Pre-Kid Me vs 3-Kid Me

Once upon a time I was not a mother. I was a young, newly-married kindergarten teacher who couldn’t wait to have babies. I had OPINIONS and OPTIMISM and an awful lot of confidence in my future parenting abilities.

Pre-Kid us painting my new classroom walls.

And then I had a baby. And then I had another baby, and another baby. And those babies taught me that I don’t get to call all the shots, or make all the decisions. They taught me (quickly!) that they weren’t blank slates…they were people, with their own distinct personalities and preferences and needs, and those personalities and preferences blossomed at a remarkably young age. Since that first child came into my life, I have been forced to revise many of my ideas about myself as a parent, while others have stayed remarkably fixed.

On Research:

Pre-Kid: I researched things in college! I wrote papers and CITED THINGS. And before my own kids, when writing my lesson plans, I totally researched things. Other than that, I usually defaulted to calling one of my parents for information I didn’t possess.

3-Kid: I am a professional googler of all things related to parenthood and education. I will gleefully while away hours at a time doing a deep dive into every bit of information I can find about Baby Led Weaning, Typical Speech of An 18-month-old, or Best Types of Swim Classes for Preschoolers. I am constantly searching for things online. There is no errant thought left unpursued. If I don’t immediately know the answer, I’m off to research. I am picky about my sources, but like to read it all anyway to see what other people are seeing. I am a firm believer that there is no such thing as too much information (except when it is flat-out wrong!). I don’t enjoy guesswork in my parenting or teaching. I want to know the best way, and why it’s the best way.

To be honest, this research bit had to come first because it has informed a HUGE part of who my husband and I are as parents, and it is a huge influence on why some of these other parts of our parenting lives have changed…and also why some of our viewpoints haven’t changed at all.

I still call my mom every day of my life, though. That part hasn’t changed. Sometimes now though, she asks ME things. It’s wild.

On Birth:

Pre-Kid: I want it to be as natural as possible! It’s best for baby AND me! There will obviously be so many things I can do during pregnancy to control the outcome of my birth experience. I do NOT want a C-section unless it is absolutely necessary, and I’d want to completely trust the doctor who tells me it’s necessary.

3-Kid: Baby #1…a C-section. Ha. We discovered at 36 ½ weeks that our perfect baby girl didn’t have enough fluid around her and she was still breech. (I’d been standing on my head for WEEKS trying to get her to turn. Literally!) 

My baby niece helped with every baby-flipping attempt.

The doctor said she needed to come out basically ASAP. I told him we couldn’t do that because my mom was still in Pennsylvania (and we were in Georgia)...which was obviously relevant to the medical necessity of the situation. As referenced by Pre-kid me, I didn’t trust this doctor. He was the specialist that I barely knew. He was smart enough to read the room. He left and called my regular OB, who called me and said that this needed to happen, but we could wait until the next day if I stayed on the monitor all night. He even came in on his day off to do my C-section.

Long story short, my mom drove through the night and arrived while I was in recovery. I never even labored at all, and I was devastated by that birth experience. We were both healthy, which everyone kept saying was all that mattered…but I disagreed. Fortunately, my more capable sister (who had her own traumatic 7-wk NICU experience) was present to tell those people off in articulate and CERTAIN terms, because I was an emotional wreck. I’ll never, ever forget my big sister loudly lecturing an anesthesiologist who was unfortunate enough to utter the statement, “All that matters is a healthy baby.” It was the stuff of hero worship.

I still disagree with that statement. Birth experience DOES matter. Health matters more, but birth experience matters enormously to the mental health of the mother, and, by extension, to her baby, her partner, and others close to them. I also disagree with dismissing a Cesarean section as, “Well, you’re healthy. Count your blessings.” That is MAJOR surgery and requires significant recovery time. It should be treated as such, but it’s not. Women are expected to be thrilled with a baby to care for, to be relieved that our, “health” is intact (Seriously? They CUT me OPEN), and to be ready to go home and tackle new motherhood.

So when we were pregnant again, I fell into my usual habits and began to research everything about VBACs (Vaginal Birth After Cesarean). Either the chiropractic care and yoga ball worked, or Mr. Middle was always going to be an easy, head-down, go-into-labor-on-my-own, 39-week delivery. The world will never know. Either way, it was a massively healing experience.

This is where my mind was after that VBAC!

And then there was Baby B. I went into it thinking, “I’ve done this both ways - I’ve got this! We know what to expect!” Again, I say, HA.

We did not, in fact, know what to expect. I developed high blood pressure midway through the third trimester (which I had never had before in my life, pregnant or not), and he had to be induced just after 37 weeks. Induction was totally new for us. My goal for that one was not to have an epidural (not out of any desire to appear strong or being averse to the medication, just because the epidural with Mr. Middle was a horrible experience, and I still have back pain from it). In the end, the induction was miserable, but once it got going, Baby B came FLYING out, and I got my unmedicated wish with an awesome midwife as the icing on the cake.

