“With my first baby I was too married to his sleep schedule to let him fall asleep on my chest.”*
That heartbreaking line grabbed my attention the second I read it on a seasoned mother’s blog. She went on to describe the ways in which she became a much more relaxed parent after the arrival of her second child.
From what I’ve observed, that seems to be the case with most mothers.
{At least it was with me.}
My second has been wildly different from my first, but I’ve also been a completely different parent. Less caught up in doing it right, instead I just try to do it well. This has allowed me to step back and savor the sweet moments I might have been too uptight to allow to happen the first time around.
It’s also allowed me to give myself grace, which would have been much appreciated if I would have given myself that gift the first time around.
Case in point: I recently traveled solo with my two kids. This is something I’ve been accustomed to doing since I first became a mom. But the first time around it involved pre-travel lists and shopping trips and a backpack full of amazingly educational and fun distractions, along with a hefty supply of well-thought-out, travel-friendly snacks.
Fast-forward to last month, and this is what air travel looked like:
Easiest. Trip. Ever. {I didn’t even pack snacks.}
Certainly, as parents, we don’t always choose the easy route, nor should we. Parenting takes discipline and diligence and hard work. But we don’t have to try to do it perfectly every moment of every day.
Because grace gives us sanity, and if I could do it all over again, I’d tell myself that.
Don’t pursue perfection. Just do it well. Give yourself grace.
All of us can look back on seasons of our parenting and identify things we wish we would have done differently. If you had a parenting do-over, what would it be?
*As much as I tried, I couldn’t for the life of me find this post again for appropriate attribution. If this quote is yours, let us know!
