One Year as Mr. Mom

I'm going to sound like a really bad person in the next couple sentences, and there's no getting around it, so here goes: 

I took my mom for granted my entire childhood. It frequently manifested itself as embarrassment, and often bordered on outright disrespect and contempt. I waited until my 36th year on this earth to look at her and truly appreciate all she went through. 

I have newfound respect for her and mothers everywhere after spending one year (my son's first year) at home raising our first child. I sincerely tried to prepare as best I could, reading all the books and gleaning all the info I could from reliable sources. Unfortunately, the only constant was that NOTHING was constant and that all babies are different and require different strategies to keep them happy. Nothing could have prepared me for the poop storm of trying to keep an infant baby alive and happy, when all I've ever done is (barely) keep myself alive and happy. Seriously, it was really touch and go for a couple of years, especially my military days. My wife cringed at some of the stories, which is why I don't bring the old Navy buddies around often. I brushed off all the "your life is over as you know it" "get ready for misery" blah blah blah comments from parents who had already been through it. ... I was so sure that as long as I could keep him fed and changed, it would be like raising a hamster ... no muss, no fuss. Keep the cage clean, the food flowing, and the wheel will turn, right?

Naive doesn't even touch the surface. To be sure, he has been a very easy baby to handle (or so I've been told) ... but with the TONS of conflicting baby-rearing advice, the mind-numbing lack of sleep, the power struggles and petty arguments that result from lack of sleep, it all added up to a very eventful year. I discovered quite a bit about myself trapped in a house with a 5 month old that slept most of the day, and just stared at me and screamed from a swing the other 4 hours.

I had large blocks of time to catch up on sleep and reflect on how hard it must have been for my mother to raise 3 of us without all the tools and knowledge that is now available with just a click of a button. Raising a baby via Google was not an option back then. I was forced to reevaluate what exactly was important to me, and in some cases I was forced to cease being me, or at least change who I thought I was in order to more effectively attend to his needs. Oh yeah, life was definitely different.

That's a long winded way of saying that I've changed. A monumental change that left me standing silently last Saturday in at my son's first birthday party, watching him scoot around picnic tables and bouncing from hug to hug from family and friends, realizing just how special, compassionate, patient and hard working my mother really is.

Come to think of it, that's the only thing that's been constant all these years.