My head is heavy on the pillow as I sense my husband gently peeling back the bed covers and, inch by inch, easing his way out from our family's slumber. He momentarily catches my gaze and we smile good morning to each other. I check the time, 4:53 a.m. Despite being a rainy Sunday morning, I know exactly where he's going: down the hallway to our study to work in all-too-rare-these-days peace and quiet.
My somewhat smaller sleep companion, our three-year-old son, rolls over and kisses me on the cheek before nuzzling in to nurse. Maybe he'll fall back to sleep, I hope. Then I hear it, "Mama, sorbet...please!" No such luck. Our little man had a fever two days ago and mango sorbet was a treat which has now become an expectation. I attempt to negotiate, but he's determined at this early hour and I give in easily.
Thankfully, his Dad reappears with my son's request, crawls back into bed and with it, our day begins. I curl up with my husband for all of ninety seconds before our son leaps on his father's head and catches me with a familiar elbow to the cheek. He asks us to "cover ears" as he roars like a dinosaur while simultaneously pushing me to the edge of the bed, readying himself for a dose of boys-only roughhousing.
Relegated to my female corner I day dream about what it would be like to sleep in one day, safely enveloped in my husband's arms, waking up slowly and chatting to each other without the nonstop interruption of a cheeky toddler.
I miss my husband. I miss sleep. I miss a lot of things.
But, I remind myself the one thing I don't miss is the pain of yearning for a baby. It took us three long years to conceive our son and seeing those two magical pink lines after so many failed attempts was one of the happiest moments of my life. This internal tug-of-war is familiar to most parents as we battle to find our new normal, reconcile our mellowing sense of self and adjust to our evolving marriages.
We accept life is irreversibly transformed and some parts of our pre-children lives are forever lost. It's hard to do -- life was simple and straightforward before kids and it's healthy to admit we miss it. It doesn't make us ungrateful parents, it makes us human. It means we're honest.
I often feel the most potent catalyst fuelling my internal tug-of-war is not the reality of parenting itself, but the disparity between what we're told it should look like and the way it really is. Expectation is a powerful thing, transforming the same reality into a heaven or a hell. Unfortunately, parenting is littered with false expectations.
I feel a dangerous and growing misconception in our consumer-driven society is the notion we can and should have it all and I wonder if it impacts our parenting choices more than we realize. The idea that we can have a baby and also have eight uninterrupted hours of sleep. The expectation we can have a rewarding career and a family.
The world is changing at a rapid rate and the inconvenient truth is we can't have it all.
There's always a compromise and we have to make a choice and set clear priorities. If we don't we risk becoming so overwhelmed we make short-sighted decisions, such as leaving our babies to cry themselves to sleep. The great irony is the more we seek the impossible dream of having it all, the more unhappy we become and the more we resent those who promise to bring us unprecedented happiness and joy, our families.
One of my defining traits, which is both a blessing and a curse, is my drive to see things for how they really are... and to say it. It means I'm not great at small talk, I often find myself in hot water (online and in real life) and I can't fake a smile to save myself. So, when it comes to parenting this trait pushes me to question the status quo and to find my own truth.
I encourage you to find your personal truth on this parenting journey. It helps me silence the noise of convention, overlook judgement from others and gives me the courage to act on my natural instincts. It's the only thing that has helped me calm my internal tug-of-war. To accept my free time is now counted in minutes, not hours. To appreciate small pockets of time with my husband. And to find gratitude in the most unlikely of moments.
So, as I lay here happily watching my two boys wrestle it out at this pre-dawn hour I'm grateful for my unconventional, crazy life I share with them.
I accept working traditional hours has gone out the window and if we want to care for our son on our own 5 a.m. on a Sunday is now a productive hour. I acknowledge if I want my website to be a success, while still working my day job, I'll be run ragged for a while. But, I know I have too many balls in the air and rather than juggling faster, I need to find a way to gracefully drop a ball, to bring more balance into my life.
I don't know what life will look like next for our little family but I sense a change is coming: a change which involves less, not more. In acknowledging there are some things I just can't have right now, in this season of my life, I feel a great sense of relief, of unloading, of freedom. And by expecting less I hope I open the door to having more of what makes me truly happy.
This post originally appeared on Raised Good.
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