that bit about life being over is total bullshit.

okay well, not TOTAL bullshit. Get ready for your OLD life to be over. Get ready for you not being the center of your universe 24/7. Get ready to sacrifice some things in lieu of growing the future. Get ready to make the decisions you make not just based on what YOU want to do or what you think is best for YOU, but what you think is best for someone else, too. Parenting has taught me how to not be so self-centered and self-absorbed and how to nurture.

Honestly? I got lucky. I didn’t have post-partum depression, thankfully, and not everyone does or will. I had a post-partum freakout, for sure (OMG WHAT THE FUCK HAVE I DONE) — but that’s NORMAL. I also didn’t really have much sleep dep (it’s not everyone’s boat, but I co-slept with my daughter and she was an easy baby — when she woke up, I was right there, and we fell back asleep). Again, not everyone wins this kind of lottery in the baby business, I do know this…

The never-being-alone bit is hard, as was, for me, the endless hours of having conversations with no one other than toddlers, or other moms of toddlers… It can seem like every day is 48 hours long but like everyone says, it actually goes by in a flash. All of a sudden one day they’re seven years old and they’re going to school every day and they have friends and like reading books, maybe, and boom, you have alone/work/relationship time, and it’s way easier to find a sitter because they can just chill with a cool little person who doesn’t need a diaper change and goes to bed at 8pm.

Also: Get ready to walk into someone’s room at midnight so you can quietly gaze at their sweet perfection and have them wake up just then to say, in that little seven year old voice, “I love you, mom” before falling right back to sleep.

Life. made.