What it’s Like to Have an Unexpected Newborn Human Baby

I had to throw the word "human" in the title because when people hear we have a newborn at our age, they think it's a puppy or a kitty. Nope, we've got a real, in the flesh, eating, crapping machine. Also, I did not unexpectedly give birth, we are fostering a little dude that we met when he was just 5 weeks old. But we weren't expecting to foster a child, it's a whole story, but you know, confidentiality.

Our son is 17-years-old, so it's been a minute since we've done this baby stuff. A co-worker saw me in the common room at work with a baby in one arm and typing away with the other hand and asked, "is it like riding a bike?" I responded, "same laptop, different baby." Our son grew up at the radio station, we've done this before, but we were in our 20's before. We could see well, our backs didn't hurt, we weren't as tired...

We forgot how totally exhausting it is to have a newborn in the house. We've got a team of 4, so we are managing to love Little Dude up 24/7 and still manage to go to work and school. I don't know how single parents do it, my hat goes off to you! You always hear experienced parents telling new parents, "sleep when the baby is sleeping." And that's for real. When the baby does finally sleep soundly during the day, it feels like an opportunity to finally get around to emptying the dryer, washing the one thousand dirty bottles, or getting your work done for your job. But you can't do that, you have to force yourself to nap with the little one. You have to, heed my words.

Speaking of bottles, when did those little measurement lines get so small and blurry!? And were car seats always this heavy? I actually had back surgery scheduled before this precious little one arrived, so my spine may fall out by the end of summer, we'll see. He's so worth it though, just the best little baby.

Yes, all the fun things we forgot about: those smelly liquid vitamins that stain everything it touches, getting peed on a minimum of once per day (hint: try to avoid quickly pushing the new diaper on when this begins to happen, most of the time it redirects the stream right on to the baby), empathetic broken hearts during vaccinations, the inability to make a spontaneous decision to leave the house, SO. MUCH. LAUNDRY., lost binkys, and sleeping for only 90 minutes at a time, maximum.

But also all of the literally fun things like baby scent, adorable baby noises, watching him learn new things every single day, watching him grow at a rapid rate, band onsies, tiny toes, milk breath, and SO MANY SNUGGLES. Another thing people will tell you is "enjoy it while you can, it goes fast," and that's the damn truth, put your phone down and play with those kiddos.

We'd like to add a special THANK YOU to our family, friends, and co-workers who have pitched in their time, gifts, and funds to ensure this little miracle is well taken care of, we appreciate our village XO