December 6, 2004
So you see that cute baby being wheeled around in the grocery cart and you think idly that having kids would be really great. You see the adorable children giggling and playing in the park and you feel a little twinge at your uterus. Kids are so great, you think wistfully. Maybe I should have some one of these days.
So let me present you with a slightly different scenario, as a true test of whether you really, really, really want kids or not.
Your 9-month-old eats a big dinner and then it's time for her bath, so you carry her upstairs, but she screams at the very sight of the water, so you decide, okay, maybe no bath tonight because it seems to be traumatic. So you hold her on your lap and nurse her while you type up some emails. She finally nods off -- very adorable, I assure you -- and you carefully pick her up to quietly carry her down the hall and deposit her on her little sleeping mat.
Halfway down the hall she erupts like Mt. Vesuvius, spraying the contents of her last breastfeeding plus her entire dinner all over you, the hallway floor, and the bathroom. You manage to aim her at the toilet at the last minute but it doesn't really help that much. Soaking wet with baby vomit, you yell for your husband, and he doesn't hear you because he just started the dishwasher, so you yell louder, and then your two-year-old, who is still not asleep despite the fact that it is 10:30 PM, takes up yelling for Daddy too.
"Daddy! I NEED HELP!" you yell. A small voice pipes up, "Daddy! I need help!" "Thanks, Zeke," you mutter.
Your husband comes upstairs and helps clean up the baby while you take a shower and then clean up the bathroom floor. You figure that the baby has discharged all the contents of her tummy, so it's probably safe to lie down with her on her mat. You nurse her. She falls asleep. Just as you're about to get up and tiptoe away, she opens her eyes and then throws up everything in her stomach again. This time it looks like the most recent breastfeeding plus some of what she had for lunch.
Two more changes of clothes, some scrubbing of the sleeping mat, and a quick conference with your husband. You decide to try giving her one tablespoon of apple juice in a bottle. She slurps it down greedily and then passes out on her (scrubbed and flipped over) sleeping mat. Five minutes later she wakes up and throws it up too. This time you've had the foresight to put down towels so at least the mess is pretty well contained.
You clean her up again and this time let her fall asleep without giving her anything to eat or drink. She passes out pretty quick but you're worried. You stay up a few hours more working on a project for your job that's due the next day, going back to the bedroom to check on her and make sure she's still breathing and hasn't thrown up again, about every half hour.
You finally go to bed but you don't want to disturb her so instead of carrying her into your bed like normal, you just get a blanket and go to sleep next to her on the mat on the floor. Except it's not very comfortable and also she keeps kicking in her sleep restlessly, so you don't actually sleep all that much. Then she throws up again around 2 AM. And around 4 AM. This despite the fact that she hasn't eaten anything since 8 PM the previous evening. You tell your husband, when he leaves for work at 3:30, to expect a call telling him he has to come transport you to the doctor's office.
Against your better judgement, you nurse the baby around 4:30 AM, because she seems really hungry and you figure if her appetite is back, maybe that means she won't throw up. You are wrong. She throws up again. You change your clothes for the fourth or maybe fifth time, you've lost count, and contemplate sleeping naked but decide that would not be better.
You finally fall asleep next to her, and without thinking, automatically nurse her when she starts rooting around at 6 AM. You feel stupid and brace yourself for the coming deluge, but it never materializes. She falls asleep without throwing up. At 6:30 she still hasn't thrown up so you cautiously drift back to sleep yourself.
At 8:15 your toddler wakes up, bright-eyed and ready to go, and then the baby wakes up too, equally bright-eyed, and neither of them understand why Mommy is so bleary this morning and keeps muttering about coffee.
So. If after reading through all that, you still want kids, then I congratulate you, sir or madam, you're ready to be a parent. Because it's not all about the cute Kodak moments (although those are nice), it's about staying up all night with a sick baby because it is physically impossible for you to fall asleep when your baby is ill, and about sleeping on the floor because you are worried and don't want to leave your baby's side, and about caring less about losing sleep than about checking the baby's temperature for the fifteenth time, just to be sure everything is okay.
And now there's a tired Mommy who really needs to make some coffee.
Posted by Jan at December 6, 2004 8:32 AM