Everyone knows that having a baby changes things in your life.  There’s really no debating that.  It can be odd, however, when you think about exactly what things changed when the baby came along.  There are some major changes that everyone sees coming – you love the baby more than you even imagined possible, you never get to sleep, you can’t go clubbing anymore (although, really, who wants to go clubbing in the first place?).  But there are also some smaller, less obvious changes that take place.  I’m sure they’re different for everyone but recently I was thinking about some of the things that changed when I first had a baby.  Most of them were temporary changes and none of them were life altering but they’re kind of amusing so I’ll share a few of them with you now…

1. Wearing Socks to Bed.  I can’t explain why exactly but when Baby #1 was born, I started sleeping with socks on.  Prior to having a baby, I hated to sleep with socks on.  But then she came along and suddenly I had to wear socks to bed.  For some reason, I felt better prepared to leap out of bed at a moment’s notice when I was wearing socks. After a few months passed, I stopped getting into bed with the same level of fear that the baby was going to wake up at any moment. I knew that she would wake up but I must have come to terms with it because the amount of terror that it caused me began to lessen over time. I knew I had turned a corner the night that I got up and fed the baby at 4:30 AM and then I got back into bed without socks on. Because I wasn’t scared!

   2.  Sleeping with the bathroom light on.  When Baby #1 was born, we took up the habit of sleeping with one of the bathroom lights on every night. Not the main light that makes it equal to sleeping in broad daylight but one of the auxiliary bathroom lights, like the one over the bathtub which I’m pretty sure before the baby was born had been turned on exactly 0 times. We’re not big bath takers, I guess. Anyway, along with wearing socks, having a light on in the bathroom somehow makes me more prepared to wake up at any minute. Don’t ask me to explain it. I won’t do it.

   3.  Under cabinet lightning.  One of the selling points when we bought our house was the under cabinet lighting. I must confess that under cabinet lighting is something I don’t understand at all. I mean, so the underside of the cabinets light up. So what? When exactly does that come in handy? When you are sticking your head so far under the cabinets that you need extra lighting? That never happens to me. Well, when Baby #1 was born, we made good use of those under cabinet lights. We left them on when we went to bed so that when we had to get up in the middle of the night there was some soft light to guide the way into the kitchen, making it less likely that we would trip over a dog toy or the laundry basket. Maybe we should have put the dog toys and the laundry basket away but then we’d have to go back to wondering what the heck the under cabinet lights are for.

So, there are three examples of weird ways my life changed when I had my first baby.  Each one a little weirder than the last.  I don’t do any of these things anymore but I do remember that after each subsequent baby was born, I would fall back into these habits.  Somehow having a newborn baby means I need more light and warm feet.  And then, when the baby gets a little older, we go back to sleeping with the lights off, like normal people, and I once again prefer bare feet at bedtime.  I’m sure this is a real load off your mind.

But I have a feeling that these little quirks aren’t unique to me.  I mean, maybe these particular ones are but my guess is that if you give it some thought you’ll be able to come up with some silly little things that changed when a new baby arrived on the scene.  So, now I’ll ask, what odd habits did you pick up when your baby was brand new?