You Know the Exact Type of Parent You’ll Be (Until You Have Kids)

The instant you become a parent, you’re served up with a big dose of reality. You know all those silly “Expectations vs. Reality” memes surfacing the web? That just about sums up parenting. No matter how much you plan to raise your kid a certain way, you never know what type of parent you’ll actually be. It’s to no character fault of your own. You simply never know what tricks your kid will have up their sleeve.

Jessica Krantz had a pretty good idea of how she was going to raise her baby-to-be. Then she had Jacob and it all went out the window. Instead of focusing on things like the types of food she would never allow him to eat, she shifted gears to worry more on just getting her son to eat anything. Needless to say, her expectations didn’t meet reality, and that’s perfectly okay. Popular Instagram account FertileGirl recently shared Krantz’s story as a reminder to all parents to stop being so hard on themselves if they aren’t parenting the way they anticipated.

“Before I had my son, nearly two years ago, I had a lot of ideas of what type of mom I was going to be,” she says. “I determined that he would be a cultured and curious eater. I read books on baby-led-weaning and how to introduce salmon at 5 months.”

Despite those lofty goals, Krantz quickly learned Jacob’s tastebuds were partial to very few food groups. “Chicken fingers, fish sticks, frozen waffles, Goldfish crackers and french fries are all on auto-reorder on my Fresh Direct account,” she admits. One day, when she was with a friend and her son was snacking on chicken fingers, she felt personally attacked by her girlfriend’s judgy remarks about letting Jacob eat those kinds of foods.

“I took a deep breath and realized that was me two years ago, [commenting] on what other moms and parents fed their kids,” Krantz admits. “But having a kid is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It has tested my patience and pushed me in so many ways to be more compassionate, more open, more accepting—of myself and others—and more honest.”

A word from the wise—stop stressing about the exact way you’ll parent, and instead stay open to becoming an adaptable parent. As Krantz says, “to all the other judgmental moms-to-be, just you wait.”