“The path is made by walking”
Aug. 17th, 2024 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talonkarrdeWe prepared ourselves the best we could - given the resources we had, it was considerable amount. We read a bunch of books, looked at the data, and asked endless questions to friends. We pretty much memorized Emily Oster’s Crib Sheet, cherishing its meta-analysis of all the studies on what to do for babies; we took newborn care classes, got certified in infant CPR and first aid, watched the supplemental videos; and, of course, we lurked in all the new parent forums, scouring years of wisdom (and folly) of redditors.
And yet, when our baby was born and we brought him home… we somehow didn’t have any baby sized blankets to swaddle him in! Despite having a large baby registry, despite pouring over all the giudes what to have on-hand when you’re bringing a newborn home, despite all the checklists, the only thing that we had was a kind of scratchy blanket from the hospital, which was definitely better than nothing, but not nearly as comfortable as we wanted.
Our night doula, who has cared for more infants than I will ever see in my life, remarked that this was a first for her, and if we could, we would have melted into a puddle of embarrassment.
His first year was a year of discovery. Of course it was, all the parents are saying in your heads: raising children is unlike any other experience a human is likely to have. And while that’s true, the thing that struck me the most is that, despite thousands of years of having children, we still know comparatively so little about learning and development.
We’re a species that has travelled through space, harnessed the energy of a split atom to boil water, reached the depths of the ocean where the pressure would crush a naked human in an instant… and yet, when asked if an infant’s behavior is normal, a doctor’s answer is ‘oh yeah probably’. There are a lot of ranges - not just of height or weight, which are comparatively easy to quantify, but also of things like ‘sleep quality’ and ‘fussiness’, and ‘is your baby capable of making different cries for different needs’, which are much harder to objectively measure or judge.
And so despite procreation being something that we - and every living thing - has done for as long as we have existed, there are only general guidelines on what to expect. General paths to travel, and even those change: in the 80s and 90s, babies slept with blankets and stuffies and often with parents; now, the guidance is that they should sleep by themselves, on their back, in a (pretty cold) room with an adult in the room but not in the same bed. Who knows what the guidance for the next generation will be?
Nothing taught us more about being ‘first child parents’ than when we had our second one, though. I tell my friends that having two (about two-and-a-half years apart) is only one and a half times as hard, but three times as much work: everything that she does, we’re much more prepared for (and much less anxious when dealing with), and yet there is much less downtime, and we’re constantly bouncing between children. But everything feels familiar - diapers aren’t new, nor is fussiness, nor is waking up three or five or twelve times a night to gently put a pacifier back in a baby’s mouth.
But the thing that strikes me the most now is how alike and yet different they are. I shouldn’t be surprised - the twin studies that I’ve read all talk about the nature-vs-nurture influence, and anyone who has spent significant time around twins knows that they may be genetically identical but express themselves (sometimes quite) differently.
And so we’re on the road again, but even though it feels very similar, it’s not quite the same road it as it was two years ago. The milestones are the same for all parents, and yet, the ways that we get there are sometimes drastically and sometimes minutely different.
It’s enough that even with billions of people and millions of people that have backgrounds like us, even with thousands of families that raise their kids the same way, even with cousins or siblings or identical twins, at the end of the day, each path is unique.
And you know what? We’re less than three years in. I can’t imagine what it looks like when they’re nine and seven, or when they’re twenty-five and twenty-three, or beyond.
And I can’t wait.
Traveler, there is no road;
only a ship's wake on the sea
And yet, when our baby was born and we brought him home… we somehow didn’t have any baby sized blankets to swaddle him in! Despite having a large baby registry, despite pouring over all the giudes what to have on-hand when you’re bringing a newborn home, despite all the checklists, the only thing that we had was a kind of scratchy blanket from the hospital, which was definitely better than nothing, but not nearly as comfortable as we wanted.
Our night doula, who has cared for more infants than I will ever see in my life, remarked that this was a first for her, and if we could, we would have melted into a puddle of embarrassment.
His first year was a year of discovery. Of course it was, all the parents are saying in your heads: raising children is unlike any other experience a human is likely to have. And while that’s true, the thing that struck me the most is that, despite thousands of years of having children, we still know comparatively so little about learning and development.
We’re a species that has travelled through space, harnessed the energy of a split atom to boil water, reached the depths of the ocean where the pressure would crush a naked human in an instant… and yet, when asked if an infant’s behavior is normal, a doctor’s answer is ‘oh yeah probably’. There are a lot of ranges - not just of height or weight, which are comparatively easy to quantify, but also of things like ‘sleep quality’ and ‘fussiness’, and ‘is your baby capable of making different cries for different needs’, which are much harder to objectively measure or judge.
And so despite procreation being something that we - and every living thing - has done for as long as we have existed, there are only general guidelines on what to expect. General paths to travel, and even those change: in the 80s and 90s, babies slept with blankets and stuffies and often with parents; now, the guidance is that they should sleep by themselves, on their back, in a (pretty cold) room with an adult in the room but not in the same bed. Who knows what the guidance for the next generation will be?
Nothing taught us more about being ‘first child parents’ than when we had our second one, though. I tell my friends that having two (about two-and-a-half years apart) is only one and a half times as hard, but three times as much work: everything that she does, we’re much more prepared for (and much less anxious when dealing with), and yet there is much less downtime, and we’re constantly bouncing between children. But everything feels familiar - diapers aren’t new, nor is fussiness, nor is waking up three or five or twelve times a night to gently put a pacifier back in a baby’s mouth.
But the thing that strikes me the most now is how alike and yet different they are. I shouldn’t be surprised - the twin studies that I’ve read all talk about the nature-vs-nurture influence, and anyone who has spent significant time around twins knows that they may be genetically identical but express themselves (sometimes quite) differently.
And so we’re on the road again, but even though it feels very similar, it’s not quite the same road it as it was two years ago. The milestones are the same for all parents, and yet, the ways that we get there are sometimes drastically and sometimes minutely different.
It’s enough that even with billions of people and millions of people that have backgrounds like us, even with thousands of families that raise their kids the same way, even with cousins or siblings or identical twins, at the end of the day, each path is unique.
And you know what? We’re less than three years in. I can’t imagine what it looks like when they’re nine and seven, or when they’re twenty-five and twenty-three, or beyond.
And I can’t wait.
Traveler, there is no road;
only a ship's wake on the sea
