Top 10 Worst Things About Parenting

In which parenthood is both awesome and terrible.

A NOTE BEFORE WE BEGIN: All right, so, this post is huge. I was going to put both the Best and Worst Top 10s in the same piece, but I don’t want to fuck this up and rush it like the writers of A Game of Thrones, and yes, I’m still mad about that. Separating the two Top 10s makes this one fucking downer of a post, so trust me when I say this: The Bests of parenthood far, far, far, far, far outweigh the Worsts, no matter how massive and all-encompassing the Worsts seem in this post. The Bests are just as awe-inspiring, world-shifting, and all-encompassing, and, yes, make the Worsts absolutely worth it.

So don’t get on my ass about complaining when I have two beautiful and healthy offspring and a wonderful, supportive, dead-sexy partner.

I’m 100% on the side that sharing both the good and the bad of a life-altering situation should be done. Being ignorant of the bad in a big life event doesn’t protect you from it, it just makes you feel alone when said event isn’t exclusively the glorious-unicorns-farting-glitter-wonderland you end up expecting it to be.

Anyway, on with the thing.

Greetings, my poor, neglected blog.

And that’s all the time I’m going to spend acknowledging how long it’s been since I’ve posted a blog. Parenting is hard. In fact, let’s talk about it!

For the record, I promise I won’t only blog about parenting from now on. As always, I have thoughts and opinions on all manner of subject matter, but you can’t blame me as a first-time mother of twin demons to have parenting on my mind. Also, due to the aforementioned demons, I don’t sleep very much, and my days are exhausting. This leaves precious little brainpower for a full-fledged blog post with thought put into it. This is why this one is going to be in list form!

Parenting is truly a whole new mode of existence. It’s so difficult to even begin to describe how much things have changed. Hell, even my brain chemistry has changed. I guess that pretty much sums up the scope of things. There was so much I didn’t know about motherhood, even with my habit of obsessively researching topics of interest to me.

Without further preamble, here are my top 10 lists about the Best and Worst things about parenting.

Special note: One or two twin-specific points will slip in here.

Let’s start with the negatives.

Top 10 Worst Things About Parenting

10. Twin Commentary

            This one’s at the bottom of the list only because I’m an extremely friendly person and I don’t mind interacting with strangers. It’s a damned good thing I don’t mind, because a twin stroller is a fucking stranger magnet. I don’t know if it’s similar for singleton babies, but people just gravitate toward our baby bats like moths to a flame. More often than not, they say exactly the same things in almost the exact same order:

            “Are they twins? How old? Boys, girls, one of each? Oh my gosh, instant complete family! You must have your hands full! I can’t imagine having TWO at ONCE! Oh, you’re so blessed. You know I’m a twin/I have twins/my neighbor’s friend’s cousin twice removed has twins! Anyway, they’re gorgeous, God bless!”

            As I said before, I don’t mind interacting with strangers. So long as they don’t touch my little cubs or make Baby M, who is wary of strangers, start wailing, I’m fine answering the same questions at least three times every time we step into a public place. Hubby, however, doesn’t much enjoy the constant repetitive interaction with people we don’t know. I can only imagine he feels like a sitting duck as we wait in line at Starbucks with old ladies circling around the stroller like sharks, ready to dive in with the same commentary we’ve heard a hundred thousand times.

            My heart goes out to any introvert who ends up with twins. Your poor, poor souls.

9. Travel time: Doubled/”Sorry, guys, we can’t make it.”

            We haven’t traveled further than an hour away from home with the babes, but soon we’re going to have to take long trips. My in-laws and my brother both live 6 hours away. When we took trips, we always had a bit of trouble managing the dogs, but that has nothing, and I mean nothing, on babies. Babies complicate even going to our local grocery store to grab a few things.

Ladies and gentlemen, the aesthetic paragraph break.

