Do the next thing

I seem to recall Rachel and my WHWD moment (it’s pronounced wah-wood btw) coming about 14 seconds after closing the front door behind us on the bright sunny afternoon of March 6^th 2014. This was the day we brought a tiny person home from hospital for the first time. 

In the build up to that day you attend the classes, you read the books, you get scared witless by that friend who loves to tell you about how they spent 3 ½ months in active labour, but you do the best you can, you get all the stuff you think you need (including lots of things you will never use) and you wait.

Then comes the birth itself, it’s wonderful/miraculous etc etc… and after little Gruntilda is born, you bask in this wonderful period of peace and quiet together amazed at what you’ve brought into the world, as Mummy and baby recover from their ordeal and Daddy wonders if he will ever get brought a packet of biscuits for himself.

But then, having only had a go at this parenting malarkey for perhaps a matter of hours, the hospital do something incredibly reckless…. they actually let you take this little bundle home with you…on your own.

So you check the car seat, you check it again, and you check it a third time ‘just in case’. Then the midwife checks it, and you decide to check it once more for thoroughness, and before you know it you’re out the door and driving home slower than a sleepy sloth, as you’ve decided that the entire driving world is far too dangerous and carefree for your liking.

Eventually you get home, and you do something you’ve done 1000 times before, and it should be no drama. You get to the front door, unlock it, walk in and close it behind you. Except on this occasion you’re not alone. You’re carrying with you a small, wriggly, pink blob, and it’s a small, wriggly, pink blob that, whilst you’ve only just met in person, you already can’t see how you could possibly ever love more than you do right now.

And for Rachel and myself, that’s when we had our WHWD moment. As we carefully placed Harry’s car seat on the living room floor (with him still in it I should add – we hadn’t lost him on the way home), we looked at each other and subconsciously both exclaimed “What have we done!?”

I didn’t have the foggiest idea about babies – I’d never changed a nappy, I’d never even got one dressed. But suddenly here we were totally unprepared for what to do next.

But instead of panicking and freaking out, we did the only thing you can (and should) do at such a momentous moment in your life. We did the next thing. And that next thing just happened to be making a cup of tea for ourselves (not Harry you understand – he was more a coffee drinker).

And once we’d done that? We just did the next thing, and so it continued until before we knew it, we had a 5 year old who would not have enjoyed being carried around in a carseat nearly as much.

It’s one of those things I learned about parenting – it’s not helpful to worry about the future, it does no-one any good. Just make sure you keep doing the next thing, and if possible, doing it well.

*** Post Script – I wrote this article having no idea where the phrase ‘Do the next thing’ came from in my mind. Googling it, the phrase is most commonly attributed to an anonymous poem written many years ago – its words are beautiful and capture perfectly mine and Rachel’s testimony of raising children (and life in general) as a Christian.