“Can you believe your baby is already one year old?”
Some variation of this question has been asked so many times, always implying how fast my baby’s first year must have gone. In my experience, it couldn’t be farther from the truth. My baby’s first year has been the longest year of my life. And that may not be a bad thing.
I’ll start off by saying I love my baby more than anything and can’t imagine life without him. This past year feeling so long is not an indication that I didn’t enjoy the year. Rather, this has been my longest year because I have grown and changed more in this year than ever in my life.
Parenthood has been the biggest change of my life. I think I have learned more and changed more in the past year than I did in all 4 years of college. So no, this year didn’t fly by. I don’t think it’s possible to go through this much change and have it go by quickly.
I will share another example that I have thought of related to this question. Imagine you have an elderly parent or grandparent that suddenly needs constant care, and you become the caregiver. Imagine that you have to quit your job or at least alter your work schedule dramatically. You now have to wake up multiple times every night to care for your relative. You will struggle to take care of your basic needs of eating, bathing, and sleeping because your family member has constant needs. You will not go out or see friends nearly as much, because you need to make sure your family member is in bed and cared for. If you do go out, you will need to spend a lot of time preparing all the items they need while out and make sure they are fed and changed before you leave.
If taking care of this relative nonstop became your reality, would that first year go by quickly?
This post is not meant to talk about the difficulties of parenting and having a baby. I have just been asked this question so much, and went through a phase where I felt guilty about feeling like this past year has been the longest of my life. I’m sure some other moms feel the same.
When your whole world changes, it is surely an adjustment period. One that I am still going through a year later. So to answer your question, yes, I absolutely can believe my baby is already one year old, and I sure am proud to have gotten us both to this point.