If we forgot milk before, we just took a quick walk or drive, grabbed the milk, and came back. Boom. Done. Now? Get the babes in the car seats, wait, it’s chilly, they need jackets. Where are the jackets? Please tell me they aren’t in the washer. Okay, do we have the diaper bag? Make sure we have burp cloths—remember, we didn’t last time and A spit up all over himself? Okay, diaper bag, babies…is the stroller in the car? Fuck. Let me lug that bulky bitch into the car, or out of it, if we’re walking…what did we need to buy again? Ah, fuck it, we can do without milk for now.

Similar enough that I had to put them in the same category—unless all of your friends are also parents, your social life takes a major hit. Impromptu visits are impossible. Major trips are contingent upon a babysitter (and how comfortable you are having your infant with a babysitter, which as of right now, we’re…we’re not.)

Then there’s the simple fact that many of your friends just aren’t “kid people.” They don’t want to come over and watch you wrangle screaming babies, they don’t want to hold your kid, and they aren’t awed by your daughter’s newfound discovery of blowing raspberries. Unless you can carve out coveted free time to see them in a baby-free environment, these people are likely to disappear completely from your life. I don’t mean this meanly—I legitimately understand that many people aren’t kid people—but that doesn’t make it suck any less.

To be fair, even friends who don’t mind kids don’t always want to come to your house and sit for some lukewarm coffee and conversation constantly interrupted by diaper changes, temper tantrums, attention-seeking, and preparing bottles. It makes me eternally grateful for my friends who have visited multiple times and seem to have infinite patience for our little monsters. I don’t want to say you find your “true” friends after you become a parent, but you definitely learn who would be your Blood Riders.

Sorry…still obsessed with A Song of Ice and Fire, even if A Game of Thrones ended weakly.

Non-nerdy conclusion: Your friends who see you when you have your kids—especially multiple times—are your lifers.

8. Suddenly…Future!

            Once you become a parent, shit suddenly gets real. The future isn’t this distant, abstract hypothetical anymore. It’s here. It’s now. All that super adult stuff you were planning on getting to “someday”—saving for retirement, writing a will, getting your finances together, whatever—all has a new sense of urgency.

7. Dad? What Dad?

            As when I got engaged and married, I noticed the intensity of the role gender dynamics still play in our society. Parenthood is another painful and obnoxious reminder of that. Other than him working full time and me working part time, my husband and I are dead even in parenting duties. We both feed, change, dress, play with, and put to bed our hellspawn (argh, the grammar of that sentence…it burns!) We both take them to the pediatrician—alone if one of us is working. The only distinct difference in our parenting roles is my ability to breastfeed them as a soothing mechanism. Other than that, we’re even-keel, and we will remain that way in all future endeavors, from PTA meetings, Little League games (or, probably more likely for our kids, Drama Club productions,) to teaching them to drive.

            And wow, do people just not get it.

            Now, to clarify, I don’t think anyone does this consciously. It’s not like a guest clutched their pearls when my husband went to change a diaper and cried, “But that’s women’s work!” We’ve just both noticed very strong, but unconscious, assumptions that anything baby-related is my realm. Questions about the babies are directed at me when Hubby is sitting right next to me. Oh, Dee, you must be tired. How are you handling cloth diapers? Are you still getting up all night? I’m also given encouragement approximately 9000% more than my husband is (though, to be fair, I share more about my life on social media than he does.)

            We’ve also noticed that whenever Hubby does a normal parenting thing, he’s met with surprise and even admiration at times. “Where’s Mom?” the nurse asked him the last time he took the babes to the pediatrician. They’ve never asked me where he was when I’ve taken them alone. He’s inundated with admiring glances when he walks them down the street in their stroller.

            It’s surprising how much we still assume that childcare is the work of women and expect men to be more distant and “hands-off” with their children. Because this is a top 10 list and not a singular rant, I’ll refrain from hopping on my soapbox, but…can we fix this, please? Can we have Dad Groups and stop teasing fathers for “babysitting” their own fucking children when they’re watching them alone? Can we? Please?

