Apollo Fields | Best Wedding Photos | New York Wedding Photographer | Long Island Wedding Photographer | Terrence Huie | Writer

By the end of every single day, my t-shirt looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. An orange-yellow smear of baby food and boogers up by my shoulder, a splattering of red marinara sauce across my chest, and a living museum of the day's activities everywhere else. Taking it off and throwing it into the hamper is the closest thing I’ll come to feeling like an athlete anytime soon. Part badge-of-honor and part a symbol of parental sacrifice, I throw myself on to a bed that has never felt so good. 

The funny thing about my tattered shirts is that they are the perfect representation of what it’s like to become a parent–not only from a literal perspective—but also an analogy for my physical, mental, and emotional self. Everyday there is a messy confluence of factors that prod at various vulnerabilities: whether it is shifting my identity as a professional or creative to a parent; my parents exhibiting some benign (or malignant) behavior towards my children that triggers something about my experience as a child, or how each of Heather and I’s individual lives and relationship as a whole take a back seat to the family’s immediate and ever present needs. 

We are fortunate enough to run a business that allows us to be present in our children’s lives, but it isn’t always easy for us to draw that line in the sand. I have a predisposition to overcompensate for the lack of attention that I got as a child, and Heather has a predisposition to provide for them as her family struggled in her youth. It is a cruel joke that parents are forced to grapple with these psychological hurdles when we are operating on the least sleep we have gotten in our lives–but I suppose true comedy is all about timing. 

This entry is less about complaining about being a new parent and more about recognizing the framework of parenthood and setting up a plan for success. We will always have a pile of laundry to get to and no amount of detergent in the world will rid us of the stains. My generation is operating with a different relationship to work than our parents, where more often than not both parents are working. In our case, at least early in our 2023 wedding season, Heather is handling the business side while I am staying home more with the kids. It isn’t a clear 1:1 division of labor but we recognize that it is important for both parents to put on the other cap, realizing sides of their identities before they are lost in the maelstrom of parenthood. Sometimes time feels like a paradox, where days pass in a blur but every minute is a struggle, or “how they grow up so fast” but it feels like no time has passed. 

There is no universal advice to offer new parents as every situation is unique, but here are a few observations. Right now, Heather and I only know how tired we are when we get good rest, when the bags under our eyes sag a little less. That means all of the other times we are operating on a razor slim margin, meaning that when one of us gets sick or our car winds up in the shop for a week, there will be blood (So that’s what that stain is). There is no way around parenthood, the only path is through it. The ultimate struggle is that if you don’t enjoy it then you are ungrateful and will regret it five or 10 years from now. 

The best anecdote I heard to combat this is to pretend that you’re 80 years old and laying in a bed and you get to warp back in time to this particular time, where both kids are crying, or you’re trying to navigate a dirty diaper, and that there is no other place that you’d rather be. It sounds like a hypothetical platitude but it has helped me this week, and I hope it helps you.