Are you expecting and you don’t know what to expect? It’s normal, and all parents go through this phase. The answer is simple:

“When your baby is born, your life becomes everything but what you expected.”

During pregnancy, you imagine the future and make plans. Everything seems to make sense at the time. Then, the baby arrives, and, although it is just a small and fragile doll you barely find the courage to take into your arms, it turns everything upside down like the most devastating tornado.

The good news is that you’ll love the incoming disaster. As strange as it may seem, you’ll learn to accept everything as it happens, and you’ll survive, even if it feels difficult at the time. Because it helps to be prepared, we’ll discuss parenthood-related changes in the following lines.

10 Ways Your Life Will Change When You Become a Parent

1. It’s no longer about you; it’s about them

Do you remember the days when you only thought about yourself, your needs and priorities? They will never come back. As a parent, you end up being a priority the moment you hear that little heartbeat at the ultrasound. You learn to live, breathe, and dream for your baby.

2. Sleep becomes a luxury you cannot afford

First, the baby needs a diaper change. Then, they need food. When they’re finally asleep, your friends and relatives come to visit. You sacrifice sleep hours to do the laundry, clean around, and simply stare at the small miracle in your life. However, your body doesn’t fight it and learns to take its energy from the couple of hours of sleep you get when you can.

3. You spend a fortune on things you don’t really need 

As a parent, you want your baby to have everything they need and everything your parents couldn’t provide when you were little. You see cute stuff you can’t resist in every store you visit. Even though you already have enough baby clothes, you keep buying, thinking that the baby may ruin them with food spills and it doesn’t hurt to have backup solutions.

4. You begin to see your spouse differently

When you hold the dearest treasure of all in your arms, you see the person who brought that treasure to you in a different life. Your baby becomes an invisible bond that will keep you close to one another, a life you have created together. You find yourself looking at each other and smiling, excitedly reacting to every giggle and every gesture of your little one.

5. Your perception of the world changes

Before your baby was born, you couldn’t stand to see something out of place, or you reached for coffee the moment you opened your eyes. Now, previous disasters seem acceptable, and you only acknowledge your own needs after you’ve met your baby’s. When you look at something, you evaluate the impact it could have on your baby without even realizing it.

6. You ask more of yourself

The moment you become a parent, you realize you need to set an example for your baby. You want to improve, you work harder, and you struggle to make more money. You realize your baby will need to learn the value of people and things, and you re-evaluate your systems.

7. You lose some friends and gain new ones 

Before, you were free to go out at night, take long trips, and hang around anytime, anywhere. Now, you need to plan a simple restaurant dinner with days in advance and schedule everything around the baby’s schedule.

You lose some friends because they don’t understand and agree with your new duties and approach to life.

But you also gain new ones as you discover common interests and priorities.

8. You change your eating habits

If you breastfeed, you have to think twice before eating something, to make sure it won’t harm the little one. As they grow up, you try to teach them to eat as healthily as possible, and you change your eating habits to set an example.

9. You learn the value of your relationships, and you become more responsible

The moment you acknowledge your responsibility, you begin to care what would happen to your baby if you got sick, divorced, into a new relationship, or died. You want to keep your parents close, to teach your child the importance of family. More importantly, you feel the need to surround yourself with people you can rely on, and you feel closer to those who care about your baby and would take care of them.

10. You learn to care about your health more

As a parent, you have the responsibility to watch over the child you brought into this world and raise them well, to the best of your abilities. To succeed, you need to stay healthy.

From a simple cold your baby could catch to a disease that could throw you in the hospital for a couple of days, health problems become your worst enemy, and you do everything in your power to avoid them.

There Is More!

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These are just a few examples of the new turns your life takes. There are many more! Sure, we all experience them differently, and not always consciously. Some of us change more and willingly, and others do it without even realizing it.

I think it is all a consequence of growing up, of acquiring new responsibilities and developing new goals.

We are responsible for a person’s life, for who that person becomes, and parenthood gives us a chance to write our destiny, to reinvent ourselves.

Of course, we change! I like to think we do it for the better. Perhaps we don’t become more successful from the professional point of view, or better looking from the aesthetical one. We become human. We gain a new purpose. We do what we have to do to survive and protect our loved ones.

We, parents, can understand and help each other better than anyone else can. We can learn from one another, and support one another put up with the changes in our life, by sharing our own experience. I’ve already done that in the above lines.

Do so yourself in a comment: share the changes you’ve already experienced or watched others experience, and the changes you feel ready to put up with! Share this post if you think others may find themselves between its lines!

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