What would you warn new parents about that you learned the hard way?

As suggested here.

You don't need to change a newborn's nappy every time they do a wee, particularly in the middle of the night! <doh>

Yeah, I wish I'd known that in retrospect.

get your plastics paranoia in order before delivery so you don't have to rebuy everything as post-partum fear-of-everything mounts.

That this bit (when you're a new parent) is the easiest bit. Sure you not getting enough sleep, sure you're tired, sure there's a load of washing and feeding and poo but WAIT UNTIL THEY START MOVING AROUND...

oh shit

Wait until they can have tantrums, throw stuff around, generally do everything you don't want them to do, BUT CANNOT YET BE REASONED WITH!!!!!!!

^^^^ we got a good dose of this at 5am this morning. weee!

b-b-but everyone keeps telling me that everything keeps getting easier!

The only piece of advice I ever give to new parents is prepare to be unprepared, expect the unexpected, you're not going to know what to do and no one else is going to be able to tell you exactly what you should be doing. Humans have been winging it for 10,000 years and for you to think that you'll be different is crazy talk.

I'd say the reason it gets easier is because you get more used to being clueless. For example, our Beeps refuses to eat dinner these days. Time was, we'd go nuts and get upset because our daughter was going malnourished and social services would take her away. Now we realize that, yeah, we still have to get her to eat something, but she's far from starving to death and will eventually eat something.

*calls social services*

"What you got to come in with no warrant for?"

Yeah, I'm at least getting some confidence that, okay, I might not know exactly what I'm doing, but I've managed to keep her alive so far. She's easily twice the size she was at birth, she's clearly developing her motor skills, brains and personality. I can do this.

xpost

I'd say the reason it gets easier is because you get more used to being clueless.

otm x 100

the only really useful advice i think i got from anyone pre-kid (and then again, pre-two-kids) was, just know that you're going to make most of it up as you go along. that doesn't mean to ignore the experts and the advice books and the websites and all the rest -- those things are actually helpful -- but just that day to day and moment to moment, it's a whole lot of instinctive decision-making. you are not going to be the perfect parent or have the perfect child.

the other thing i'd say isn't a warning at all -- it's just, for all the hassle, it's really a whole lot of fun. i spent a lot of time with the kids today, being sunday, and i couldn't even start to count the number of times they made me smile or laugh. every day has its own little trove of those moments, and they more than compensate for the crying and whining and obstinance and sheer incomprehensibility.

also, it goes really fast. our youngest just turned 1, and i can't even believe it's already a year.

That breast-feeding just plain hurts for awhile.

tipsy it's funny - I must be alone in NOT feeling that time flies. L. is four months old and it feels like it's been FOREVER. I am crazy impatient - I want him to be able to tell jokes and beat me at chess. I mean, I'm not complaining. But pregnancy, birth.. it all seems ages and ages ago.

Do you think this whole "time flies" thing is due to babies changing right after you've gotten used to them? That there's an irrational feeling that one's baby will stay the way he or she is for awhile?

*each one is different*

The first three months or so, they're hardly human. Those months, at least with #1, were brutal. I'm glad I had no warnings about this because I doubt I'd have wanted to enter, pun intended, such a situation.

The "time flies" advice is pretty underrated too. I remember Beeps screaming at the top of her lungs and me trying to rock her the first night she was home, and I thought, "It's going to be like this for the next two years."

Ha. More like "the next three months". She still cries and we have our sleepless nights every once in awhile, but nothing, and I mean nothing like those first few months that lasted less than a college semester.

yeah agreed, it starts out slow. and of course it depends on the kid, in terms of how much they knock the wind out of you every day. but in my experience at least, it picks up speed pretty quick. like some einsteinian thing where it gets faster as they get older. and i also think with the second kid everything seems to be happening much faster, probably partly because of not obsessing so much over all the details.

(and of course it's largely a retrospective sense -- things seem like they happened really fast, after they've happened. the first time i remember it really hitting me was at z's third birthday party where i was just momentarily dumbfounded that it had already been three years and he was 1/6th of the way to 18...)