6. “You know nothing, Mama Snow.”

            Due to my compulsive urge to research random topics, I’m a person who’s pretty well-informed on many subjects. Parenthood, though? There are no definitive rules. None. There is no one answer to any question you might have, and the level of misinformation out there on the subject is singularly horrifying. I’ve never felt more uninformed in my life, nor have I had the urge to call a doctor. I’ve wanted to call our pediatrician for everything from a slightly elevated temperature to “why does my son’s hand seem to have a mind of its own when it pulls the pacifier out of his mouth?”

I’m not used to being so in-the-dark on a subject, especially not one this important. It doesn’t help that I had absolutely no experience with babies until I had them myself. My Google search history is full of questions that start with “How old are babies when they start…”

            Pro tip: When it comes to infant health, don’t Google. Just call your pediatrician. They’re used to all manner of dumb questions.

5. Motherhood is visceral as fuck.

            If you think mankind has evolved away from base instincts, honey, you’re not a parent.

Motherhood is one massive shift in brain chemistry, and for someone who started out with faulty brain chemistry, it is one terrifying trip. For the first month of the babes’ lives, I demanded that Hubby and I sleep in shifts so one of us was always awake in case one of them stopped breathing. My husband and I forced ourselves to stay awake until we were crying hysterically, falling asleep standing up, or both. I once slammed the back of my head against the headboard because I conked out at 4am while sitting straight up. All because I could not shake my fear of SIDS. I never conquered it—only buying Snuza breathing monitors calmed me enough to allow us to sleep at the same time. My “anxiety” kicked up again a couple weeks ago when we moved the babes from bedside bassinets to the nursery. Despite having the aforementioned breathing monitors and a video monitor, I’m still having trouble sleeping. At least once before I go to bed, I check on them to make sure they’re breathing. If even the slightest thing is off—the temperature’s a degree too high in the nursery, for example—I can’t sleep until I’ve done everything I can to find a solution.

            I put “anxiety” in quotation marks because “anxiety” doesn’t even begin to cover what I feel. I’ve had anxiety all my life. This feeling is closer to mortal dread or pure terror. All it takes is one stray thought to flitter across my mind—say I’m changing my daughter and I think, my son’s alone in the living room on his play mat. What if he rolls over and smothers himself?—and bam, instant ice in my veins. My heart is pounding and I’m sprinting toward my son, who’s happily tugging at a toy dangling over his head. I’ve thoroughly freaked out both him and my daughter, who’s clinging to my neck for dear life in a half-snapped diaper.

            Anger has also reached a new intensity. I can’t watch moments in TV and film where it’s even insinuated that a child is hurt without internally raging. The thought of some future hypothetical, like my child being bullied, and fury ignites under my skin like a brush-fire.

            Fear and anger regarding my babes are so instinctual, instantaneous, and overwhelming. It isn’t something I could possibly have prepared for or that anyone could have explained to me in a way that would make me understand. I try my best to keep calm, usually through meditation or subverting my thoughts from rage-inducing hypotheticals, but it’s fucking tough. I’ve lost count of the times my husband has had to reassure me “the babies are breathing, they’re just asleep, they’re going to be okay, we’ll see them in the morning” before I can relax enough to sleep.

4. No Sleep…Chronically.

            I have never experienced sleep deprivation like this.

College? Oh, my sweet summer child. Finals week with all-nighters has fucking nothing on new parenthood.

My hellspawn are good sleepers, but even so, they’ve always woken up at least once or twice a night. Since there are two, that means we’re up two or four times every night from 20 minutes or over an hour. They also have moments of “sleep fussing,” where they flail their tiny limbs in their sleep and struggle to get comfortable. When they were at our bedside, “sleep fussing” was no big deal. We could roll over, put their pacifiers back in their mouths or stroke them gently back to sleep without having to leave our bed or even truly wake up ourselves. Now that they’re in the nursery, though, their “sleep fussing” wakes them up far more often, and we have to get up and cross the hall to comfort them.  They’re getting better at putting themselves back to sleep without our aid, but even that gets complicated, at least for me.

