Daphne Bennett

This is one of the drawings I did when I was pregnant.

I am sure there is no quicker way to grow up than being parents. In retrospective, my husband and I seem to have turned into two completely different people after having Bertie. Like every new parent, we had a lot of false assumptions and wrong expectation about babies. As a modern female, I can’t help being lured by excitement of the colourful images of all the cute baby toys and clothes I could get. Yet, after he was born, we understand how fast they grow out of each size and stage and many toys and ‘must-haves’ are just products of consumerism. And we are surpirsed by how many ‘must-have’s are totally waste of money. I buy them just because I want to be a good parent like everybody and I don’t want my child have less than others, but not because he really needs them. I thought I could use all those baby gears to babysit my child but again and again he makes his point clear: all he needs is my time. We learn to resist impulsive shopping as parents and try to spend more time reading to him, sit on the floor doing nothing with him, stop thinking about things that we’d rather be doing, and give him as much cuddle as he needs instead.

Being a parent is definitely a journey full of surprises and tears. Carl and I are still at the beginning of it. I hope we learn to be more patient and lovable people as each new day teaches us.