Jami Waxes Philosophical About Parenting

Not too long ago, some friends of mine - let's call them Bob and Mary - had their first baby. Bob told me about the day after, as they were leaving the hospital. He signed the insurance form things, and the nurse at the check-out desk, or whatever it's called at the hospital, said "Okay, bye-bye and congratulations!" Bob was concerned. "That's it? We just leave?" Nurse: "You have a carseat in the car, right?" Bob: "Yes." Nurse: "Then that's it. Okay, bye-bye!" Bob told me he couldn't believe that he and Mary (both mature, responsible people with advanced degrees in scientific areas) would just be allowed to leave, unaided, unsupervised, with this helpless little infant. He tried again, "Don't you have instructions or pamphlets or something to give us?" I am sure the nurse has dealt with insane new parents before. She assured him that no, babies don't come with instructions, or even pamphlets and they'd be just fine. Poor Bob. He strapped his baby into the (seriously incorrectly installed) carseat and left. We discussed how odd it is to basically just be handed a baby and sent home. If you don't know, we adopted. Imagine meeting strangers in a hotel lobby who hand a baby over to you, for keeps! And it wasn't even their baby. Truthfully, we had it a little better than Bob and Mary; Eddie's foster mom actually gave us some instructions. I don't have much point here except that parenting, however you get there, is a sort of weird occurrence. One day you're not parents and the next day, you are. No matter how you think you've prepared, I think you suddenly realize that you aren't, but you'd better be. Just saying.