Ladies and gentlemen, another aesthetic paragraph break.

Since my husband sleeps like the drunken dead and a moth flapping its wings on the other side of the house has the potential to wake me up, the video monitor is on my side of the bed. I’m going to ballpark this to about five or six times a night, the same thing happens: One of the babes begins to whimper and flail around. My eyes snap open, and I wait. Sometimes the whimpering stops, they put themselves back to sleep, and I drift back off. Other times, their whimper turns into a wail: They’re up, they’re pissed, and they need one of us—whomever’s turn it is. Because of this, even if it’s Hubby’s turn to get up, my sleep is constantly interrupted. And with Hubby getting home late and the babes waking pretty consistently just before sunrise (little beastlings,) both of us have been consistently deprived of quality sleep for six solid months. We literally, and we mean literally, haven’t had an uninterrupted full night of sleep since our hellspawn crossed onto this plane.

I (we) have never experienced this sort of chronic lack of sleep before. It doesn’t feel like pulling an all-nighter or having a long, crazy weekend. That is simple exhaustion, easily remedied by a night of rest. At this point, I feel like parts of my mind are fading away. I have moments where I can barely form a coherent sentence. People have had to repeat the same thing to me three times before I grasp what they said. I forget little things—I’ve boiled water for the same cup of tea a record five times before I remembered to steep the damned thing—and bigger things—once it took me ten solid minutes to remember how to turn on the rear windshield wipers on my car. I ask stupid questions and make stupid oversights; I can’t problem-solve like I normally can. I repeat myself constantly, constantly, constantly. I don’t want to be callous in comparing what I’m experiencing to dementia, but I can only imagine this is similar to how that disease feels at the very beginning.

For someone like me, who arrogantly prides themselves on their wit, quickness, and ability to listen, this has been a nightmarish experience. It’s also hard to have such little energy that all I can bring myself to do when the babes go to sleep is sit on the couch and listen to an audiobook while occasionally playing Stardew Valley. My messy house and neglected hobbies/passions ache like splinters in my heart, but by the barely dying light of 7pm, I’ve lost all capacity for higher cognitive function.

I almost made this one a separate point, but it ties directly to sleep-deprivation: I miss being ‘me;’ my hobbies/passions/projects for which I just don’t have the energy. Hell, I hate not having the energy to dye my hair, put makeup on, put thought into my clothing. On really bad days, I feel like a shell, barely functioning, barely thinking, barely existing.

3. Always “On.”

            So, I’m an ambivert. Yes, it’s a real thing. Like an extrovert, I adore people and crave, nay, need, social contact. However, like an introvert, social contact can exhaust me, and I need time to myself to recharge my “batteries.” Whenever I go to a family function, a professional event, or something that requires me to be anything but my candid, overly-opinionated, foul-mouthed self, I’m especially exhausted. I call that being “On” because I have to remain extremely aware of what I wear, what I say (and don’t say,) how I behave. It’s not that I put on a false persona or anything, I just have to hold back a lot, or play a specific role, and it can be draining. After an extended time of being “on,” I need extended chill time to recuperate.

            Well, I’ve been “on,” in a sense, for months.

            Babies are little sponges; they absorb every sound, sight, and texture around them. A few days ago, my son spent a ridiculous amount of time exploring just the tag of a toy of his. But what babies truly love to watch, hear, and interact with more than anything in the world is…yep…you, the parent.

