Gut: Go with It!

I do a lot of research these days, listening and looking at the break-through approaches and Grandparent Pearls of passed-down Wisdom, seeking to stay up on this business of building new families and parenting.  In recent years, having had the opportunity to be involved in some ground-breaking toddler to Preschool practices, I hear many of the new parents saying that they have posted their parenting concerns into a few of the online communities they are involved with.  They’re looking for consensus, and concurrent feedback, on the decisions they deal with daily.

It has been almost 45 years since I was on my way to becoming a parent, with all of the “first time” feelings, hopes, moments of Joy – and in a frightened, cold sweat that I was going to get it all wrong.  A type of silver-lined self-doubt cloud, one that still remains – present and alive in me.

Now, I am blessed with the privilege of seeing my own with their own, and I reflect on the “GUT” that showed up in those “new parenting” days.  It comes back to me as I watch our new families navigate each day through their own world of feelings, hopes, and moments of Joy clouds.

The science and philosophy of child-rearing came into full being just a few years in advance of my first coming into being.  For the most part, it was a DIY playbook – no Google “how to” videos.  I didn’t have the reassurance of online communities filled with thousands of parents, in the same place, asking the same questions, searching (sometimes a little desperately) for information, knowledge.  I’m not exaggerating, when I left the hospital, 2 days after my little guy arrived, it was “Here’s your Baby.”  “Figure it Out.”  “Do Your Best, and Have a Nice Life.”  For those of us raised as an only child with zero babysitting experience, it was…WHOA!

So, it’s the “figure it out” part that, so clearly, defines those first years of having my own child, and amazes me to this day.  Here is this beautiful new little person, who I have had an “inside out” relationship with for 9 months, now in my arms, relying on me to “figure it out”.  This is where the GUT comes in.

The GUT I am referring to is the self-generated resources we have each developed along the way that spring into action:  trial and error, chance and opportunity, risk, passion and distraction, expectation – and that most glorious sensation of “free falling”.  By the time our “parenting” lives do show up, be it earlier or later, that DIY playbook has chapters filled with many pages, and many resources that, perhaps, we were not aware of, but that can be called upon to get us, and our little ones, through.

So, I would be giving the go-by if I do not acknowledge here that the current online support community eventually morphs (a caring new consensus way to say ages) into the Grandparent Pearls of Wisdom voice, sharing all of the trial and errors days and ways of their GUT experience.  Dear new families, enjoy your babies, you will figure it out, and when it comes to the little ones, you will always do your best.

Have a wonderful life together and take advantage of all of those hard-earned resources.

GO WITH YOUR GUT!