"What Am I Doing?" The Realities of Parenting

“I have no idea what I’m doing!” said every honest parent everywhere. I’m not the first to point out the irony that you have to fill out an application and sometimes even have home visits to adopt a pet, yet they just let you walk out of the hospital with a baby and no training at all. Not only did I walk out with one baby, but two. Twins. Twins that came in the midst of my husband’s PhD. Twins that were a surprise and perhaps a miracle. Twins that crippled me during my pregnancy with nausea, vomiting, and pain. Twins that came eight weeks too early. Twins that spent the first month of their lives in the hospital. Twins that were only four pounds in weight when we carefully brought them home from the hospital, feeding tubes still in place. 

Nothing makes you learn faster than necessity. By the time we brought our tiny babies home I knew about gastric PH, how to use a feeding tub, infant cpr, and how to work most machines we encountered in the hospital. Yet, as my boys lay in their crib during their first night at home, crying incessantly, I wept with them because I just didn’t know what to do, what they needed, and how to make it all stop. 

They say that your second child is easier in many ways because you’ve learned so much from that first child. The first born is a guinea pig and by the time you bring that second born home you are a veteran of baby affairs. Though I will never understand that experience, because twins was enough for me, I’ve heard about it from many of my fellow parents. What they’ve found is that though they now know how to change a diaper with their eye’s clothes, make a bottle without breaking a sweat, and handle a blowout with only the slightest grimace, they still have no experience in how to handle both a toddler and a baby. So though they may be veterans in one area, the inexperience they feel in their situation is unchanged. Each child is different, each situation shifting, each milestone a novelty and each family their own. 

Thousands if not millions of books have been written on the topic of parenting and yet we still find ourselves overwhelmed by parenthood as it hits us in the face with the full force of a projectile vomit. We clammer to the books, the gurus, the social media gods asking for guidance as we blindly work our way through weaning, the terrible twos, starting school, and puberty. Some of us find the answers we need, the solutions that work for our family, and the models that align with the values we hold dear. While others still find ourselves flailing about as nothing quite seems to work for our child/ren, family, or worldview. Perhaps this is because we feel torn between the values we were raised with and the ones we now hold dear. Perhaps it is because the words on a page don’t seem to connect with our lived reality. Perhaps it is because of special needs, medical needs, or neurodivergence. Perhaps it is because of family systems, cultural conflicts, trauma, or a host of other possibilities. Perhaps it is simply because humans are not square shaped and so frustratingly our kids don’t fit into the boxes we create for them. 

If you’ve found yourself with a tiny human or humans that baffle you. If you find yourself constantly wondering if anything you’ve done is right. If you have absolutely no fucking idea what you are doing. Then welcome. I don’t have any answers. Sorry to disappoint. But I am a mom on a journey trying to figure out life and this thing called parenting one step at a time. My kids not only don’t fit in the boxes, but they blew the boxes up and laughed about it as they went. So if you’re interested, join me as I try to navigate raising two pda audhd 7 year old boys that fail to fit into any molds society tries to create and challenge me each and every day in every possible way.