            As I write this, we’re in a bit of a tough spot in the babes’ development. They’re just starting to be able to explore things on their own—grab their own toys, etc—but they can’t sit up or move yet. Their toys occupy their focus for a while, but not long enough to, say, drink a cup of tea before it cools, or do dishes, or fold laundry. Nope, we’re they’re favourite toy. They stare at us expectantly pretty much any time they’re awake, waiting for us to talk to them, sing to them, dance in front of them, pick them up, swing them, rock them, cuddle them. I can’t even so much as check a text without the babes’ eyes on me. I can’t leave the room without them crying (they’re beginning to understand distance now.)

            I adore interacting with my babes. I truly do. But being the center of the universe for two enraptured little screamers for most of the week—Hubby and I are alone with them most days--is a lot. It’s a whole new level of exhausting, and, oddly, it’s a lot of pressure. Suddenly I’m very, very aware of how often and how long I’m on my phone or watching TV. So in addition to playing professor, bard, and jester, I begin feeling guilty about my screen time, because the babes are absorbing that habit, too. In addition, household activities that I was able to do little by little throughout the day are impossible. Dishes pile up three times as fast as they used to (I’m not going to pretend I used to do my dishes religiously, but now it’s so much worse so much sooner.) Clutter accumulates. Cooking, one of my favourite ways to de-stress, is impossible. The latter leads to rotting produce, which leads to wasted food, wasted money, and guilt. Our to-do lists just sit gathering dust. Hubby and I count it as a good day when we get a load of laundry to the basement, through the washer and dryer, and maybe even back upstairs.

            I could go on and on and on about this one, but I hope I’ve made my point. This is one of those instances where having multiples makes an already stressful period, just, fucking madness.

2. Missing my Husband

            My husband and I are, according to those around us who are constantly on the verge of vomiting, a bit attached. To say we enjoy each other’s company would be a massive understatement. Even before babes, we would text each other “I miss you” during work. We’re very physically affectionate when we’re out and about, holding hands, kissing, cuddling. Our favourite wind-down activity is to walk together.

            Right now, our work schedules give us three days with no time together whatsoever. In a week, that isn’t unendurable, but our time together now is entirely focused on the babes. It’s not a bad thing. We love being a little family and we treasure experiencing parenthood side by side. But much of our interaction is interrupted and stifled. We can’t hold hands when we walk anymore, or cuddle up on the couch, because at least one of us is usually occupied with one or both offspring. Our weekend time together is split into shifts: Hubby watches the babes and I fold the ever-growing mountain of baby laundry. I watch the babes and Hubby tackles the ever-growing mountain of dishes.

            We still see a lot of each other, but we, the overly-attached sickening couple that we are, definitely feel the difference with our focus being shifted to twin care. I remember one Saturday, we took the dog and babes out in the stroller for a walk. I looked at my husband, unable to hold his hand because he was pushing the stroller, unable to walk side by side because our Boston barrels ahead.

            “This sounds stupid,” I said. “I mean, we’ve spent the entire day together, but…I miss you. Is that ridiculous?”

            Hubby shook his head. “I feel the exact same way.”

            This is a small gripe in the grand scheme of things, and one from a huge pedestal of privilege: We’re new parents in a happy and solid relationship. But it’s big for me. My husband is my “Person.” He’s the one to whom I vent, with whom I face or hide from the challenges of the world. We well and truly enjoy—and crave—spending time together. Even this small shift in focus is heavily felt. We’ve lost sleep chatting in bed because it was the only real time we had to talk to each other. I’ve been nearly late to work because we’re trying to squeeze much-needed conversation into the few-minute span between walking the dog and me leaving in the early morning. I’m grateful that this is a problem that will absolutely improve as the babes grow more independent. Hell, when the little beastlings hit puberty, it’s probably going to be an Us vs. Them situation!

1. No one Really “Gets It.”

Still one of my favourite pics of A.

