Few things make us really stop and consider life and our relationship to it the same way becoming a parent does. All of a sudden all of those things that we have blindly just accepted are now in question, as though peeling through the first part of our lives will open up a world of knowledge that we feel we need. Of course, this period of questioning and evaluating is bound to change at least a few of the relationships we have in our lives if not all of them.
The mysterious door is opening up for you and of course this means that you are bound to find that new things are waiting for you. The changes that are going to happen will be grand and huge, and a lot of those changes will simply be an internal experience. While we can physically prepare for the arrival of our first child, we can not always prepare for the onslaught of questions that our mind starts to pelt at us.
We can feel prepared as we take the Evenflo convertible car seat out of the box and get it ready for its maiden voyage to the hospital. This physical act of being prepared doesn’t tarnish the nagging thoughts we’ve been having of our own childhood. Maybe we should bother to confront our parents about the tactics they employed when it came to discipline.
Neatly stacking the baby bath towels in the linen closet doesn’t prevent us from questioning whether our best friend and the behaviors that go with them is really in our new family’s best interest. Yet we can often find that the more we keep the new baby belongings in order and ready to go the more in control we feel despite our need to examine every relationship.
Thoughts of our compatibility with our significant other do not quiet just because we have the baby toiletries set up beside the cute little baby bath tubs. What happens if we are walking into parenthood with the wrong partner? What if we were really meant to be with someone else and yet we bring a child into the world together? The thoughts can be overloading, taxing, and not always even all that centered in reality.
Questions at this stage are part of preparing. Your relationship dynamics may very well change. They may even change drastically from one relationship to another. It’s a normal part of evolving into a part.
Other people in your life are also likely to change as your child enters their life. The best you can do is operate at your level best every day. One day at a time is the most you can really take it on, so why try to take on months at a time?