You know all those times when people saw you with your newborn and were like, “ermagherd, baby legs, I miss that phase so much, that phase was the best.”
And you understandably wanted to throat punch them but since you were now a grown-up parenty person you instead were like, “wtf are you even talking about, Karen? This stay-puff-pillsbury-baby is a no-sleep, projectile pooping nightmare. Are they cute as hell? Fuck yes they are. But they also make me want to run off and live in the hot sweaty silence of a desert yurt every few minutes.”
And then other people were all, “Don’t worry, it gets easier.” And your parents were like,
“Awww. It’s okay honey. It gets better. I promise.”
And remember how that made you feel better because you were literally about to pull your hair out? So you slumped onto the floor under the pack-and-play and were like, “oh thank god.”
But then a few sleepless days later you were pacing around the parent group all like, “Ya’ll are liars, that’s what ya’ll are. Why tf did none of you all tell me how hard this is. Sneaky mfers. You just wanted turtle-baby-chest-snuggles and another sleep-deprived commiserator, didn’t you? Well I tell you what. It had best be getting better pretty damn quick, cause I got a blow out onesie in a ziploc and I’m not afraid to use it.”
But then you finally got a night of sleep, and when you woke up you no longer felt the urge to burn humanity to the ground.
And hey, remember when someone had the balls of steel to tell you that the newborn phase is nothing in comparison to the teething phase, and your partner had to grab the diaper bag before you grabbed the forgotten blow out onesie?
But then you hit the teething phase and you were like, “what? how… how were they right? Tell me how this is possible. How? Whoa now. Hold up. Is that a tooth?
Is that a fucking baby fang??
Omg. It is.
HONEY!!!! Come quick before the gums change their mind! BOOPY HAS A TOOTH!!!”
But then it got worse again because apparently babies have to poke out all of their freaking fangs in a rolling non-stop cycle of inconsolable wailing and baby drool and then people started to wish you luck when they saw you in public, all coming up and offering sympathy unprompted, like, “yeah, teething is a rough phase. Don’t worry, it’ll get better. You got this.”
And you believed them.
Because it had to right?
Did that happen?
No.
No. It. Did. Not.
Instead, you had a mini-existential crisis and a month-long meltdown.
Then you went and found that one book we all get from Amazon. But not for real-real.
You got it as an ebook at 2:51am because that is when you buy this book as a parent. It’s like a rule.
And then you read the age-sorted lists in the appendix because that’s all you have time and energy for.
You know, THAT one.
Its that wonder phase one that talks about the “regression” phases and “brain growth spurts” and all the reasons you shouldn’t be mad at your baby for being a little punk sometimes.
And then angels sang when you saw that “wonder-book” tells you the wonder-phases should end around the 20 month mark.
End? Is that the mythical gets-better phase?
False hope successfully imparted, you then dug in your dry, cracked, barefoot heels into the gummed-biscuit-shellacked playmat and you were like, “Right. I can do this. We can do this. Right bubs? Course we can. Come on you adorable sleep-stealing drool monster, let’s go pwn this gauntlet. And oh my sweet jeebus. Look at you. You are too cute in your wonder-gauntlet sweatbands. Who has lost their sanity but loves you and wants to bite your cute wittle cheeks? It’s me! Yes that’s right! I do! I do! Okay you adorable little chonk. Let’s do this.”
And then, do you remember? How you busted your ass in that wonder-phase gauntlet of hell but finally got to the 20-month mark and although it was more like 20-month-plus-9-weeks-of-unlabeled-phasery-petering-out, you looked up at your wee snuggle-booper-bug (yes, up. Because you were cleaning up the full plate of lasagna they just price-is-right-palm-slapped out of your hand when you walked by their highchair, remember?)… and you begged them to not do you wrong after their birthday. Which you totally knew was coming up so fast, and definitely won’t plan last minute this time.
“So, booper-bug, can we keep it chill with the Terrible twos? Can we agree on that? Yes? Cool, calm, collected twos? Terrific twos! Am I right?! Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Now, stop giving your plastic bib to the dog.”
And then off you went to conquer age two.
Remember how you arrived on tip-toe, got a good extra long false sense of security going, and then BAM, terrible twos, threenager-ing, the f*cking-fours, five-year-old sleep regression, and SLAM you have hit the insufferable sixes.
That gauntlet had turned into the longest ninja warrior course there ever was, remember?
But you shot up that warp wall anyway didn’t you? Expertly dragging your sixer by his tablet-handle because #screentime waits for no one. Then you danced over in your stained sweatpants to do your own Bob-barker-button slam. Because guess what?
