Hello, everyone. I have finally burst forth from the abyss.1 Allow me to once again beg your forgiveness for taking so long between posts. I am truly and deeply sorry and you are totally right to be suuuuper mad about the length of time between my last post and this one...
Ha! Take a look at the post date of my last post! 7 months ago! Which, not coincidentally, is just a little longer than my daughter's age! I bet you just feel terrible about making me grovel now, don't you?! Mwahaha my evil plan worked!2
So today, dear reader,3 you and I are going to take an eye-opening foray into the crazy, intimidating, scary, and somehow still exciting transition from not-parenthood to parenthood. As I am just 7 months removed from this transition, I'm pretty much an expert on the subject,4 and I will now bestow my knowledge upon you like a wise sage...uh...bestows...his knowledge on people.2
When you are expecting your first child, literally every single person you encounter has advice for you.6 Literally everyone. Even the 17-year-old cashier at Macy's had some "wisdom" he wished to bestow on us because, you know, he clearly knew everything about raising children. The good news, or so you think as a yet-to-be parent, is that those who do have children are also giving you advice. Their advice is what you listen to. You dwell on it. You log it away in that special "nuggets of wisdom" place in your brain. Sometimes, if you feel that a piece of advice is particularly wise, you even go crazy and write it down. Then, the day arrives. Your little one joins you. And it takes about 13 seconds for you to realize that every single thing anyone told you during the pregnancy was completely useless and not even slightly practical. Yup. Sorry to burst your bubble, almost-parents, but better that it's burst now than when a tiny human is screaming in your ear and you haven't slept in 3 or 7 days (you can't remember) and you're pretty sure you don't have clothes to wear tomorrow and you're hungry even though you're 20% positive you just ate (or was that yesterday?) and you're not entirely certain where your spouse is and...wait, did you just black out? Where's the baby? Where's the baby?! Oh. You're still holding her and she's still screaming; everything's cool.
As I've thought about it, I've realized that the useless advice that you hear when you're expecting your first child really does serve a purpose, albeit an unexpected one. Instead of helping you prepare for what's to come,8 it instead helps9 you in your journey to parenthood.
First and foremost, get ready for people to tell you that you aren't going to sleep. Seriously, you need to mentally prepare yourself for this crap. Every. Single. Person. Is going to tell you this, sometimes multiple times in the same conversation. You'll start a conversation about the pregnancy, they will tell you that are you about to experience some serious sleep deprivation, you will chuckle out of politeness because that joke has already stopped being funny just 2 weeks in, the conversation will diverge to another topic. Then this will happen:
You: "Great movie, though, I totally recommend it."
Them: "Cool I'll go watch it...person who will never sleep again! Ha! You see what I did? I brought attention back to the fact that you're about to have difficulty sleeping! It's funny because you're going to have a tiny screaming human who doesn't understand sleep yet! Classic!"
So yea, that's going to be a thing. Try to have fun with it.10 Aside from this "you're never going to sleep" tidbit, some people will also give you other advice to help you in your journey to being responsible for a young life.
Some of this advice, for instance, will be encouraging. When we were expecting Audrey, my boss would tell me on a weekly basis how awesome being a daddy was and how amazing it was coming home and getting stampeded by his two girls as they screamed "Daaaaadddddyyyyy!"11 Some of it is a little ambiguous and slightly frightening. Many many people told me something along the lines of "Your life will forever be changed once you have that kid; there's no going back.", which sounds like it's either some weird kind of encouragement or...a veiled threat. And then, there are the people who throw any and all caution to the wind, who skip the "slightly frightening" advice, and who jump straight into the purely terrifying.
There was one guy at work who had a ~6-month-old when Stephanie and I found out she was pregnant.13 This child of his was not sleeping,14 which of course meant that he was not sleeping. Our first conversation on the topic of having a first child went like this:
Him: "Hey, I heard your wife is expecting."
Me: "Yea, we're excited! I'm nervous, obviously, but I can't wait to..."
Him (donning an intensely serious and slightly horrified look): "Nothing can prepare you for how little sleep you're about to get."
Me (frightened, taken aback): "...I....uh...ha...ha...?"
At this point, he continued to stare at me as I slowly backed out of the kitchen. As I was about to leave his line of site, he called out after me with a zombie-like "Good luck." Yea, that wasn't horrifying at all. To make matters worse, from that day forward, every single time he saw me - even if we were just walking by each other - he would give me that same stare for several silent seconds before asking "You ready?" Um. No? Please kill me now? You know what, I'm just gonna go back to my desk, don't worry about it. Please...please don't actually kill me.
At this point, you're probably wondering why I'm telling you all this. Until I spoke up, you were blissfully unaware, thinking that all of the advice you've been getting is stuff that is going to help you once your child joins you. But now that you know that your comfortable world is a pile of lies built to protect you from the harsh reality that is about to knock it, and the rest of your life, to pieces, allow me to reassure you.15 I, The Great Chris Sellek,16 am about to give you the advice you've been looking for. Over the next blog post or few, I will advise you. My advice will be practical. It will tell you some of what you can expect from having a new child and it won't even have to do with sleep deprivation. And it will explain the reasoning behind some of the advice you've been getting that doesn't quite make sense to someone who has never had their life forever ruin...uh...changed17 by an infant. So join me as you prepare to welcome this little half-you/half-your-significant-other into the world and I will help you be 100% ready for anything and everything that that little baby is getting ready to throw at you.18
1 I have no idea what this means.
2 I...uh...I don't sleep anymore.
3 I hate this phrase. None of you are dear to me, it was a lie.
4 Pretty sure that's how being an expert works.
5 This is a disembodied footnote. Seriously, nothing leads here. Hey, have you guys ever wondered why your third gimp arm is even there? No? Oh. Uh. Yea, neither have I.
6 No one cares about you if you've already had another kid. Sorry.7
7 I am not.
8 Which is what things called advice generally do...
9 Or hinders...
10 Or at least try not to stab anyone.
11 This sounds like the best thing ever and Audrey needs to hurry up and start doing this, already.12
12 She is 7 months old.
13 I almost typed "found out we were pregnant", since that is a phrase people use for some stupid reason. We most certainly were not pregnant, thank God. If there was even a chance that I'd have to go through pregnancy, I would have chosen to remain celibate at around Audrey's age.12
14 Hilarious!
15 Is....is it working?
16 You all have to call me that now.
17 It's a joke, people.
18 Chris is not legally responsible for the things your infant can and absolutely will do that he does not prepare you for.
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