Preparing the Parent: The Part of Pregnancy We Rarely Talk About

I spent my twenties and a good part of my thirties as a nanny for families across Seattle. Most of them were first-time parents, and they were prepared. The car seat was installed weeks early. The sleep books were read. There were lists, and there were lists for the lists.

Then the baby came home, and the questions started. Is this normal? What do I do when she won't stop crying? How do I handle this?

These were smart, loving people who had planned for everything. What I noticed, standing in their kitchens, was that all of the planning had been about the baby. Nobody had prepared the person who was becoming the parent.

Years later I became that person myself, and I understood it from the inside.

You arrive with a history

By the time we have children, we've spent decades learning how relationships work. We know what love looked like in our house. We know what happened when someone got angry, whether feelings were welcome at the table, what a mistake cost you, and whether it was safe to ask for help. Some of us learned early that being "good" meant being responsible for everyone else's mood.

Some of that is exactly what we want to hand down. Some of it isn't. And some of it we don't know we're carrying until we're parenting, usually at a moment when we're too tired to be anyone but ourselves.

So when I say prepare yourself, I don't mean make a list of everything your parents got wrong, or resolve your whole childhood before your due date. I mean something more modest. You won't become a brand-new person in the delivery room. You're bringing yourself with you: your history, your expectations, the way you handle stress, your nervous system, the way you learned to give and receive love. It's worth knowing what's in the bag.

Babies introduce us to ourselves

You can read the books and take the classes and make the plans. Then a tiny person shows up with a temperament and a nervous system of their own, and you are tired in a way you've never been tired. Your schedule isn't yours. Someone needs you constantly. You're figuring out feeding and sleep and work and your relationship and who you even are now, all at the same time.

There will be moments when you feel more love than you knew you had. There will be moments when you're completely overwhelmed. And one day you will open your mouth and your mother or your father will come out of it, and you'll think, oh. There you are.

No amount of preparation heads all of that off, and I don't think it should. Parenthood is supposed to change you.

Prepared is not the same as perfect

You don't need to be perfectly regulated before you have a baby. You don't need to heal every old wound, or know exactly what kind of parent you'll be. Your child will have opinions about that anyway.

What helps is smaller than that. Start noticing your patterns. Pay attention to what you do when you're stressed or flooded. Think about what you want to carry forward from how you were raised and what you'd like to set down. Think about the support you'll need, and practice asking for it before you're desperate.

None of this makes parenting easy. What it gives you is a little more choice in the moments that aren't.

Two people are being born

I think about it the way people think about premarital counseling. You do the work before you need it, so that when you need it, you already have something to stand on.

A baby is on the way, and so is a parent. That second person deserves some preparation too. I don't mean preparing to do everything right. I mean getting ready for a relationship that is going to stretch you, surprise you, set you off, and change you, and knowing yourself well enough to notice when something deeper is going on.

Becoming a parent doesn't happen in one moment. It's a relationship that keeps changing both of you for the rest of your lives.

So build the crib. Take the birth class. Research the stroller, and fold the impossibly tiny clothes. Then save a little room on the list for yourself. You're part of what you're preparing for.

// Prepairent

Preparing ourselves for the relationships that matter most.