PARENTHOOD

In a successful attempt to cheer me recently, my friend Melissa rapped about all the "bummers" of parenthood. I enjoyed her tongue-in-cheek comments so much, I asked her if I could share them with my readers. She gave me the green light, so here it is, for your reading pleasure!
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Preface
I absolutely love [my daughter] Claire, and I really would throw myself in front of a bus for her. It's like my friends Rebecca and Joel put on their first child's birth announcement: "We thought we knew love, and then came Stella." I've never forgotten that because it became so real to me when I had Claire. It's this crazy protective love that you didn't even know exists. And yes, children are totally a huge blessing ... but if I may ... and totally for your benefit I hope ...

 

Physical Health and Hygiene

I frequently go two months without shaving my legs or bikini line. Please note that I had a C-section and I was freshly shorn way north of my original bikini line for that surgery, so my current bikini line ... well ... it's a bit higher than it used to be.

 

Showers are for function, not fun (or fornication for that matter). There's simply not enough time.

 

Fixing my hair means I blow-dried it, brushed it and didn't pull it back in a ponytail, as opposed to letting it air-dry with half of it sitting on top of my head and then putting it in a ponytail later.

 

I don't exercise. Actually, I started running again in August in an attempt to lose 20 pounds (I never lost all the weight after having Claire). After a month of getting up at 6 a.m. to run and shower before Claire woke up, I lost a half-pound and people said, "Are you losing weight?" It must've been a really big half-pound.

 

My boobs are, as Holly puts it, deflated balloons. Totally saggy and squishy and never to be perky again. (They are one cup size bigger, but big whoop, ya know? That just means I had to go out and buy all new bras.)

 

I have little red bumps on the back of my arms that I have heard occur during pregnancy. They never go away.

 

Due to that relaxin hormone, my joints swelled/expanded, and my fingers are permanently bigger. I haven't worn my wedding ring since February 2010.

 

Sleep, as you know it, is gone.

 

Environment

I clean my house every 9-10 weeks. That's right. The clean neat freak from college has a filthy, pube-infested bathroom. It is rotten nasty and I've accepted it. You think you won't accept that that's the way it's going to be, but eventually, you do.

 

If you have any home-improvement projects in the works, get to workin', because it's near impossible to do so when you have kids.

 

Social/Relational

Jerry and I have not been on a date in three months. It seems like it would be so easy, but here's why it's not. There is a shortage of good babysitters; even girls from our church are not always as good as we hope they will be. Even if you have a good babysitter, it's nerve-wracking to leave your child with her because what if the baby starts wailing uncontrollably and the sitter can't get her calmed down, or what if the baby doesn't take a bottle for the sitter or go to sleep for the sitter ... ? Plus, you're just too tired.

 

We don't see our friends often. We just don't. No time. Plus, if they don't have kids, you have to get a babysitter to hang out with them if you're going out to dinner or doing an adults-only type thing.

 

I have time to check my e-mail only once or twice a week. Example: This e-mail right here that I'm typing is like eight days late.

 

I cancelled my Facebook account because I never had time to check it.

 

God

Stopped reading my Bible altogether and rarely pray. Now, however, I'm in Bible Study Fellowship, and I read a little bit almost every day. I go to the meetings on Monday evenings, and Jerry stays home with Claire. I'm learning a lot.

 

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Post Script

I wrote Melissa back to say, "I already don't do the following on a regular basis: shower, shave, exercise, do my hair, clean, go out, improve my house, respond to emails in a timely fashion, read my Bible ... So I'm really screwed when we finally do have kids!"

 

Her reply: "No Erika -- the fact that you don't do all those things is only going to make the transition easier. Trust me. It'll be like, 'Oh well, I didn't X, Y, Z before Petunia was born anyway.'"

 

INSANE IN THE MEMBRANE

Albert Einstein said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Every month, as I faithfully chart my cycle each day and pee on ovulation-predictor sticks, perfectly timing our conception efforts, I think of this quote. We keep doing the same exact thing, month after month, expecting that magically, this time, it will work.

Not surprisingly, once again, it did not work. You would think my high levels of hope followed by disappointment would begin to drop after six months of this pattern. With Einstein's quote in mind, my logical brain is fully expecting a period, not a pregnancy. Yet hope creeps into my heart, despite my best efforts to squash it. Doctors and Web articles don't help; they just say to keep trying, like Einstein didn't know what he was talking about. Try for a year. Sometimes it just takes a while. Up to 85 percent of couples trying to conceive will succeed within 12 months.

I like things to make sense though. (So weird, I know.) It doesn't make sense that if we keep just repeating these exact same steps, one of these times, it'll stick. There has to be something happening. Or not happening. What is it? How can I fix it?

Some people say, have sex more. Seems logical. Other people say, have sex less; you don't want to lower sperm counts. Thus, in the words of Liz Lemon, blerg.

Some people tell me, just relax. As soon as you stop thinking about it, it'll happen. Well, that's sort of true. I'm sure it would help my chances if I could just chill out. Stress can delay ovulation; it can make me feel like doing anything but have sex; and who knows what other physiological effects it may have. But at the same time, we've gotta time it right, and I won't know if we're timing it right unless I'm keeping track. And I simply don't know how to keep track without growing mildly obsessive.

So here's my plan for November. I'm getting out of Dodge. I'm taking Philip with me. For three nights, we're leaving behind work, responsibilities, fertility charts and OPKs. We're staying in a rental villa on an island in Florida, one that has a nice bed. We've timed the trip around my best guess at when I'll ovulate, but we're just going to be intimate when the mood strikes -- no happy faces, no thermometers, no carefully noting the consistency of my cervical fluid.

I just had to change it up this month; I was starting to feel insane.