note to pre-pregnant self

Brilliant posting: http://www.scarymommy.com/a-letter-to-my-pregnant-child-less-self/. I always say, I never knew as much about child-rearing as when I didn't have kids.

Incredible how humbling becoming a parent is.

I used to fight the clichés, refuse to even consider that I might become like my mother, that it's not REALLY the "toughest job in the world"; that there might be anything worth "wait and see" before making my blanket decisions and judgments on how I would act and react in all the various challenges of child-rearing. Now, I see what others see as the craziest acts of parenting, and I don't bat an eyelid. As a colleague says, when she sees a mom spanking her kid, she feels sorry for the MOM wondering what craziness was it that made her get to that point in PUBLIC.

I do think the article might need an addendum: the judgments return to older people whose children are grown. A curtain is drawn over their memories and they remember the good old days with a mixture of hubris and nostalgia, often with little empathy for the difficulties of the daily grind.

I hope my blog, and my near-incessant woe-recordings will help me remember just how tough it was, and help me be a kind "older" mom when the time comes.