What I've Learned Ten Years, and One Year, into Parenthood
Quail eggs, velvet couches, oxi-clean and not letting anyone else eat your placenta.
In typical parent fashion, it’s 9pm the night before I’m planning on publishing this. I’m a parent of two, a son who is ten in a few weeks, and a daughter who just turned one. I’m burning the candle at both ends, but it’s a candle I can’t not light, so I don’t mind doing this. I run my own business, a business I put to bed for years and then resurrected after thrashing about on the cutting floor of secondary infertility. I’ve been through four rounds of IVF, two home births, moved across country postpartum, and done just about everything you can do to get pregnant. I’ve been a mom in my twenties, and a mom approaching forty.
I realize I’ve learned a few things, mostly things about what a school boy likes in his lunch (definitely no hard boiled eggs, not even quail), how to keep the tide of toys at bay, and what it takes to keep a relationship alive and smoking after having a baby. I thought I’d share a few of these lessons here, mostly because it’s a handy way for me to document how I’ve changed and what small glimmers of wisdom I’ve accumulated over the course of these profound years, but also because I’m hopelessly nostalgic.
While it feels like just yesterday that I had my son, it also seems like a lifetime ago. A lot can happen in a decade, a year, a day. Like rings in a tree, I can feel certain things calcifying within me: beautiful things, hard-won things, well worn and potent, intricate things. So, here we go.
I’d love to hear from you! Do you resonate with this list? What have you learned on your parenting journey? Add your wisdom to the comments below!
(Almost) Everything I’ve Learned Ten Years Into Parenthood and One Year Into Postpartum:
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