You just dropped wee boople off at kindergarten.
Wait, you did what!?
Haaahhh!!!!
HAAAHHH!!
The crowd goes wild!
HAAAHHH!!!
You did it!
You made it to the “it gets better” phase!!!
But then …
The sound of your child’s screams reached your ears all the way from the elementary school.
Remember?
The imaginary crowd then rubbed their necks and didn’t make eye contact with you did they. Some guffawing voice then asked,
“How do you like having so much time off now that the kids are in school?”
Everyone in the fake crowd glared at them and then rolled their eyes when they realized it was that old lady who haunts your dreams. That war grandma. The one who raised 15 kids in the 1940s. She is yet again laughing her ass off at everyone, but mostly you. Then, after she stopped, she wiped her tears away with a classic “ahhahh haaa, ahaha. *ahem* whew. That was a doozie. Come on everybody. It’s time to fess up.”
And then your heart stopped because all of your imaginary-crowd-friends looked away.
“But. You guys said it gets better. It’s supposed to get better right?”
Everyone, even that c-word of a war granny looked at you with bit lips and a grimace.
“Come on. There’s still a not-feeling-like-I-want-to tear-my-hair-out-24/7 break for a while. Right?
RIGHT?!”
The crowd then dispersed in solemn solidarity and while they drifted into their respective drop-off-line-from-hades-van-parade someone turned to you, patted you on the back and handed you a warehouse sized box of generic cold medicine labeled “elementary school starter kit.”
You sobbed for a while.
Feeling like you got played. It’s ok. We all felt that way when we went through it.
It’s normal to feel played, because, we were.
But like us, you consoled yourself with all those construction paper masterpieces that for some evil reason can’t be folded or stored but are so goddamn amazing that we find a place for them and will never throw them away.
Oh, and then you get school photos. Holy cuteness. You cry a lot when you get the school photos. Because damn, you have an Angel. You saw your grown little nugget all combed and smiling and being the best goddamned photo-taker in the whole goddamned photo-freaking world.
Then you glanced up and they were somehow 8.
It’s ok.
We don’t remember those two years either. No one does.
We can call it the Bermuda Triangle of parenting. It’s just a hamster wheel of bowling alley birthday parties, ignored fundraiser flyers, bungled school breaks, and cough medicine anyway.
So. Much. Cough Medicine.
But don’t worry.
I know you will remember what comes next. ‘Cause guess what buttercup?
You know how they didn’t tell us about all those things they didn’t tell us about when planning to have a kid?
Well, there is more of that.
And it starts to get reaaaal rocky right smack dab where I’m at.
ADRENARCHE!
From 6–9 years old, there is a phase called adrenarche. Did you know this?
“What,” you ask me hesitantly, “what is this hair-ball hack of a far-to-close-to-puberty-sounding word?”
Well.
It’s puberty.
Your kid hit puberty.
What?
Don’t look at me like that.
Pssh. You thought that didn’t happen until like 10 or 11? Well…
SO DID I.
Apparently, while we were wading through all those aww-I-miss-that-phases of public patronization, some scientist did some science and their science spat out some new sciency facts that show kids go through a big hormone surge before the puberty hormone surge.
Double hormones all the way.
WHELP. Ok.
Fine.
No one knew, right?
NO.
NOT right.
It’s the biggest fucking parenting lie ever to tell a new parent “it gets better,” but then fail to mention the teen years start at fucking age 8!
Yeah. They knew.
Theeeeey kneeewwww.
All those parents and family members. All those so-called-friends. And everyone that raised all those generations of children that came before yours.
They fecking knew. The liars.
“BUT IF THEY KNEW WHY DIDN’T THEY TELL ME!?”
Hey, hey. Shhh, it’s ok. No, no, you don’t have to apologize for yelling.
Your anger is perfectly understandable and completely justified, my fellow woeful parental pariah.
Here’s my take.
They didn’t tell us for the same reason no-one told them:
Sometimes, it isn’t a big deal. Sometimes it is.
Every kid is different and they truly don’t write books for this shit.
No, no, those books are crap and you know it.
No one wrote a book for YOUR little drama-tween.
Remember when all of those people were saying, “aww, you poor thing. It’ll get better.”
Yeah, they said that because that is what we say.
Is it true? Fuck no.
Do they know it’s not true?
Yup, every fucking one of them.
WHY?!
Well… What are you going to do, tell a stressed out parent that it never gets better?
That every single second of your child’s life will be equally hard in a myriad of different unlistable and unpredictable ways?
