And now? What I need to do?

Waiting for a baby is an extremely exciting and beautiful time in the life of future parents. You read and read, you inform yourself, you document yourself, you are avid of any tip that someone who is already a parent is selling you, believing that when you are put in front of the fulfilled fact you will be prepared for any situation and yet … yet, after what the miracle happens and when you get home, you feel completely and completely unprepared. Any theory goes wrong and you get the impression that nothing applies to you from what you thought you knew.

Sneeze too often. Hello, cough. Has it cooled down? Cry! Why? You take him in your arms, walk, sleep. You put him down, he wakes up. You take it in your arms again and walk again. You feed it, you sleep it, you change it, and you feed it, you sleep it, and you change it. This exercise becomes a routine, and that starts to scare you a little. You wonder if you will ever have a bath longer than 5 minutes, if you can ever leave your hair loose, if and when things sit on a normal shelf.

The plans you had before giving birth to the wonder fall one by one. Or maybe you’re not that relaxed and haunted parent from baby commercials.

The baby of the first 3 months may seem like a scenario to some parents from horror movies. You need help like air, although often the worse help gets you confused. You feel the need to take a break, to leave without a single target, at least an hour, and to be alone with your thoughts. But you can’t be anymore. Because while you may be able to get away with the price of an hour of overwhelming responsibility to be the parent of a newborn, you miss the buzz. And do you wonder what he does, if he cries, if he misses you. So no, you are no longer alone with your thoughts. Never. This chapter is over.

Everyone “warned” warns you that your life will change radically and that practically, with the arrival of the new family member in the world you begin to build a new life, from the ground up. But you don’t think so. Do you think that in your case things will be different and that others are exaggerating. But they are right! It’s really not a lie and you get convinced of it as soon as you and the child are no longer one and the same being. Everything is new, extremely tiring, wonderful and always different.

When we became parents we were born a second time. We reinvented ourselves. We fell in love again. Arya and each other. Irreparable and without measure.

I have learned these months that there is no universal recipe for being the perfect parent. That you can fail countless times, that the information received needs to be filtered, that you often have to rely on intuition to determine what is best for your child, that the experiences of others can be helpful when you least expect it and that the happiness of the mother really means the happiness of the whole family.