Change. Could there possibly be a better word to sum up your life when you become a parent? Perhaps chaotic? Unpredictable? Insane? Tired? Okay, there are many words that can sum up your life when you become a parent. All of them, however, fall under that broad umbrella of change.

Once upon a time there was a man and wife who slept late on Saturdays. They went on road trips with barely a moments notice. While scanning the paper, if they saw a movie they wanted to see that started in 20 minutes, they could pick up and be there before the previews began. That was the life of a couple without children. Small hip apartment that had breakable items that you didn’t have to step on tiptoes to see. A home that had televisions without fingerprints, walls without crayon marks, and carpets without juice stains.

Then came The Big Change. Certainly, among family we refer to The Change as Being Blessed with a Child. But don’t let that kind title fool you. The Big Change took a couple who was confident in who they were and shook their lives up like a snotty nosed kid frantically shaking a snow-globe he picked up from the half-off bin in WalMart. Except the “soft billowy snow” in the snow globe was in fact the neat little pieces of our lives that we had control over.

For a woman who loves sleep (and I mean LOVES sleep more than coffee and chocolate and even chocolate coffee), suddenly having a tiny person disrupting every aspect of sleep was unsettling. Going from a woman who believed that the only way one could survive waking up in the morning was if it was a gentle and slow waking up process to becoming a woman who now awoke to the blood curling chilling screams from a person that weighed less than a Thanksgiving turkey was as unsettling as it came. Change.

Before The Big Change, I was a woman who loved to spend time getting ready in the morning. I don’t mean that I insisted on having the perfect hair and make-up before going anywhere. I simply loved the process of getting ready. The long hot shower. The body lotion. The facial moisturizer. It was an entire process that was both feminine and luxurious. After The Big Change, I felt blessed if I took a shower at all. The days I did manage a shower, it was usually done so fast I barely had time to get wet. Gone were the days of luxurious primping. The days of “I can wear this. The spit up doesn’t show” have arrived.

I was never a woman who strived to have a home that was showcased in Architectural Digest, but I did enjoy having an orderly home. Orderly? The Big Change took everything orderly and tossed it out of my now fingerprinted window. How could a person who couldn’t even walk have so many toys and accessories? How is it possible that this person without the use of language could let me know that it was imperative that he have the latest gadget to soothe, calm and entertain him? I mean, seriously, I didn’t have this many toys for myself and I was the one making the money buy them! There was nothing that even resembled orderly in my life after The Big Change.

Before The Big Change my husband and I loved each other more than we could ever imagine. We had happiness. We sought out interesting and eclectic forms of entertainment. We shared laughter all the time. We had everything we thought we needed. Then came The Big Change. In the moment of his birth, we learned how to love more than we ever imagined possible. We learned a love that was unlike anything we had ever known. We watched that love grow not only for each other, but for our new life after The Big Change. We began to find happiness in the simplest things. Things that we used to overlook or ignore suddenly made us practically giddy with joy. For entertainment we found that we could just stare at this new little person in our life for hours. His tiny toes, his button nose, and his adorable little fingers could keep us enthralled for hours. Laughter? The first time we heard our little one laugh, you would have thought we were privy to a private concert with a top name comedian. We clapped. We laughed. We did everything we could think of to get him to do it again. We realized that now we truly did have everything we would ever need.

It took The Big Change to shake things up. It was The Big Change that made me realize that although the fear and uncertainty that came when our lives were shaken up like that cheap snow globe, it was also The Big Change that gave me the strength, courage and passion for life that I could never have imagined before.

And the beauty of it all is that The Big Change is never ending. Once we reach a milestone in the life of parenting, we are immediately thrust into a new and different Big Change. So, you see, I cannot really tell you how I adapted to a Big Change in my life. At least not yet. You see, with The Big Change, we are adapting daily.

Change? Seriously, it is the perfect synonym for parenting!