One day your kids will grow up

I don’t know if anyone has explained to you how growing works but one day your baby is going to be an adult. I found this out from a shared poem on Facebook. I’m really glad I discovered it because this whole time that my kids have been growing I’ve been like WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? I thought babies stayed babies forever.

So ever since reading this life-changing poem, I’ve been busy as fuck CHERISHING EVERY MOMENT. And boy am I tired. But not so tired that I couldn’t ignore my child to write this blog post (I cherished the moment of ignoring him while I ignored him).

Here I present my own sharable FB wisdom about children and parenting:

A poem about how kids will grow up or something more profound than that but I can’t think of a better title

One day your child will stop waking up every 45 minutes and you will actually sleep – real sleep.

One day you will clean a poo out of the shower for the last time.

One day you will be able to read a book that was written for adult people.

One day, for the last time, you will be woken by a toddler saying “my tummy…” and then they will vomit all over you and the entire family will have to shower at 4am – FOR THE LAST TIME.

One day, you will actually only have one load of washing to do.

One day you will go out with your girlfriends and dance till 4am and get drunk on house wine and have the best time ever and not think about your kids once.

One day your child will do an explosive poo in public that covers them from head to toe and leaks on to your arm and your new pants and you will realise you forgot wipes – for the last time.

You won’t realise it at the time but one day when your child refuses to just put on their bloody shoes it will be the last time you will be an hour and forty five minutes late to something that was really important.

One day you will step on lego for the last time.

One day, while laying in bed next to your child who won’t sleep and thinking about the bills you are struggling to pay on one income, you’ll not realise it’s the last time you do this.

One day, you will hear the Fireman Sam theme tune for the last time. It won’t even register.

One day your breasts will bleed and searing pain will rip through your body for the last time.

When your baby is screaming from the pain of teething and you’re sobbing in the dark because you don’t know how to help them and you feel like the worst mother in the world – it will be the last time.

And you didn’t even realise.

One day you will carry a kicking and screaming toddler through a mall while people give you disapproving stares for the last time.

One day you will change the sheets on a bunk bed at 2am for the last time.

One day, and you won’t realise it’s the last time, your baby will smear yoghurt all over himself and his highchair and then throw it on the floor.

One day you will watch Frozen – for the last time.

You won’t know it’s the last time at the time. And one day you’ll look back on those moments and think – I wish I could look at a pair of poo covered undies and try to work out if I should soak them or just throw them out. I wish I could have just one more cold coffee and a panadol as I try to fight off the most severe sleep deprivation I’ve ever experienced in my life. I wish just once more I could just once more hoover down a meal while standing and then spend an evening in a room under a screaming baby. I wish I could hear Justine Clarke sing Watermelon while my children scream at each other. Just. One. More. Time.

Cherish every moment. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Every second. Every millisecond. Because one day they will grow up and you’ll be sharing nostalgic and delusional poems about this time on whatever terrifying new platform Mark Zuckerberg has created.

Really though, before I get those looks and comments…These types of posts make me fairly unpopular in the positive parenting/gentle parenting/attachment crowd – BUT, this is how I can be a positive parent and a gentle parent and follow the attachment practices that work for my family.

Reality makes me a good parent.

Guilt-tripping and anxiety over whether I’m happy enough or grateful enough for what I have – that doesn’t make me a good parent. Endless comments about how this is just a stage and one day you’ll regret not loving every bloody second of it and bla bla bla – these comments aren’t helpful to parents. I doubt any parent has said – “Oh my gosh, you’re right! They DO grow up! I feel so much better about the fact that my child has severe reflux and screams in agony while I try to work out what medication is actually going to work”.  I’ve even had people say cherish every moment to me while my child was in hospital unable to breathe on his own – time flies! Before you know it they’ll be adults. Or they won’t – you know, that’s why we are sitting by his bed trying to hold everything together.

Cherish every moment. Time flies. Before you know it you’ll be alone and grey and have nothing to live for – I mean, please just STOP. Let people be in whatever moment of parenting they’re in and let them allow some of those moments to woosh past them and be forgotten forever because those moments SUCKED. This beautiful chaos, this awful mess of wonderous life – let us just be here. Let us choose. Don’t suggest to us that it’s all downhill from baby-hood. Allow some complexity in what it’s really like to grow our babies. Every stage can be tough at times, no stage is bliss.

If we are so immensely lucky in a world where we are so very fragile: they will grow up.

That’s the gift. That’s what you cherish.

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