I was 25 with my first and it was way harder than expected. He was a difficult baby - didn't sleep through the night for many, many years. At 9 months with 3+ wake ups a night I was exhausted. On top of that his Dad did as little as possible. Many years later my second child with a different man was much easier both with sleep and a better partnership.

My first has been so difficult, my second so easy.

Harder than I expected for the early years.

It gets easier in some ways, harder in others.

Nine months is HARD! I had babies who were horrible sleepers and I was exhausted. And my DH had started a new career, so he was putting in long hours and not much help.

I now have a young adult and a teen, and they'd sleep all day if they could. But it's the mental load that's hard.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s definitely easier than I thought but I got pregnant by accident. Anecdotally, the friends I have who most desperately wanted to be moms and spent the most money to do it seem to hate it and complain the most.

Were they older? Every single one of my friends who had babies at 37+ has struggled with parenthood. I think because they were more used to a DINK life?

Most were mid thirties. It’s so wild to me to see the constant complaining when I know how much was spent to have these kids. The biggest complainer spent 40k each to adopt two kids.

I don’t know about complaining but I do think that if you struggle to have kids, it makes all of parenting (especially the young ages where fertility/adoption stress is fresh) a lot more fraught. If you got into something even somewhat by accident it can be easier to forgive yourself the learning curve and you will be more likely to have a less rosy expectation of motherhood since you spent way less time romanticizing it before you actually embarked on it.

Harder. Admittedly I was woefully naïve, but I also have an objectively challenging 2.5 year old with mild ASD (recently diagnosed).

The 6 months of sleep deprivation and year of reflux almost did me in, then the noise, whining, frequent tantrums etc. He’s still challenging but now that his speech is coming along, it’s getting better.

Overall it’s the relentlessness, physical demands, and lack of time for introverted me that have been the hardest. I know I’m still in the trenches though, and newly pregnant with #2. We’ll see how it goes the second time around.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s definitely easier than I thought but I got pregnant by accident. Anecdotally, the friends I have who most desperately wanted to be moms and spent the most money to do it seem to hate it and complain the most.

Were they older? Every single one of my friends who had babies at 37+ has struggled with parenthood. I think because they were more used to a DINK life?

Most were mid thirties. It’s so wild to me to see the constant complaining when I know how much was spent to have these kids. The biggest complainer spent 40k each to adopt two kids.

The baby parts were easier once I settled in. The ADHD kid is harder than I ever imagined now that we are a decade in.

It's not harder than I thought, but I also expected it to be fairly hard. My kids are 13, 11, and 9 and there have been challenges and terrific things at each developmental stage. The best advice I got from a seasoned mom when they were really little was to pace myself and that's been so helpful to keep in mind.

There's also still a lot of adjusting to parenthood when you have a nine month old, but in some ways, there's always adjusting as your kids grow and change. It's wonderful, too, of course.

Anonymous wrote:It’s definitely easier than I thought but I got pregnant by accident. Anecdotally, the friends I have who most desperately wanted to be moms and spent the most money to do it seem to hate it and complain the most.

Were they older? Every single one of my friends who had babies at 37+ has struggled with parenthood. I think because they were more used to a DINK life?

No, I expected it to be extremely difficult. My kids are 5 and 7 and we are in a lovely spot!!!

It’s definitely easier than I thought but I got pregnant by accident. Anecdotally, the friends I have who most desperately wanted to be moms and spent the most money to do it seem to hate it and complain the most.

My first kid was easier than I expected, adding a second was way harder. Not so much because the second was a hard baby (he’s not; he’s actually super chill) but because I hadn’t realized how much as the parent of one I was easily just making my child the most important thing in my life which works less well with two most important things. That being said, I think I didn’t anticipate how all consuming parenting would be.

I do think it gets easier in some ways once they move away from being 100% physically dependent on you (and you start getting more sleep).

Yes.

Mine are now 30, 17, and 17. They are “easy”, but raising each has demanded from me things I never imagined. Maybe because I largely parented myself.

The first years of my babies’ lives were the hardest times I’ve ever encountered, hands down. Way, way harder than expected. I think I was a bit smug when I was pregnant for the first time, thinking my easy, “perfect” pregnancy would make for an easy baby, but the sleep deprivation was a living hell. When I hit my stride as a mom of two, things got good for a while, and now I have teens and it’s hard again. But at least I can sleep.