A few months ago I commented that the arrival of a child changes the lives of parents, sure.
In my personal case (and as in most I would say) the change was for good, but the process was hard, very hard and we honestly didn't expect it to be that way, however nobody told us that having a child was easy.
We live in a society in which everything is demanded for yesterday, in which everything that involves excessive effort or too small a reward tends to be rejected.
We are at a time when we need to work hard to pay for the material goods that make our lives easier, that we cannot enjoy because we are working.
In this process or vicious circle we have changed the walk to work by the car, the books for the films, the coffee maker for an encapsulated one, the washable diapers for disposable diapers, the sponge for wipes, the cooked for the Frozen, the Fairy by the dishwasher ...
And in these you plant in the Prenatal (or similar) and tell them with a smile from ear to ear that You are going to be a father, well, full of pride, and that you come to buy the necessary and the best for your son.
The list is endless: The three-wheeled mattress, the crib heats diapers, the body to calm the colic, the emitting receiver for the other room with a folding hood, the scented backpack that induces sleep, the sponge with safety closure, ...
And one day your baby arrives and you realize, little by little, that you have made the “panoli” (don't be offended, I speak in the first person).
A baby is born in the 21st century who does not know if he is in the wonderful and modern world in which we live or in the Paleolithic era. Well, I'm not going that far ... He doesn't know if he was born in Spain or in the desert of Africa.
And you, my dear novel father, used to make your life, to live it with pleasure, to give and receive in equal measure (or to receive more than what you give), you suddenly find yourself in the situation of having to give, give, and give and at the moment, no possibility of waiting.
You realize that the thousand inventions are rather unhelpful, that the crib mattress "burns" and that it always ends in your arms (cheap invention of infallible result).
And it turns out that he wakes up when you start to catch the dream, he falls asleep when you have revealed himself and he wakes up again the moment you release the first snore.
Then everyone is forced to help you and they give you thousand and one contradictory tips and your wife asks you to help more at home, because the baby is all day in the chest and in the arms because in the crib does not hold twenty minutes and you, who expected to continue living, more or less as before, with slight changes, You see that light have little.
They tell you that if you breastfeed so much it is that she has no milk, or that her milk is not good. The pediatrician says no, that it is normal for me to breastfeed so much because he is a newborn, but the nurse says that if he is hungry to drink artificial milk.
And he cries, and every day at the same time and you bathe him before sleeping because he is supposed to relax, but instead it seems that yours is different, that he gets like a “motorcycle”, and you dress him and he cries , and you realize that being all day in arms cries less, but the mother-in-law comes (whatever it is) and says that you take it too much in arms and that you are going to spoil it.
You realize that it is not so easy. You were waiting for a little person, who understood your inexperience and gave you prudential time to gradually learn from him (and vice versa) and you realize with hammer blows that your baby It is neither more nor less, a mammalian animal.
That means you need the security of contact, heat and rocking. The food almost continuously, the smell of his mother, care and constant availability.
And you see that your life has turned 180º, that you cannot do anything you did before, neither you nor her. And that is where you must decide, or I take a parenthesis as a person and I dedicate myself to my baby, my wife and my house, or I will want to cover so much that in the end I will not do one thing or another.
I'm sorry, someone had to say it. Is not easy. Having a baby is a big responsibility. It is a dependent being in its entirety and needs you more than anything.
He needs you to know how to give up many things for a while and that you learn to make guts heart and dark circles hope because it is a stage, a time, until small mammals grow and gradually detach themselves until they become the little people who you expected
PS: I recommend that you go, when you can, by the "Shop of the patient" and buy two or three spare. Usually needed.
Photos | Flickr (Pedro Klien), Flickr (bionicteaching)
In Babies and more | Entrances of Being Dad
