When my husband and I first seriously started discussing starting a family I immeditately started forming expectations and imagining what my child would be like. We had already selected a name before we even found out that I was indeed expecting. We had already spent hours discussing how we would set up the home for a child, how we would discipline, and how we would eat once the baby was born. My husband and I still laugh each time we pass happy meals back to our kids while leaving the drive through. We vividly remember the moment we said we would probably have to stop eating fast food any time now because our son was nearly the right age for solids.

I am getting ahead of myself here. Back to when I was pregnant and wanting to set up the perfect Montessori space for first child. I had these ideas of a kid friendly home where my son could explore and have a yes space. Where he would not need any play pens or cribs. I wanted to do a floor bed from birth, and planned to only have the beautiful Montessori alighned toys available to my little man. It didn’t take long for those expectations and aspirations to crash into my reality. We lived in a teeny three bedroom apartment with three cats. Our bathroom barely had enough room to turn around in let alone set up a changing and toileting area for a baby. Our kitchen had enough room for one adult to cook or clean, and honestly barely enough space for that. There was no room for a learning tower. No space for stools or low seats, or even low hooks to hang his little sweaters on. We decided to do the best we could with what we had available. We had recently been students and our second bedroom had been set up with computers, desks and books. We moved these to our bedroom to make space for a nursery. We painted and filled the nursery with the furniture we could afford, which was not exactly what I had envisioned but it served its purpose.

The beautiful mobiles that I had been hoping to hang for the first weeks of my sons life were extremely expensive, and the shipping for them was absurd. I realized that there was no way we would be getting them. This was my first DIY project for my son. I made him the Munari, the Gobbi, the Dancers and the Octahedron mobiles. I was honestly not at all satisfied with how they turned out. I wanted to offer my child the best, and I did not feel like these met that expectation. We recieved many beautiful gifts at my baby shower which filled the empty room and soon my son’s space was complete. It was mostly Montessori I told myself and I knew that more than the room and the things, it would be about how we parented this little guy.

I planned for a medication free, natural birth. Well my water broke early one morning and by the following morning my labour still had not started and we found out that I would have to be induced with medication. It jump started my labour, it was intense and quick and I still had my (mostly) natural and (mostly) medication free birth that I had hoped for. The moment that stands out to me is when my son was lifted up for me to see and I looked at him and was surprised that I didn’t recognize him. It should have been obvious, I had never met this little person before, but I realized later that I even had expectations of what he would look like and this contributed to my surprise.

When we brought the baby home things went mostly as I expected. We did the things we had planned on like baby wearing, skin to skin, tummy time and so on. I struggled and cried through breastfeeding. I had expected it to be a lot easier than it was, I had envisioned these beautiful moments of bonding and admiring the baby. What I got instead was awful pain, bleeding, and dread. I did not want to feed him. I found myself trying to stall and wanting to avoid feeding him. I realized I would have to pump instead because I was so tempted to wait and skip feeds. After a few weeks of exclusively pumping I realized it didn’t hurt anymore and we switched back to breastfeeding directly. It was not what I had imagined but I realized how thankful I should be that it was (mostly) working out the way I had hoped.

I did not want to bedshare. It was dangerous right? I was sure we would room share, but never ever bedshare. Well, one night I was holding my son on my lap and I started to doze off. It was not more than a moment or so but he slid and woke me. He was fine and safe but it made me realize how much more dangerous it was to be trying to stay awake in the night when he woke. We carefully rearranged our sleeping arrangements and my son started sleeping beside me. I am not by any means advocating for bedsharing, nor am I advocating against it. What I am saying is that it worked for us at the time, and we did what we needed to do, regardless of what we had hoped to do.

This trend continued in a lot of ways throughout my parenting journey so far. I had my ideas and expectations and what ended up happening, and how we ended up parenting was mostly aligned. I learned pretty quickly that I could not control my child’s experience, and all I had control over was my own reactions (mostly).

Let’s fast forward to my second baby. We were living in a bigger home now and this baby had her nursery set up exactly how I had hoped. I still used my hand made mobiles though. We knew this time around that we would be co sleeping and planned for it. Breastfeeding was easy with my daughter, but I was so busy that half the time I didn’t soak it up, I just rushed through. We had our bathrooms set up for children now, low furniture for them, hooks for their little sweaters, and a playroom dedicated to their learning and development. We had our learning tower in the kitchen, and the Pikler triangle I coveted in our basement. I think you could say we met majority of my hopes and expectations the second time around.

Now here is the big point of all these stories. I didn’t see any big difference in the way my daughter developed as compared to my son. She had the stuff, she had the environment. Yet I essentially parented her the same way. My son is 4.5 and my daughter is 2 now. We have already given away the learning tower, they prefer chairs. We are trying to sell the Pikler triangle, they don’t use it. We are considering having them share a bedroom because they do not use their carefully cultivated bedrooms for anything but sleeping. I will say that the low hooks for their little sweaters have come in handy, we still use those (mostly).

I guess one of the biggest lessons I have faced since my children were born is that I need to manage my expectations. I can have aspirations, and ideals for sure, but they cannot hold so much power over me. I think it is a battle I, and many others will fight our whole parenting journey. We have our ideas about how things will go, and then we have reality to face. It is a feeling that I like to keep close when I find my children fighting over things like Little Miss knocking down Mr Man’s block castle. He had expectations and goals and reality made them come crashing down. It is hard work for people of any age to manage expectations and yet it is also so crucial.