Parental terror
There’s something good about the worst baby stress – we promise!
In extreme cases, a crying baby can feel like pure torture.
Babies and small children can quickly become backbreaking work that pushes you to your limits. And yet there is a kernel in this stress that should be valued.
We’re just among ourselves here, so let’s say it openly: babies and toddlers are often hell! And I don’t mean the cute “hee hee, the pacifier fell off again” problems that people without children imagine. No, having a child can be a real pain at times! In Guantanamo Bay, inmates were tortured by being deprived of sleep for ages and being played with aggressively loud music. Parents in the first year of the baby, who have had no sleep for months but have enjoyed the nerve-racking cries of colic, nod in understanding at the descriptions. Or cry spontaneously.
Discover hidden happiness
The good thing is that even in the hardest times there is a bittersweet insight waiting to be discovered. For me personally, this moment came when my youngest child finally understood how a toilet worked. And then I realized: At some point I had changed the last diaper of my life. An epochal milestone, and it had rushed past me quite secretly. I hate diaper changes (we all do, right?) and couldn’t wait for it to be over. And now that the big moment had quietly slipped by? Not the fireworks of joy I had imagined, but a touch of melancholy. Diapers are disgusting, they’re annoying and they’re outrageously expensive. But when they’re missing, it’s also a clear signal: the baby you’ve had for years is now gone for good! The toddler it replaced is magnificent and incomparable, sure. But you will never hold the baby in your arms again.
1000 secret goodbyes every day
That’s the downside of children’s stress: if everything goes right, the children need you less and less and eventually no longer need you at all. And damn it, that’s a good thing! And yet: a toddler screaming and slapping his food on the floor is pure terror. At the same time, this terror represents a developmental phase in which, on the same day, she giggles at the window for several minutes because she has discovered a bird outside. The terror will end at some point, but with it there will be many things that you only miss afterwards. Every day we say goodbye to 1000 little things without noticing it: the last time the child snuggles up in the parents’ bed. The last book you read in the evening. The last time that your child spontaneously throws themselves on your neck just because they want to.
It’s not all bad!
And before this comes across as wrong: This is expressly not meant as a conservative call to all mothers to stop acting like that and rather enjoy the fulfillment of motherhood! No, we agreed on that: everyday life with babies and children is often sickening for parents. But when everyday life brings you to the edge of the abyss (and parental abysses are deep!), it can at least be somewhat comforting to keep an eye on the positive downside. We have this exact child, with all its peculiarities, just this once in our lives, at this moment – and then never again. And if we don’t consciously enjoy it – why are we even doing all this stuff?