Being pregnant means you actually have to have a baby...

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I have to be really honest with you. Neither of these things sound all the appealing to me. Most likely because I'm selfish. I love my time with my husband and my kindle and I love to shop and I love to eat what I want, when I want. And that my friends, means I am not ready to have a baby.
I follow a couple of blogs where the women have recently become pregnant and they all look lovely. Really, they're simply glowing. But still, no. I even have a few friends who have just had babies and that is sooooo great...for them.

I spent a huge amount of time on TheBump.com last night. I read about prenatal diets and 1st trimester ups and downs. I read about nausea and hemorrhoids and sex during pregnancy. I read about ideal ways to conceive and the joys of sonograms. I read about sleep patterns and feeding schedules and here's what I have to say about that:

Newsflash: If you get pregnant you actually have to have that baby. That baby will become a child and that child is your one true responsibility. You can no longer choose to go to the gym after work instead of waiting until your originally planned time because you have to pick up your baby at daycare by 5 or you'll be charged obscenely, you can't stop at Sonic on your way home from work and buy whatever you want to drink during Happy Hour because you're going to be on a budget, you can't have drinks with your coworkers on Thursday night, you can't ignore laundry, you can't tell your baby that "dinner's on your own" and most of all you can not under any circumstances see yourself as #1 anymore. And all of that is A-OK, if you want it. There is no room to be selfish with a baby.

I can't really tell you how many of my students are picked up from school and plopped in front of a TV until bedtime. Last year, I asked my 26 kindergarten students if they ate dinner with their families. Would you believe that only 1 student raised their hand?? 1 student.

It took me years and years to prepare myself for marriage. I read hundreds of blogs and books and I prayed and consulted married friends all because I wanted to be sure that I was ready when the time came, to give up a piece of myself for someone else.

When it comes to having a baby....to creating a new life, I believe that as much, if not more rigor must be applied to the process. We are asked to give up all of ourselves for that child- if you're doing it right, that is. We all owe it to our babies to be really, really ready. To know that we will gladly give up Sonic and spontaneous, selfish things in our lives so that we can bring a person into this world the right way.

Sometimes you may feel old or lonely or sad that your marriage is not as perfect as you imagined. But let me tell you friends those are not reasons to have a baby. Make the right choice. Get pregnant and raise a child for the right reasons.

Love & Peace.