Rebuilding Rob

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

What is something you didn’t understand, until you went through it yourself?

Being a parent is one thing I did not understand until I went through it myself

All the clichés about being a parent are true. there is no handbook for it. As parents, we really don’t know everything. We are just making stuff up as we go most of the time.

I think back to when kid one was born – and I only used kid 1 as an example because he was my first child – the most surreal moment, in a few days filled with truly surreal experiences, was a moment when we were leaving the hospital and going home for the first time. You have a human being in your hands. Why do you, this is a human being who wasn’t technically “alive“ just a few days earlier. Before your child is born, you just go into the hospital as two regular people and then you come out of there with a third person. And the two “regular people” are now parents. They don’t give you any phone numbers to call. And it’s not like buying a toaster oven. There’s no extended warranty. There’s no replacement plan

Even as I am writing this, and I’m thinking about the whole process of taking a child home with you for the first time, I’m also thinking about the mom in the situation. A woman enters a hospital with an unborn baby in her stomach. When she leaves, the baby is out. Her body has spent the last nine months, adjusting all of its hormones and chemical levels in order to incubate this unborn baby. And suddenly, the baby is outside in the world. I know that that is the gist of postpartum depression for a lot of patients, but I can’t imagine the physiological effects of having a baby in your stomach one day and then then suddenly be out, visible, tangible, real, and alive.

Ever since I started dating after my divorce, it hasn’t been not negotiable that my partner also have children, but it does help. People can tell you “oh I get it, you have kids. They come first”. But until someone has a child of their own, they really have no idea of the magnitude that those words carry.

It’s interesting then I’m thinking about all this tonight/this morning as I just got back from Missouri to visit a college with kid one. I have a kid who’s going to be graduating from high school in less than three months. He’ll be going to college in less than six months. And I could still remember the day he was born like it was yesterday. I have vivid memories of driving back-and-forth between the hospital and our home to check on our pets. I had “dammit it feels good to be a gangster” by the ghetto boys playing in my car as I was driving back-and-forth. I felt like a 400 pound gorilla. Like I just done something absolutely divine. And I’m not even the one who gave birth! Time goes by so quickly.

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, 👍 comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts

• Priceless: Why College Was My Best Purchase (Even If I’m Still Paying For It)
• The Legend of the Street Fight
• Battle Tested and Flying Solo 
• The TikTok Paradox: A Screen Time Confession
• Burning the boats

The article “there is no owner’s manual…” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob