Parenting Cramps

Somewhere between the births of my second and third children, I decided that I would take up running. I figured it would be a low-investment, high-return exercise regime. With two young children at home, throwing on running shoes and heading out for twenty minutes of solitude and sweat would be way easier to fit in than attempting the gauntlet involved with trying to get to the gym.

My initiation to my new fitness pursuit involved tagging along with my neighbour when she went to her Learn to Run group. The concept was simple enough: meet up with a group of newbie runners and follow the instructions of the group leader, a more experienced runner.  And by “more experienced” I, of course, mean a perky, blonde, barely twenty-year-old goddess who had probably never heard the words “kegel” or “uterine prolapse.”

Whatever.

On this, my first night of running, I found myself at a local outdoor track doing various drills, sprints and challenges. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel too bad. I remember at one point, the goddess was running beside me and so she asked how long I had been running. When I told her this was really my first time she remarked that I was looking strong, smiled and promptly sped up to easily lap me four or five times. Still, I felt proud of myself. I am looking strong, I repeated in my head for the rest of the session.

The next day when I tried to get out of bed, it felt as if my calf muscles had been surgically removed, replaced by unyielding steel rods that saw me hobbling around the house for days.

I have heard many a parent say that they kept looking over their shoulder as they left the hospital with their first baby, wondering if someone was going to stop them by declaring, “You can’t leave with this baby! You clearly have no idea what you’re doing.” But it doesn’t happen that way. You do get through those sleep-deprived months, gaining confidence with each passing day. The next thing you know, you’re many years in to the gig. Perhaps you have welcomed additional babies to your family. You have survived engorgement and food jags, tantrums and time outs.  You feel confident in your discipline techniques, grounded in your decision-making abilities. I am looking strong, you say to yourself. Then - - BAM - - you wake up with steel rods where your calves used to be.

I guess I’m a little slow in coming to the realization that there are going to be challenges at every stage of parenting. Those early days of caring for young children could be intense, their demands swirling around like the dust that suddenly appears in the air, thick as oatmeal, when the late autumn sun shines through the living room window. I sort of figured there would be a period of middle childhood, before the much-hyped teenage years, that would be the honeymoon of parenting, all agreeable offspring and laughing family game nights.

Nope. Parenting is a constantly evolving role. Granted the good times are rewarding and beautiful and addictive, but there are also going to be times that we are called upon to make decisions we never anticipated. We will be pushed to take a deep breath and plunge right into the icy water, even though we didn’t bring our bathing suits and never intended to swim. We will be called upon to stretch parenting muscles we didn’t even know existed and it will feel uncomfortable, but only for a little bit. We just have to stay strong and walk it off.

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This is an original Canada Moms Blog post.

Photo credit: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/