So I am here to tell you, as the birthing parent of three kids…don’t even bother planning it. Don’t even try. Be prepared. Do all the research so that you and your partner can advocate for you throughout the process (and be ready to advocate because you WILL be challenged by medical professionals)…but there is literally no point in planning. Three wildly different experiences later showed me that a healthy baby and mama really do matter, but I was right in my conviction that the birth experience also matters.

On Family Planning:

Pre-Kid: I’d like to have 2 kids. Maybe 3. I don’t want them more than 2.5-3 years apart because I really want them to play together and grow up together. But not too close either, because that doesn’t seem fair to them and I don’t want to shortchange my babies. Also, it sounds really hard to have them very close together. (Background: my sister and I are 30 months apart and have been super-good playmates and friends most of our lives. We won’t talk about those middle-school years.)

I don’t recall thinking much about miscarriages, or infertility…why would those things happen to me?

3-Kid: Whew. A lot to unpack with this one. I can honestly say that I have more friends who have struggled with infertility or miscarriage than friends who haven’t. Now, I look at a classroom of kids and stare in wonder at the incredible series of miracles that occurred for each and everyone of them to be there, perfectly healthy, beautiful, living children. Our first pregnancy happened very, very easily. We decided to try for a baby and BAM. We were pregnant that very first month. Nothing went wrong. She was born a tad early (see above) but perfectly healthy. Escaped NICU time, though it was a close call. Took her home, and never looked back.

When she turned two, we decided to casually start trying for a sibling. We didn’t want to try TOO hard, because she happened super easily, right? Six months later we decided we’d better start trying a little harder and timing things and paying more attention. Six months after that we were talking to the doctor. After two years of what was termed Unexplained Secondary Infertility, we were finally pregnant again naturally…and then lost it, very early on.

Our, “Two kids, maybe three,” had turned into “Please, please, please don’t let her be an only child.” The very next month, I was pregnant a third time with the blessing that turned out to be our precious Middle Man.

Six weeks pregnant with Mr. Middle and TERRIFIED of another loss.

Thirteen months later, I was feeling the baby fever. Don’t ask me why - Mr. Middle was basically still a baby. I just didn’t feel finished. So we decided, “Not to try and not to not try.” I vividly remember us saying, “We’ll just see what happens. It did take SO long for Middle Man, and we aren’t getting any younger.” As it turned out, I was already pregnant when we had that conversation. So we ended up with Baby B 21 months after Middle Man was born.

With the exception of Big Girl being so easy to create, and us ending up with three kids, nothing else went according to plan. We never intended such a big gap between the first two, or such a small gap between the second two. We never anticipated a loss - does anyone ever really think that will happen to them before it happens?

Now that we are on the other side of pregnancy days (which is sort of surreal and very bittersweet), I am left with a profound sense of gratitude that we were gifted with three entire LIVES. Three healthy kids. I will never, ever even come close to taking that for granted. I have watched too many family members and friends suffer through infertility and pregnancy or infant loss. I could never have imagined it before living this season of life with all of my parent friends. I just never imagined that such grief is SO prevalent. I have such a greater appreciation for all the things that had to go biologically right in order for any of us to carry on the human race.

Even on the hardest days of parenting, I wonder how we ever got so lucky.

On Bathtime:

Pre-Kid: You bathe little kids every night, right? Isn’t that part of a healthy bedtime routine? Don’t they get dirty a lot?

We held onto this for a while with kid #1. When there were two, it became less frequent. Now that there are three…nope. Just nope.

3-Kid: You get bathed when I am afraid to send you out in public for fear of people judging me. Turns out, this is totally what we should be doing! The research is very much against bathing every day, at least as it relates to skin health and immunity. A doctor who writes for Harvard Health states that for most kids, bathing once or twice a week is fine, as long as they aren’t visibly dirty, stinky, or have been in a body of water or covered in bug spray. Every dermatologist recommendation I could find supports this. And, “Visibly dirty,” seems pretty subjective to me…!

Obviously though, we don’t have any teens in our house who are getting sweaty and stinky, and also obviously, we push frequent hand washing. Bedtime includes wiping of faces/bottoms/hands, even though it doesn’t always include bathing or showering.

I should also point out that none of our three have any skin issues. They don’t have any dry skin or eczema or rashes of any types; the youngest two rarely even get diaper rashes. So that may be skewing my opinion…but this is where we’re at with bathing these days.

On Reading:

Pre-Kid: We are going to read all the time. ALL. THE. TIME. We are going to have the best-read, most literate kids in the history of kids. They’ll read early, and they won’t struggle with reading, because we will do All The Reading Aloud, and all the experts say this is the key to reading and future academic success. It’s that simple!

