Becoming a parent for the first time

I didn't want to have kids. Whenever I saw a baby, they looked so unpredictable, happy one moment and miserable the next. As a child psychologist, I've seen a lot of bad things happen to good kids. In my own life, I know how difficult it's been for my parents to lose my brother. The unpredictability of being a parent, of loving someone so much and not knowing what's going to happen, I didn't want to experience that. But what I knew about parenting was biased. Since I was the youngest in my family, I never saw a baby grow up. Everything I knew was based on movies, being stuck behind a crying baby in an airplane, the experience of working with families during the most difficult periods of their lives, and living through my family's tragedy. This is the availability heuristic at work. We often make decisions based on examples that easily come to our mind. When I thought about becoming a parent, my head filled with loud, poopy babies surrounded by sleep-deprived parents on the verge of a breakdown. Then my wife and I moved to Brooklyn. We became friends with a couple who had a newborn boy. This was the first time I got to develop a relationship with people who had just become parents. What surprised me most was that they weren't miserable. Sure, I saw a lot of loud, poopy moments, and our friends always seemed to be in need of more sleep. But there are also these moments of discovery. I love being there for them. Seeing our friends walk their son around the neighborhood, introducing him to what a fire hydrant is, how to pet a dog, and why you shouldn't touch gum that someone else stuck on the wall. I was willing to never have kids because I thought I knew how it would make me feel. We're also horrible at this, affective forecasting, predicting how we're going to feel in the future. We spend so much time imagining what our future will feel like, even though it's impossible to know what's going to happen, what emotions will come up, and how long they'll last. Failing to predict future emotions summarizes our experience becoming parents. We were so excited to start trying to have a baby and had no idea how hard it was going to be for us. We spent a long time trying to get pregnant and couldn't. I was ashamed, thought there was something wrong with me, I'd get really jealous when my friends became pregnant, and then I got mad at myself for being jealous. With the help of some great doctors, we finally became pregnant and that unlocked a whole new set of emotions. Complete awe every time I saw an ultrasound, relief when I heard a heartbeat, shock to learn that we're having a girl, and lots of worries. Am I going to mess this all up? How am I going to know what to do? Will she love me? Then the big day came. This is where I was reminded again of the availability heuristic. Everything I learned about labor and delivery was completely wrong. Nothing happens as quickly as it does on TV. At no point did my wife hysterically yell, why did you do this to me? Also, affective forecasting. The birth plan we had spent months putting together, most of it wasn't possible, and it ended up being okay. I remember this moment when all the doctors and nurses were gone. It was just our new family for the first time, and I got to hold my daughter. And this person I had waited so many years to meet, she was finally here in my hands. And seeing her look at me for the very first time, everything else disappeared. Sometimes when I hold her like this, and I see her look up at me, I just, I'm taken back to that moment when everything was so new. When she was born, I felt my heart expand. A love I never felt before. It was probably the hormones. During her first time pregnancy, women experience an increase in testosterone, cortisol, estradiol, and progesterone, while men experience a drop in testosterone and estradiol. These changes focus parents on their relationship with each other, and on taking care of their newborn child. I felt that. Holding her, feeding her, helping her fall asleep. These moments gave me so much unexpected joy. There's a growing body of research that suggests the more men get involved in taking care of their kids early on, the better parents they become. But here's the problem. It's very hard in America for parents to take the time off from work to be with their newborn child. I did it, but it took months of bureaucratic nonsense and a big cut in our savings to happen. It hasn't been all joy. I'm really sleepy all the time. We just don't have the time or energy to go out or watch movies or do a lot of the things that we used to do. I have to be really mindful, present, and focused on her when I'm holding her. There's one time I was feeding her and I got this phone call and I got really distracted, tried to pick up the phone, and ended up dropping the phone on her. And she was crying. I felt super guilty. I thought I was such a bad parent and I thought I hurt her, called a pediatrician who assured me I was just being an anxious first-time parent and everything was okay. But it really scared me. It's really hard to stop everything else in the world and just be with your child. And she knows the difference when I'm paying attention to her or not. But life keeps surprising me. I thought becoming a parent would make my job more stressful, but the opposite has happened. I care a lot less about the stupid things at work. Recent research has shown that it's good for men and women to both work and raise their children. I know, it's good for both of them. You like it when we all are working and taking care of you, huh? Being involved in both helps you to deal with the stress of each role. Maybe you have a bad day at work, but you get some extra cuddles at home that night. Or maybe your kid vomits all over you in the morning and you can escape to work. One of the roles I've struggled with is all the extra stuff I do outside of work and family, like the psych show. Since becoming a parent, I've made half as many videos as I used to. Everything I learned about getting things done just doesn't work anymore. I know, it's really hard to get things done, sweetie. I know. I'm gonna make another video about this for Patreon, about how to be productive as a parent. But for now, I just want to say thank you for your patience. And she says thank you for your patience. Six months into becoming a parent, there are three big things I've learned. The first is, I'm never gonna master this. See what I mean? I'm never gonna be able to control this. I have to surrender to the uncertainty of parenting. Nowhere else in life does this happen. Usually, you do something, get better at it, and that's it. But just when you think you've got parenting figured out, your child grows. And that thing that you're doing that helped her calm down doesn't work anymore. It's like playing a video game that keeps getting harder. Your controller keeps changing. It's Zelda one minute, then Street Fighter, and then it's really weird and becomes Bioshock. And no matter how long you play, you never reach the end. Let's do some more. The second thing I've learned is you need friends who have recently gone through what you're going through. It's like when you get stuck on a video game, but you look up a video on YouTube of someone else playing through that stuck part. My wife and I constantly text our friends who also have little kids. They've helped us learn that a runny nose is a constant thing kids get in New York during the winter, and not something you need to go to the ER for. That doing the same routine over and over again, like singing the exact three songs every time your daughter wants to fall asleep, helps her to fall asleep. And it's okay if random scary thoughts about your kids pop up in your heads. That's just something that happens when a little part of you is out there running around in the world. The third thing I've learned is every new thing you do as a parent is scary, and you have to find a way to deal with your own fear. Having her sleep in her own room for the first time, taking her on the subway for the first time, leaving her with another caregiver for the first time, it all terrified me. But this will always happen throughout both of our lives. Going to school, play dates, sloop overs, camps, and college. If that's something you want to do, and if college is even around in 18 years. I have to learn how to let go of trying to control everything, and just focus on creating a safe place where she can learn how to cope on her own. That's the ultimate job of a parent. Do you want kids? What have you learned about parenting? Let me know in the comments below.