A year-and-a-half ago if you asked me what I thought about children I would have told you something completely different. I would have told you some funny story about how I don’t want to do some kind of joke involving a baby. I would have told you that I didn’t want to do all of the things I thought were associated with having a child. What I was actually telling you was that I knew/know nothing about kids and that is why I should not be having them.
I was always good with kids when I was younger. I was probably about 13 years old and I was playing with my cousins who were between the ages of 5 and 8. My cousins and family adored me and we always had fun together.
My very first job was at a go-kart track. When two guys bumped and spun each other around, I would run out and turn them around. That was my job for eight years. I was surrounded by kids all day every day while at work. You would think that after a while I would have gotten used to being around children.
Before you read this next part I’m going to let you know right now that there’s going to be some stuff said. I’m going to say some things about kids and if you’re a big kids person I might upset you. Reader be warned.
You would think that working with kids for 8 years, you would get used to life with kids in it. For me, it was the complete opposite. Some of these little ungrateful bastards didn’t deserve to live, let alone be worthy enough to live in my world.
One time I saw a kid crying because he didn’t get to go on the go karts for the 8th time of the day. That kid’s dad looked like he had worked his entire life to save up the $48 to ride the go-karts 7 times in a row. And this little bag of shit complained and kicked his feet until he got to go for the 8th time.The dad walked into the office and asked for two more tickets. I handed the guy the tickets and he handed me his credit card. I told him that he was the lucky customer of the day and this ride was free. The guy shook my hand and said thank you.
Another time there was a young girl who did not want to ride the go-karts. Her daddy just wanted to have an experience with her. The father carried the little girl into the go-karts and put her gently into the passenger seat. The father buckled her in and told her everything was going to be okay. While the father was taking care of his daughter, his daughter was screaming her head off and saying how bad of a father she had for making her ride a go-kart.
Maybe I just don’t see eye-to-eye with children. Maybe the kids were never taught about graciousness. I didn’t ask so I don’t know. But in my eyes, I wanted nothing to do with kids.
That’s when I met Jill
When I first met Jill, I felt like she was absolutely the one for me. I still do by the way. It felt like we had been together our entire lives and previous lives and we’ll be together in our future lives. We clicked the instant we met and kids were not on the menu. The act to make the kids was defiantly on the menu, but not the finished product.
I did think about having kids and if Jill was really the one for me. I’m a literal person. Before I just give myself to somebody, I analyze everything.What take out place will we order from, is she a Pineapple Pizza kind of woman, will she tolerate Nascar, everything else here. One of those subjects is kids. I know I didn’t want kids but the possibility of having kids was real. So you have to take that into consideration. Yes, even with protection, you can still have kids.
Sidenote: Jill and I were both told kids would be super hard to have.
Fast forward to April 3rd, 2017. That’s the day we found out we are going to be parents. We looked at each other we kind of shook our heads. We both nodded yes. We were in agreeance that we were going to be parents and since that moment we have thought about nothing other than our child.
We learned about kids together and by the time our son was born we felt a tiny bit confident we could do this. HA! Yeah, right.
The first month
The first month of having newborn is the worst. You’re up every 2 to 3 hours taking care of a 7lb baby screaming its head off. You and your partner will argue and fight over who had the baby last and whose turn it actually is. You will probably have to hire an attorney to prove your case.
In the first month, you’re going to realize that everything you thought you learned, you didn’t. You retained none of the knowledge and you hope Google is open 24 hours a day. And with this whole thing with net neutrality you might have to pay to learn how to be a father instead of having free Google searches. Think about that for a minute. I’ll talk about this.
In the first month, you are going to change every diaper you thought about and more. You will come to a point in your life where you will just put a baby’s butt up to your nose to check to see if it had gone to the bathroom.
Brace yourself because here comes the truth. This is just the first month. It gets worse, but I’ll spare you the details. Just think about long nights with no sleep and trying to get you and your partner in the mood.
The second month
If you think the first month was bad, wait until the 2nd month. Our first-month suck because we were giving her child formula containing Dairy. We think he’s allergic to Dairy which makes that a problem. It took 3 weeks to realize he had a dairy allergy and it took 3 weeks for the dairy allergy to leave his system.
By this point, we were well into our second month and things were about to get a little harder. In the second month, you’re trying to do a better job than you did the month before. You’ve gotten a little better with diapers, you know where the trash can is, and you’re totally not afraid to grab a bottle and feed your child. #SuperParents.
You’re still not going to be comfortable leaving them alone for more than 10 seconds. In the second month, your sleep schedule has completely changed. You don’t know what day & time it is. All you know is you heard you’re screaming baby through the monitor and Mommy’s not going to get up.
It’s 4:45 in the morning. You have been up for about 10 minutes. Normally in the morning (9:00 am) you have breakfast and maybe choose an energy drink. But that’s what you did when you were single. Now that you’re a father you’re up at all times of the night and an energy drink is not going to save you.
An energy drink with a child is like bringing a banana to a gunfight. It just doesn’t make sense. You have no idea when your child is going to fall asleep. If you drink the energy drink, right now, and your child takes three sips of formula and falls back asleep you are now going to be awake for the next 5 hours.
The downside is if your child requires more than 6 oz of formula in order to fall asleep, and you don’t drink the energy drink, you’re going to have a hard time staying awake.
It’s in the second month that you realize you have no control over life anymore and you better just hold the hell on.
The third month
The third month for us is where I currently am in life, during the production of this post. We’ve had our son in our hands every day for 3 months. It kind of baffles me to think about it. It’s been 90 days and I’ve held my child two to three times a day. That’s a lot of holding and a lot of hours love.
By the third month, you and your partner have a routine. You’ve probably had a couple discussions together and have agreed you both need to pay attention and do a better job. Now both of you hear the baby monitor go off & you race to see who can get to the baby first. Not because your love for the baby has changed but because you know that it’s 9:30 pm. It’s time to feed the baby and you will get the skip the next feeding time at 3:45 am in the morning. You and your partner become more competitive because instead of agreeing on a schedule it’s now become first come first serve.
You’re completely an alliance and have made peace in your life. It’s the first time you’ve actually been on a schedule in a long time. You can pretend that you had to schedule and that you worked your hours between the day but the truth is that until you have a child, you don’t know what you don’t know. You can’t really make jokes about having kids. And that’s because you have to have kids in order to understand having kids. Before you have a child you think it’s just about changing smelly diapers and being gross. Now that you have a child you know you still don’t want a child for completely different reasons.
You have to reach a cruising altitude of 30000 ft before you can realize children are for you, but you wish you would have done things a little bit different.
But it’s okay you’ll get it right on the next child. Right?