New Baby Flashbacks

Thanks to this job, I meet -- I guess I should say "meet," since it's mostly online friendships -- some really wonderful people. One of them is a guy so smart, my emails always take three times longer than usual to write because he has a better grasp of the written language than I do and I'm afraid of looking like a grammar goon when I'm the one who supposedly knows about this whole editing thing.

So we're talking deadlines. He needs one to help him stay on track, and oh, by the way, since our last email (a few weeks ago, I think), he's become the father of a newborn.

Well, gee, THAT'S not important or anything.

So of course I'm falling all over myself congratulating him on this amazing event. And inside I'm thinking, "Am I the biggest loser in the world, or what?"

Because when I had a new baby, that was all I was doing. It was my first child, we didn't have any household help, we used cloth diapers and the building's community washer/dryer was downstairs and outside (and this was January), I was doing a lot of bleeding, and HOLY CATS THERE'S A BABY IN THE HOUSE. That last bit was, frankly, more than enough. That was all that would fit on every day's to-do list, and even then it kept spilling over the edges.

Now, granted, since my new friend is male, he didn't just have a baby (unless I'm way behind in the science news department). He now has a baby -- little different. But still. He's writing an article and politely requesting a deadline and mentioning ever so casually that he has a new relative he and his wife made from stuff they found around the house.

Maybe he's Amish. Yeah. He's an Amish academic. He hops out of bed at four in the morning, builds a barn, writes an article for homeschoolers about taking the SAT, nods approvingly at the family's new arrival, and sits down to a lunch made up of ingredients he grew or raised. He's probably already taught the baby how to grind wheat.

Okay, probably not. Probably he's just normal, and I'm a total wuss.

So he writes back thanking me for the deadline. Oh, and by the way, parenting is way harder than he and his wife had ever thought it could be. Did I have any recommendations on reading material for surviving the baby's first year?

It was one in the morning when I got that message, but I was so happy to hear that I wasn't a loser after all that I typed out the following.
 
Okay, it's late and I'll have to ask around for articles, books, and other sources of wisdom. From my own experience:

1. I didn't give birth until I was 28. Before that, I was a nanny, program aide for multiply-disabled children, classroom aide, and helper in a preschool, not to mention taking primary care of my two youngest siblings for years. And I was completely unprepared for how utterly unprepared for parenthood all that alleged experience left me feeling. There is nothing like the real thing.  
2. Parenting is 80 times harder than you ever expect it to be. It's completely insane that someone so small whose needs are more straightforward and basic than they'll ever be again can demand more time and energy than you can possess. Some insane things turn out to be true. If you feel at times as if you're in the middle of a story by H.P. Lovecraft (or a John Carpenter movie, take your choice), now you know why.
3. Don't believe the people who tell you that parenting gets easier over time. It does not, especially if you're going to homeschool. However, this is the most intense that it will ever be. This sense of frequently-panicked life-or-deathness will ease up. You will still parent-panic at times no matter how many years go by. But you'll do it less often, and you'll learn how to ride it out.
4. You have succeeded in passing your genes along (I'm assuming this is a birth child — forgive my phraseology if it isn't). There's a reason that Darwin marveled at how comparatively few creatures manage that. Just plain parenting is the toughest gig there is, and now that we've evolved into sentient beings, we'd also like to hang onto our sanity and happiness while we're at it. What we're asking for isn't impossible, but it is unprecedented.
5. That last bit may sound discouraging. It shouldn't be. As new parents, many of us suffer from a tremendous sense of guilt and inadequacy because we figure that if we're having this hard a time, we must be really bad at this. That's not the case.
6. Okay, here's a great passage from a great book that you should try to get your hands on — Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent (by Meredith Small). Not the most prepossessing title in the world, but this friendly, scholarly, sympathetic book is one I wish I'd read earlier in my own parenting career.
7. "Parenting is a veritable circus of interacting egos and needs, biological constraints and evolutionary expectations. As in all things in life, parenting too is a series of trade-offs; there is no perfect way, only a series of options, a bundle of possible pathways, that pilot adults through the hazardous job of bringing up babies. And it is indeed so much trouble that one may wonder why people have children at all. But as Jim McKenna once glibly pointed out to me when I commented on the excessive investment infants require, 'Evolution never promised us a rose garden.' Our nature is to pass on our genes and so we must pay the price that infants extract. Parenting is, in fact, supposed to be a lot of work and a major drain on the adult organism because that's the way the human animal is designed. If we, as parents, accept this fundamental truth — that having a baby and bringing it into adulthood is a major constraint on life, on resources, on our physical and emotional selves, and a big job not for the squeamish — we are then essentially in line with and accepting of our evolutionary heritage."
   

No easy answers, but there is something reassuring in knowing that this job really is that hard. It is. You're not failing at it, and parenting is not trying to kill you. It's just the most amazingly difficult work there is — especially if you care about getting it right and staying sane and happy. Too many people sacrifice half that equation.

And now a few practical tips, to balance out all that philosophy:
 

1. Don't just accept help from everyone who's even half willing to give it. Demand it. You'll know you've got the hang of this when the UPS guy drops a package off and ends up staying to do the breakfast dishes.
2. Pay no visits. Make everyone come to you. Tell your wife to wear a bathrobe when they do, even if she has clothes on under it. This will inform friends and family that things are nowhere near "back to normal." Why should they be? There's a whole new person in existence. He has no grasp of the language, no sense of propriety, and all his "wants" are needs. This is an emergency, and the sooner everyone knows it, the better.
3. This is no time for subtle hints. Inform all and sundry that the price of seeing the new baby is hot food.
4. This one isn't good news, but it has to be said. (They kick me out of the mothering guild if I don't include it somewhere in this list.) If your wife is the primary caretaking parent (and if you're writing articles, I'm assuming she is), she outranks you. You're in this together, but her sanity and energy are more at risk of being completely depleted by the demands of this enchantingly beautiful but bizarre new creature (and that goes TRIPLE if she's breastfeeding). Everything she does is right, everything she needs is top priority. If you feel yourself about to start a sentence with the words “Shouldn't you --” or “Don't you think he --”, stuff a sock in it until the urge passes.
5. As the newest set of parents in your social and family circle, you and your wife currently outrank everyone else. Take full and shameless advantage of this. Everything your friends and family can do is the least they can do right now. (Be sure to pass this forward when the time comes, or there will be serious karmic consequences.)
6. Go ahead and give in to that urge to take pictures of your baby every 17 seconds, because for the next year or so at least, that's how fast he'll be changing.
   

 
I kind of held my breath after I'd send that. But he liked it, and said I ought to send it to any other new parents I stumble across. I figured posting it here would be the easiest way to do that.

I wish I knew what having a second or third new baby was like. Anyone want to fill me in?