Before becoming a parent you have all of these grand dreams of how perfect your little one will be and how awesome of a mom you will be. For the most part, both of those statements ring true. Your child is born and you look into their eyes, they look back into yours and smile. You exchange coos and all is right in the world. Then, someone decides that it would be a fantastic idea to let out a burp and shower you with mixture of baby drool and milk.
That’s when you realize being a parent is going to be a long, messy road.
Let’s not get started on mommy brain. Or, as we call it in our house, “parent brain,” since dad suffers from it as well. Mommy brain -as I choose not to throw Mr. Nicholes under the bus at the moment -had me perfecting my middle-of-the-night changing regimen down to a science. Then our twins came.
With my singleton children, I could go in, not turn on a blaring light, pick them up, nurse them, change a diaper and put them back into bed, seemingly all with my eyes closed. Not so with those twins that made their way into our hearts and home. I’m pretty sure that I fed the same kid over and over again, for a couple of nights in a row. I’m also sure that, quite often, I changed only one kid and not the other.
Lastly -and I’m only admitting this because there really is no proof left to incriminate me and the twins’ current memories are all of how great their dad and I are -one night, I went through the entire nighttime procedure only to put the twins back to bed with . . . no diapers on.
Yep, you read that right. In all of my sleep deprivation, I cleaned them thoroughly only to put them into a clean bed without anything to catch the (literal) crap that only seems to appear while their bodies are in slumber. Please also remember that they were both breastfed, so yeah, there’s that.
Finding that surprise the next morning let me know two things -perfect parents do not exist (because we all think we’re pretty darned close, right?) and that some things are better handled with a laugh. Especially when dealing with children and diaper changing. Now imagine maniacal laughter as you’re cleaning up cribs and slippery children for the morning.
To this day, I always double check to make sure that all bottoms are encased, and protected.
For their sanity and mine.