Five Cliché Quotes To Sum Up Parenting

I sat down to write tonight and realised it’s already 9.30pm. On Sunday. And it’s nearly December. It got me to thinking about some of the cliché quotes we hear and use as parents. You know the ones I mean, things like…

“Time flies”

But seriously, where the hell does the time go? Our little boy is 28 weeks old today (so 28+1 when this posts). It feels like only a second ago that he was born. He’s growing at a rate of knots at the moment and it feels like the milestones are flying past; he’s got teeth, he’s eating foods (just!), he’s half a year old already.

It’s not all been wonderful. We have been through the hardest of times. We’ve sat up through the night, struggling to get even an hours worth of sleep. We’ve been rushed to hospital to spend a week there at just a fortnight old. We worried we would lose someone we’d barely gotten to know.

“The days are long but the weeks are short”

One of my favourite quotes. As a parent, it’s particularly true. Sometimes it’s not the hardest of times that get you. It’s the mundane. The day to day and the knowledge that sometimes, it’s not even 9am and you know it’s going to be the longest of days. The adjustment to having a person completely and utterly reliant on you to do everything can be overwhelming and claustrophobic and nothing can prepare you for it. But those days that take forever, pass in a blur when you look back.

“You’ve never felt a love like it”

I thought I would do anything for my family or my husband. I thought I adored my dog. We genuinely repeatedly compared her to our friends children. Now I look back and cringe. What the HELL were we thinking. Yes, I love the dog. I love my husband. I love my family. But the love I feel for my child?! All of that pales in comparison. I never knew I could love someone as much. Even in the middle of the night when I’m exhausted and he’s insistent on fighting sleep. I love him ever so slightly less but still…

“They grow up so fast”

My least favourite. Why? I’ve said it a million times and heard it a million times more. I hate it because it’s true. I thought it wouldn’t happen to me; yes, I knew he’d grow up but I didn’t really want to acknowledge it. But in the blink of an eye we’ve gone from being parents-to-be, to parents to a newborn, to parents to a boy. Today we cleared out his cot (previously a makeshift wardrobe pile!) ready for him to start sleeping in there. Yesterday he sat in a big boy seat in the trolley. He can move himself around a room in a semi crawl – albeit backwards.

For every time that I’ve dragged my heels at weaning, held back on letting him go into his own room or held on to him to stop him from racing away from me, I’ve looked forward to the future. I can’t wait for his first Christmas (although I’m terrified that the Christmas tree may not survive his grabby hands!). I long for the day that he utters his first words. I’m counting the seconds until he’s on the move. So it’s only fitting to end with the biggest of cliché quotes, cross our fingers and keep plodding on because…

“The best is yet to come” 

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