3-Kid: This one we managed! Actually, I’ve moved arguably even further towards the obsessive end of the spectrum on this one. I reference the statistics in Jim Trelease’s Read Aloud Handbook constantly. I am always looking for opportunities in our days to read more with all three kiddos (and with all of my extra kids that attend preschool here). We go to the library, we rotate our absurdly huge book collection (I have a book buying problem; I freely admit it and refuse therapy for it). We read while they eat and while the baby nurses and before and after sleep times and as a calming strategy and a learning strategy and a bonding strategy…we read a lot! It’s exactly what I envisioned before I had kids. This is oddly reassuring. Like, I’m still somewhat the idealistic young teacher I used to be. I haven’t become a seasoned and cynical older parent…entirely. Not quite.

The one part of this that I’ve let go - and this is important - is the early reading. It’s too soon to tell for the younger two, but I actively suppressed my teacher instincts with Big Girl when I had her at home for PreK. I strove for an appropriate ratio of instruction to free play, which naturally ended up being heavy on the play and light on the instruction. I worked hard to make the tiny instructional chunks playful, appropriate, and not too demanding. In short, I didn’t try to make her read before she went to Kindergarten. It was tempting. She was starting to sound out words and I probably could have pushed her a bit…but I bit my tongue. I worked hard on phonemic awareness with jusssst a little bit of phonics (see my last blog for more information on this early reading and phonemic awareness versus phonics business) and trusted that when she entered formal school, she’d learn to read independently, easily, and quickly. That was exactly what happened.

This is all she does these days.

The jury is still out on how it will proceed with the other two, but I’ve let go of a lot of my stress about it. I put in the reading time (it’s the most joyful thing I do with them, so it’s not a hardship) and the phonemic awareness, and I trust the rest will follow.

Please also keep in mind something else that has changed from my Pre-Kid mindset on reading aloud: It’s not always this simple. It’s entirely possible that one of my younger two will struggle with reading independently, even after all this reading aloud. Sometimes there’s more going on. If you are the parent of a struggling reader, by all means, I advocate for more reading aloud…BUT do not blame yourself for their reading struggles. You could read aloud literally nonstop and some children will still struggle to learn how to read.

But the reading aloud will still benefit them in other ways…so keep it up.

On Sleeping:

Pre-Kid: Beautiful crib in beautiful nursery. Big dreams of routines-but-not-schedules, high quality and consistent bedtime routines. Obviously this will result in at least average sleepers, but likely better-than-average.

3-Kid: hahahahahahaha

Family motto: Whatever gets the most people the most sleep. Third baby has no crib and no nursery. Has slept tucked in my armpit from the day we brought him home. (Well, almost. He was a little early and severely jaundiced, so I didn’t actually share a sleep surface with him for several months.) When Baby #1 didn’t sleep at all no matter what we did, I remember googling, “Can you die from sleep deprivation?” (See above, for my research habits). We were doing it all “right,” and She. Just. Did. Not. Sleep. And I was working full-time. And barely hanging on by a thread, physically and mentally. So I began to research bedsharing. I learned the difference between cosleeping and bedsharing, and I dug DEEP into the Safe Sleep Seven.

I researched bedsharing statistics around the world, and I also discovered the difference between SIDS and infant suffocation. (Spoiler alert: They are not the same thing. There is actually some emerging research about the causes of SIDS and another Spoiler Alert: it has nothing to do with bedsharing. Bedsharing IS correlated with suffocation, IF you aren’t being smart about it. ) So we put our mattress on the floor and ditched the covers and I put my hair up and continued to nurse through the night…but now I slept. I rarely even had to sit up. It was life-saving.

The exhaustion of NOT bedsharing was honestly at a dangerous level. It was baby-dropping exhaustion. It was fall-asleep-and-slump-over-in-a-pile-of-pillows-and-suffocate-baby exhaustion. It was drive-off-the-road exhaustion. So we put that baby in the bed and never looked back. And with the other two, there was no question. Each time, I went back and re-researched the Safe Sleep Seven, which we follow very strictly.

I could NEVER have imagined this sleep set up before having kids. And honestly, I might have been a bit judgy about it before I did the research and truly understood all the nuances of how to safely sleep with an infant.

Truthfully, there are a lot of things I just wrote about that I could never have imagined before these three tiny humans rocked my world. I would never in a million years want to be that Pre-Kid version of myself again. I am exponentially more confident and more complete. My life is oh, so much richer, and I myself am so much wiser than I ever was before. Now I know how much I don’t know…and it’s a lot. It seems the more I learn about parenting and the care and education of young children, the more I realize there is to learn. It’s humbling for sure. Yes…humbling might be the most accurate adjective for parenthood in my experience.

Humbling and enriching.

Have you changed your mindset and expectations since becoming a parent? I’d love to hear about your parenting journey! And as always, if I can address a question or help in some way, please reach out below or on my socials.