That even after they are out of the house things aren’t ever “better” because you inevitably end up just pacing through their empty room, trying to reassemble your broken brain and — if you are lucky — fit back into that pre-kid-personality that has been lying crumpled under the changing table for almost two decades.
And you’ll do that on repeat until the split second that you get a text from them.
Then you’ll chuck all that shit in the air and run to snuggle their old pillow while you sit on their old bed like a classic gossiping teen who is wearing leg warmers, braces, and bedazzled acid-wash.
You’ll put yourself back together after you’re done teaching them how to find a good dentist.
Oh, and after giving them all their medical records, and school records.
And clean out their stuff from the house, and the closets, and the basement, and the attic, and the living room, and the cars.
And actually, screw it, maybe you’ll just wait to fix your brain and go find that “it gets better” part after they get their car fixed.
Nah, after that new date.
No, the wedding. Definitely after the wedding.
Or …well fuck, when the hell did time start going so damn fast?
How about you just wait until they have kids of their own. That makes sense. Right?
Then, as you watch them go through those first few months of pregnancy hormones and pre-baby stress, emotionally hold their hand as they get scary tests done that never used to be a thing when we had them, and go give them a hug after the baby inevitably breaks their brain for the first time ever (and your heart subsequently swells so large you think it’s going to pop a gold frame like the grinch), and before you know what the hell you are doing you say,
“Awww. It’s okay honey. It gets better. I promise.”
Because it does.
It’s a lie, yes. But only half a lie.
It DOES get better. Just not in the way we sapiens ever talk about things getting “better.”
And not in the way you can see it BEING better until you have a few of those high highs under your belt to carry you through the valleys.
I think. No, I hope.
But I’ll be honest. Even if my particular take is correct, this shit won’t be easy. Not for me, nor anyone like me.
For many of us, especially those of us with 2E AuDHD brains and the resulting far more challenging 2E breed of stay-puff-dough-babies, those high-highs are few and far between.
For many of us they will take forever to get going.
Like, A LOT longer than it was supposed to take. Longer than seems ethical for someone so sleep deprived and parentally burnt out.
But the highs do come.
And for those brief moments, it doesn’t only get “better.”
It gets indescribably, close to holy, expansive, timeless, endless, and barreling rush of joy.
And then it’s gone. And you drift back down into the valley.
The thing is, the highs just get higher and higher as your boople-baby grows. Doubles as they complicate every aspect of life. Triples until the highs are so high that somehow, inexplicably they make up for every single one of even the deepest of lows.
While we are in those moments it IS better.
And then it won’t be until it is again.
Because better is a phase.
A wonderful, no-book-to-teach-you-how-to-find-it phase that regresses and progresses just like every phase in your life.
Sure.
We could just not lie to parents and say, “Enjoy the ride, it’s going to be really fucking shitty for like an unhealthy amount of the time, but there are some bad ass loops that will make you want to puke happiness rainbows all over the world.”
But we can’t just go off and tell that to someone who has literally crashed into an existential abyss and is now getting metaphorically coated by puked up rainbows of parental happiness spewing from all those temporarily soaring above them.
We just can’t do that. We tell them, it gets better. Because anything else is giving too much angry granny.
And then, once they have had a few rides worth of highs…
… we as a collective apologize for humanity as a whole for not having our shit together enough to come up with words that properly convey the complex phenomenon of feels that will be raising your own little pillsbury-chest-turtle. Can’t verbally illustrate how that little boop will end up making you so goddamned giddy about life that someday you will look back and laugh at that time they spilled apple juice on the family cat while it was on your lap and landed you in the ER with diapers strapped to your profusely shredded and bleeding arm while you wait to go get stitches.**
Because it’s all just a phase. And it will always get better.
We promise.
**This specific scenario didn’t happen to me. It is a fictional combination of a few moments that I put into one funny image. It sounded better than the situation I had written down in my first draft which told the true story of how my two son’s had head slammed me in the throat so many times that it eventually fractured my larynx which resulted in me losing my voice for two weeks and getting pneumonia three times over the course of four months. 0/10 would not recommend. That story was apparently not very funny according to my friends. So, I wrote up apple juice cat. But its existence has bugged me. I’m not good with misleading people (see my blog for candid confessions) so after a couple of months of this being online you now also get the truth. 🙃
Okay, how about... It gets better because one day you will forget all the bad stuff and only remember those amazing good moments? I have an empty nest now. Sometimes I love the peace and quite... and sometimes I really miss the chaos of having children around.