There are few weeks left, if any days (we are already 37 weeks), so that my third child is born, Guim. This will mean many changes in our lives, perhaps not as pronounced as when we had the first or the second, but changes after all because our routines were already quite established.
It is clear that when you have a baby, life begins to revolve around him because babies are very demanding, they need to eat a lot, they need to be changed often and they need to be in company.
Once the dependency grows, it is less and parents usually have a little free time to do some things we did before we became parents. Now Guim is about to be born and I'm already preparing to make a new parenthesis.
Having children is like making a “Kit Kat”
Before I had children, I was going to play football with friends on Fridays, I watched series and movies at home, we went to the movies weekly, we had dinner late, there was no bedtime and I could sit quietly to enjoy a novel at the time it seemed to me well.
After having children I stopped going to play football because I felt absurd leaving my son at home to go running behind a ball, I left the series and the movies because there was no time in the day to see them, I forgot what a cinema and books are, well, for pleasure I started reading baby and parenting books, not having time to read a novel or In fact, ability to stay awake to do so.
For this reason I always explain to my friends that soon they will be parents who Having children is like making a “Kit Kat”, you open a parenthesis in which your life changes hopelessly until a day comes when, more or less, you can close it. It is clear that you never close it, because a child is for a lifetime, but over time you learn to combine time with children with time for you so that nobody gets hurt.
When children grow up ...
As I say, once my children have been growing and have taken more autonomy, free time has been increasing (in a ridiculous way, eye, but a few more minutes a day). You don't have to change diapers every few hours, you don't have to feed a baby often, because they already eat alone, they don't have to be carried around all day because they already walk and don't ask for your presence almost constantly, but rather they disappear to the room to play their things in a time that they value as "their time", the one in which parents seem to spare (it's a short time, because they like to be with us too, but my children have even closed the door on occasion to play quietly) .
Preparing to reopen parentheses
These days I have seen a movie (one in the last three weeks), which I split into three. I saw a piece of "Shutter Island" (very good, by the way) on Friday night before bed, I saw another piece on Saturday morning while ironing clothes and the last hour I saw it on Saturday night, again , before sleep.
I have also been watching some chapters of "Sherlock", which luckily there are few issued, in some times I have had free and, a couple of months ago, taking advantage of the fact that I took the leave four days, I could read the first book of "Millenium ”By Stieg Larsson. With the children we have been going more or less regularly to the cinema, we have made home cinema and we have gone to some plays. We have done excursions and have even gone out to eat one day (what the economy has allowed, which is rather little).
As you can see, it cannot be said that I have closed any parentheses, but I have been able to do some of the things I did before. The gym is still pending or going for a run, even learning English, but these, which take longer and I can not leave ipso facto If a child needs me, I will leave them for when the three go to school, at times not at home.
I'm not better than anyone
By this I don't want to say that I do it better or worse than anyone else, but simply that I decided to do it this way, leaving aside many things that I like to do because, by putting them on the scale over time with my children on the other side, they weigh less.
I am aware that there are fathers and mothers who need more time for themselves than I need. In the same way, surely there are those who need even less than me and give their children 24 hours even when they have already grown up.
The ideal is seek balance, being clear that if the parents do not open parentheses, if they try to continue doing the same life as before once the baby is already born, someone in the result of the equation will suffer and, usually, is usually the weakest link, that is , the baby.
