Things Said Before My Son – Mommy Blogger

09/04/2018

My name is Erin McCrea. I’m a Momma, a pet Momma, and a writer. I had my first baby at age 35 in May of 2016. Becoming a mom was the scariest thing I’ve ever done, and I have loved every moment of it. I blog at  http://erinisawriter.blogspot.ca/, but haven’t done a lot since Anthony arrived. It’s my goal to be a consistent Writing Mom by the time his birthday arrives. I’m shy, caring, weird, bossy, and I try to be happy every day. My baby helps with that.

This isn’t a post to talk about how people who don’t have children say the wrong things, or don’t really know what they’re talking about. I know for a fact that many people without children know more than I did, and some probably still know more than I do.

This post is about things I didn’t think about before I had a baby. Things I said out loud, and believed to be true. This is post is about the fact that I (and just me) had NO IDEA what having a baby/toddler was going to be like.

Here are some things I said:

I remember staying with a friend and her toddler. As we got ready to go she put a pair of sweats on him. I didn’t say anything at the time, but the next day was walking with a different friend, and said something like, “If I have a kid he’s never wearing sweats.”

I’m not sure exactly what I was thinking. Possibly I thought my imaginary perfect child would be dressed cute 24-7. Possibly, I thought I wouldn’t even own sweats for him or her. Honestly, I don’t know. I’m not sure why I thought it would be offensive to go out in public with sweats on a child. Don’t get me wrong, my son is still sometimes in cute outfits, but he’s also sometimes in sweats and a dirty shirt.

Here’s the reality of my sweats idea: we love getting second hand clothes. Some of those include sweats, and he wears them. Sweats are super easy to get on and off, and you honestly don’t care if they end up dirty or not. They’re almost the perfect outfit. Also, my son looks cute in everything. Everything! He also wears grow pants, regular pants, jeans, cords, shorts, over-alls, and no pants. I will never limit myself because of what I think should be a fashion no. I never want him to think like that either.

This next one I probably said until Anthony was a toddler. Until I learned I was a crazy person. I said to myself: “My child will never have a snot running down his nose.” I didn’t mean he would never have a runny nose, I just meant he’d never walk around with snot. Apparently, I thought I’d always be there to help him blow it.

I didn’t realise that it really doesn’t matter how many times you blow it, it’s still going to be messy. Always. Luckily for me, my son likes blowing his nose, but when it’s cold out or he’s sick, he’ll always have a runny nose. This won’t change. I’ve accepted it.

This ones my favourite. Anybody who knows me, knows that it’s crap. “I won’t swear in front of my child.”

Ha.

This one keeps changing. It started with me not swearing at all. When that didn’t happen, I changed it to stop swearing when he gets old enough to understand what I’m saying. When that didn’t happen, I decided to stop swearing if he repeats after me. (When it’s too late.)

I’m working on this one. He has yet to repeat after me, but it turns out, I’m kind of good at swearing.

The last one was more confusing to me than something silly I said. It was more of a question. I used to see ads for used cribs on kijiji or Facebook Marketplace. In the description it would say there were some bite marks. This was super confusing to me. “Why would the crib come with bite marks?” I asked my partner. He didn’t know.

We know now. Luckily, ours didn’t end up with a lot, but I soon learned that teething is basically to blame for everything.

These are all things I said pre baby. Before I learned that the best thing about having my son was going in not knowing anything, and not assuming anything. I was lucky I didn’t have a lot of ideas about what my life with baby would be because I would have been in for a lot of shocks. I was in for changes and the unexpected, but not because of the things I thought to be true, but because being a parent is full of the unexpected.