Families

“Sleep when the baby sleeps” is the cruelest thing you can say to a new parent. It sounds oh-so-simple, doesn’t it? Just like my sleep advice sounded all those years ago, before I knew the harsh reality of parenting. It’s impossible to sleep when the baby sleeps if the baby is only down for 10 minutes at a time!

Kids are puzzles. My son is a 1,000 piece one. This wasn’t the first time my young son, not yet two, had experienced a bizarre, heightened amount of stress when dealing with normal, everyday circumstances.

We compare birth stories like war stories. Twelve hours of labor, 32 hours of labor, three hours of pushing, we fall into the trap of trying to one-up each other. So yes, I can see why, to a parent-to-be who is enthusiastically anticipating pain relief, the refusal of an epidural might seem like a bit of a hero complex. And maybe for some people it is! But it’s none of your goddamn business.

Most of my friends are my age or slightly older and yet virtually none of them want children… ever. They argue that women deserve respect and autonomy over their bodies. I passionately agree. A few of these friends are, like me, engaged or married, but even they don’t want kids. One of my engaged friends says she and her fiancé may want to adopt children later in life, after they’ve had the chance to travel extensively.

With bottle feeding, you are able to fill the bottle with a very specific amount of formula or breast milk and are able to physically see how much Baby is taking at each feeding. With breastfeeding, that isn’t quite as easy. We know that they are eating, but we aren’t able to tell exactly how much — until now.

One thing I cannot forget was how much I wanted to “get sick.” How I longed to get some sort of ailment or bedridden condition. I cannot forget how I prayed to become ill.

We been made to fear that should we complain, lest it might be snatched from us, should we for even a moment wish we hadn't done this. Some sort of universal karma. A punishment for your lack of gratitude.

I was paying a price for how I was parenting my children. Even before this study was released — confirming that more empathetic parents can suffer health issues — I knew it to be true because I felt it, I was living it, every day.