could see the same excitement in their eyes that I felt. Little brother, being only 8 or 9 at the time, actually expressed the excitement, while little sister and I, both well into our teens, exhibited mainly detached mild disinterest.

An hour later, we were strapped into the back of a Dodge Ranger without the cap, the little brother squeezed in between me and the little sister. We were doing at least 70 up I-91 into Vermont, so the fuel economy must have been lousy. The three of us were screaming along to 'Born to Be Wild' as we watched the cars approach in front of us, move into the next lane, and pass us by. I'm not sure why we chose that song. I don't remember if it was playing on the radio and we could hear it through the opened rear window. I don't know if it was the last song we had heard in between the time when mom had said, 'leave the radio alone!' and switched it back to the Classic rock station and when we left the house. My hair was whipping in my face and I was wishing that I had thought to stick an elastic in my pocket before we had left. The smell of late spring was in the air as we screamed at the tops of our lungs. For a little while, it was the three of us just having a good time together.

Years later, I'm driving through central New England along a state highway, on my way home from work, and enjoying the beauty of fall. My fingers happen to land on the radio dial and I hear a familiar song. 'Born to be Wild,' plays on the radio in all of its Steppenwolf-ish glory. I smile, roll down the windows, and scream along for a little while. Now that my sister is a mother to six, my brother is reveling in the ups and downs of young adult life, and I spend much of my time driving all over creation, our times together are infrequent. There is no screaming in the back of a wannabe pick up truck. The three of us would never be able to fit together in that Dodge Caravan seat now. But it's still nice to be able to shift back to that time, a time when all that any of us really needed to do was sit and scream at the tops of our lungs.