I had all sorts of grand ideas on what would happen (and wouldn't happen) when I became a Mother. I would have a natural birth. I would go for stroller walks everyday to get fresh air and exercise. I would keep plastic crap to a minimum. My kids wouldn't eat in the car or eat McDonalds at all. I would speak patiently and calmly to my disobedient children. My house would be clean and I would not have toys thrown around like it was some sort of booby trap. I would never make more than one meal and the whole family would eat it (and I would never finish the food on their plate). My kids would blissfully fall asleep in corners so that my husband and I could retain our social life. The list goes on and on. I wasn't saying it to be judgmental of other Mothers, I just knew the kind of Mother that I was going to be (you can feel free to roll your eyes back and laugh. My Dear Aunt would whenever I would tell her these things).
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| he doesn't deal well with change |
And after a crazy bed-rest pregnancy, scary labor, and then emergency c-section, my son was born. He was the feistiest baby ever met. Even my Grandmother (his GG), who had 4 of her own children, 15 grandchildren, and worked in the nursery at church, said she had never met a baby (before or since) she couldn't console, until my son. At the hospital, my best friend could tell what room they moved me to because we had the loudest baby in the whole place. I couldn't claim colic, he was just bad tempered. I literally wept when they told me that I had to go home from the hospital after 4 days. He single-handedly taught me about the kind of mother I would be, and he did it in record time. Now, with 11 years of hind-sight, here is the advice I would have given myself from the beginning, they are not in order of importance:
