Get your sleep now! Nap when the baby naps! Time goes by so fast - protect those first few months! And my personal favorite: Oh, you just wait! For what? The world to implode?

I got my own share of advice before having my baby. People love to share their thoughts; it’s comfortable and all the same. However, there are truths that not everyone tells you: 1) because if they did, they’d probably sound like a total dick anyway; 2) sometimes, you just don’t know until you know. You know?

That’s why I wanted to share the truths (Writer’s Note: not advice) I’ve kept hidden away in my iPhone notes — where all great ideas begin — and share them here.

And now, a quote supporting the #1 Truth of Them All (TM) sponsored by the latest book I’m reading, “The Most Fun We Ever Had” by Claire Lombardo.

“Nobody’s ever prepared to care for a child full-time, is what I mean. Nobody understands what that means until they do it for themselves. We’re all just holding our breath and hoping nothing catastrophic happens. And how deeply you get hurt doing that! It’s constant pain. It’s a parade of complete and utter agony, all the time, forever.”

1. Routine habits have become the purest of pleasures. Really! Things like: laying down in bed at the end of the day, taking the first sip of coffee after daycare drop off, reading a book, showering (??), listening to music, answering email. Before kids, they were just “things I did.” Now, they are these little nectar bombs of goodness. The most simplest of tasks that served nothing before children, now serve a feast.

2. I think about my mortality. A lot. I don’t drive like a crazy person anymore (I’ve been known to scream profanities in my car … often). Now, specifically on the way to pick up Lila, I’m a VERY careful driver. Constantly, I’m imagining my own death, and not showing up to daycare. I’m guessing this is something I should discuss in therapy, but I have never considered dying so often as I do as a parent.

3. Work has become incrementally easier; more freeing. Since giving birth and coming off of maternity leave, my corporate work has become much easier. I don’t worry so much about a “blunt” email, I stand up for myself a bit more in meetings, and I don’t panic when something is “on fire.” I don’t mean to sound ignorant, but the corporate world just seems less ethereally important than it did pre-baby and in my twenties (overall). Additionally, using my cognitive brain during the day has given me great reprieve. I know now that I’m a better mother if I step away for a while and write email.

4. My life has been overtaken by cords and boxes. Our house is littered with the following, always: a dozen charging cords and boxes upon BOXES. Last minute Amazon orders, diapers, charging cords for monitors and bottle warmers.

5. Motherhood has changed my relationship to thrill-seeking; adventure. I used to desperately want to try mushrooms or skydiving. But now, I don’t have the appetite for it. Jia Tolentino called the years before motherhood the “death-wish years” with the ability to live a little freer than with children. And I see what that’s like now, looking back on who I was. I even see it a bit in my horseback riding (I’ve been doing that since I was little). I’m okay taking the safer horse; enjoying the ride as it serves me — metaphorically and literally.

6. I don’t worry about my physical appearance as much. Most days, I’m wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. I also don’t fret about the (somehow my suddenly unengaged middle region, that just kind of hangs there like a puppy). Of course I consider my health and believe long walks in nature are the only exercise you need. But I’m simply less neurotic about my body. I don’t have the time or the brain capacity to consider that part of my life currently. Maybe this shifts when the babies get older, but I’m not there yet.

7. I’m afraid — for now — that I have nothing intellectual to offer at dinner parties. My ability to hold conversation has wained quite a bit. And I’m surprised by that! I thought having children would give me a ticket into this expansive underworld of knowledge but it really hasn’t (yet). I know only basic, primal stories about stacking blocks and changing diapers. The only person that resides in my brain like a little haphazard troll under the bridge is, indeed, Lila. And, her general existence all I have to offer at the moment.

8. The narrative women have been fed about feeling an ethereal love the moment our babies are laid on our chest is mildly inaccurate. We have been fed this notion that maternal love is instant, snap of a finger, and your entire world is radically full of great, earth-shattering love. But loving Lila for me, is like building a snowman; rolling up a snowball. As time goes on, my love for her gets bigger and bigger. I’m so obsessed with her now that I want to physically wear her (sorry to be weird). But, when I didn’t feel that right away, I was ashamed. Of course I loved her, but that love gets bigger as time goes on versus being large in an instant.

   1. A particularly insightful quote from an article called: “The Misogyny of Mommy Brain” that directs this truth back to science: “We still, as a culture, hold up this fantasy that women are born mothers, that we have everything we need to be able to care for a newborn. It's a lie,” says Conaboy. “We grow into this role, and just like in other periods of growth in our lives—this one especially dramatic—growth is hard. Of course it is! The idea that this major life change would be anything but distressing, physically and mentally challenging and requiring major support—that's laughable, right?”

9. I wasn’t prepared for the aggressive wake ups. We knew we’d be tired when we had a baby. But the thing that surprised me most was the aggressive wake ups. No more sitting in my bed scrolling TikTok of waking up slowly to the birds outside. I hear Lila wailing in her bedroom and pop up like silly string. It scares me a lot to think this will probably be our lives for the next 15 years, but I try to make peace with it and enjoy the urgency of life.

10. Kids are their own people, not a 50/50 replica of me and my partner. I know this seems obvious, but I always thought Lila was going to be half my husband, half me. That’s the only way I could imagine her before she came, I suppose. But now that she’s here, I know she’s her own person. She has a fire in her gut unlike anything I’ve seen in either of us. She’s deeply sweet and kind; respects her own space. Physically, she has flecks of both of us. But, she’s all her own.

11. I would eat a majority of my day-meals in my car. Honestly, if I’m not hammering an egg salad sandwich in my car before daycare pickup because I forgot to eat lunch at work — I don’t know who I am anymore. It’s actually comical. I’m always last-minute flying through a drive-thru or grocery store to eat a meal I forgot about.

12. The incredible paradox of everything is poetic and chaotic. As a mother, I can exist in so many spaces all at once. When she was very little, colicky and crying, I imagined putting her on the front doorstep whilst feeling an empathy so large I wanted to explode. Oftentimes, I want to be alone whilst equally wanting to crawl and hibernate in her lap, even though it’s too small. Motherhood is so deeply everything, often at the same time. And it is the most overwhelming and beautiful thing.

Now, your turn.

What are the weird truths you’ve discovered as a parent?

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