            This is a big one that is amplified by having multiples. I remember when a family member visited once. The house was in relative disarray—a few days of dirty dishes in the sink, floor unswept, a few burp cloths, discarded sweaters, and rejected baby toys strewn about, bed unmade. To us at this point, that’s clean as fuck. To this intensely fastidious relative, however, it was like an episode of Hoarders. After insisting on cleaning our kitchen; grumbling all the way; my relative gave me some, cough, good-natured advice.

            “I know you have your hands full,” they said, “but the babies go to bed at, what, 7:30? That’s plenty of time to do the dishes and straighten up before bed. You just need to do it, you know? Just get into the habit of cleaning as you go. Then it never gets overwhelming!”

            I nodded, but inside, I was on the verge of tears. Where did I even start? How did I even begin to explain to this person that after six months without a single night’s sleep and consequential loss of focus and brain power, after six months of weathering constant fear and stress brought on partly by the newness of it all and partly by my faulty brain chemistry, after a full day of constantly holding, changing, feeding, playing with, singing to, dancing for, and soothing wailing babes, that all I want to do by 7:30 is sit on the porch swing and soak up the brief moment of sweet silence, brew myself a cup of herbal tea or have a Fentimann’s Rose Lemonade, and attempt to decompress by playing a mindless, comforting video game, or, when I have a fraction of extra energy, play around with my watercolours while passively absorbing a story through audiobook? How did I try to tell this person that I haven’t had the brain power to write, the energy to dance, the mental capacity to blog or do photography or anything else by which I define myself since my pregnancy, and spending every single day doing nothing but pure responsibilities; work, baby-wrangling, chores; would plunge me into a sorrow and loss of self that might take me years to crawl out of? That yes, I understand the importance of a clean home, and the guilt of having a week’s worth of dishes sprawled across my kitchen weighs on me like a boulder on my chest, but that yes, cleaning my house after I finally, finally have an hour in my day to be myself, alone, is too much for me?

            I just nodded.

            Having a baby is hard. Spending so much time alone with a baby is hard. Twins are harder. It’s not a contest, just a fact. And for some people, even seasoned parents of many singleton children, it’s just not something you can fully grasp. It’s like trying to understand the full-body change of pregnancy to one who’s never been pregnant, or new parenthood to the childless. You can grasp it on an intellectual level, maybe even empathize to a degree, but you can’t, can’t, can’t even scratch the surface of understanding unless you’ve gone through it yourself.

Another aesthetic paragraph break. Mama’s on a roll.

I’m not meaning to place myself high up on some exclusive pedestal or insinuate that I am in any way better than a singleton parent or someone who doesn’t want kids. I’m just pointing out that there are some experiences you can’t understand without going through it yourself. And it sucks when people like this relative lean on their own truth (sorry to use that buzzword) and use it to dole out little nuggets of criticism with a smattering of “advice” (I can clean when the babies sleep?! Eureka! The thought would never have occurred to me without your ingenious insight! You are a god among men and I am unworthy of your ineffable brilliance!) It sucks when friends complain, even good-naturedly, that we’ve “disappeared” into parenthood, or poke fun at us for being anxious about taking trips with the babies or spending our first night without them.

I’m known for my self-deprecation, both in humour and in sincerity, of downplaying my accomplishments and emphasizing faults, but I will say that I have been giving these two little human pieces of myself everything I have. Everything. My time, my energy, my body, my (metaphorical) heart, my brain power. It is incredibly difficult for me to cut myself slack, but I am doing it this first year with my sweet hellspawn.

A mother on a Mothers of Multiples forum I’m a part of (because you really, really do need to have a few people around who do “get it,”) said it best: The first year is survival. All of these Top Worst Things are temporary. Some will get worse before they get better, but they will get better. The babes will grow and learn and become independent creatures who can move, feed, entertain, and even protect themselves. But this first year, they are two tiny lumps of completely and utterly dependent clay, and dancing, dishes, friends, and ambitions crumble before their needs.

Full stop.

            See you next week--and by "week," I mean "whenever it gets here"--for some much-needed positivity!