Smooth Journey to Parenthood?

I’ve been thinking about my kids a lot lately. I have three of them ranging in age from twelve to four, so thinking about them frequently is not something unusual. When they aren’t in school they take up a lot of time and space in our house and often fill its rooms with noise of one sort or another. Now don’t misunderstand that statement; this isn’t a bad thing. I complain about them often and the job of parenting is difficult and frequently less than desirable, but these three humans have changed my life in ways I could have never imagined. I truly cannot fathom what my life would be without them. There are times where the love I have for each one of them takes my breath away.

That’s not really why I’ve been thinking about each of them so much lately. The “why” behind these thoughts is really driven by something wider than myself and the family my spouse and I have created. I have a very close friend who is currently trying to start a family of her own. Her journey has been long, winding and often difficult. Her story is not mine to tell, but has touched a piece of my consciousness in a very profound way. Throughout her journey, I have often found myself reflecting on how much we as a society take children and everything that goes with them for granted. How flippant we are with children. Decisions around having them or not, the process of creating them, raising them, guiding them, their place in our world, their value, their words, their thoughts, how we treat them over all. I myself have been guilty often of flippancy around the topic of my children. In many ways, this is a necessity. A human being and everything that goes into life in general is complicated. Bringing a new human to adulthood is even more complicated and often difficult. This flippancy, or taking for granted feels like a necessary part of the process. Although I often try to live my life in a consciously aware way, appreciating and finding joy in the little miracles of each day, doing this on a continuous basis often seems like an impossible goal to achieve. I am human after all and sometimes, frankly, life sucks. Some, I’m sure, would disagree with me, stating there is beauty and comfort in the mundane. Being consciously aware of each and every action we take is something which is achievable and even desirable, we just need to practice more. There is a part of me which wants to agree with these statements but on some level I know that for most of us, myself included, this deep level of awareness is something we will only achieve at sporadic moments throughout our life. This here feels like one of those moments.

Each of my children was brought into this world wanted and, to some level, planned for (can one really plan for a child?). At each juncture of our parenting journey, my spouse and I discussed to some level whether or not we wanted to have this future child. In all three instances this discussion happened at some point prior to conception. Honestly, we had a vague desire to have children but had we been pushed to define that desire I think each of us would have had some degree of difficulty putting into words what was behind it. For myself, this desire was most likely fueled by a biological drive to reproduce (although I would have been hard pressed to admit that at the time) as well as the desire to have a family where our love for each other could be expanded in some way. I suspect somewhere along that process of decision making there was a desire to have my values and life view passed on to the next generation as well. To be frank, none of this was part of our discussions though. Mostly those went something along these lines, “I think I want a baby. Let’s try to have a baby.” “Are you sure? Do you think this is the right time?” “There’s never going to be a right time.” At that point, “trying” usually commenced.

We were extremely lucky. All three of our children were conceived quickly and with no problems. Each pregnancy went as expected, my labors and deliveries were hard (all birth is) but uneventful and our babies were all healthy. This could have easily not been the case. The majority of my friends and family have had some difficulty along the path to parenthood. Whether this was difficulty in conceiving, miscarriages, stillbirths or abnormalities of one sort or another, few of my friends and family have gotten to the point of parenthood unscathed. Rather than being the norm, as it is so often portrayed in society, my story actually feels like an anomaly. The story which is told at large is one of ease, success and a clear path to the finish line of becoming a parent. Make a decision to have a child (Is it truly even a decision in this story line?), have sex, conceive, sail through pregnancy with only minimal issues (A queasy stomach maybe the first few months?), breeze through labor and delivery (Walk in the park, right?) and tada! You are now a parent to a happy, bouncing baby! This is the story we are continuously fed in our current society. It is a story about what is considered “normal” when it comes to conception, pregnancy and birth, which is frankly, primarily fiction. Even my own anomaly of a story doesn’t fit this standard and certainly the majority of stories within my communities don’t fit this “norm.” It makes me wonder when this fantasy became what everyone thinks of as “normal” and how we lost the core knowledge that creating life is not that simple and when it happens, it truly is miraculous. The more stories I have heard, the more I have realized what a miracle my own story really is, how blessed my husband and I have truly been. These stories have made me aware once again that like so many things in life, my story is not the only one out there. My reality is not everyone’s reality. A thought which has made me more conscious of what I say where and to whom. Most importantly, though, these stories have made me stop and think before I’m flippant about what I have in my life, whether that be a complaint about my children or the words I choose to use with them. I’m not perfect and slip up frequently; old habits are often hard to break. I do try to remember that my journey to how I got here is not how everyone got here and many more are still trying to make it along that often treacherous path.