Thoughts on the road to motherhood...

I was chatting with on old friend, discussing pregnancy and the path to motherhood, when it dawned on me....it's insanity.

The path to motherhood that is. I realize that carrying a child for nine or so months (give or take) is a wonderful gift. It is truly a miracle and a gift from our Father. I don't regret, nor do I wish it to have been any other way. I loved each time I felt my children move or hiccup for the first time. I loved the thought that I was growing a life inside of me. I still pray, daily in fact, that some of my dearest friends will one day be able to experience this job. It is all beautiful and miraculous...at least in theory.

Remember, as I write this list, I agreed to and even pleaded with my husband and God, to do this "baby thing", not once, not twice, but THREE times, knowing full well what was involved. The crazy thing is, I'd do it all again in a heartbeat! What is wrong with me!

First, you have the "morning sickness". This is really just a crock. A big, fat, horrid lie. Morning, noon, night, middle of the night, middle of the day, every waking moment sickness, would be a better name for it. There was nothing even remotely morning only about it. In fact, I often felt my best upon first opening my eyes...it went down hill from there. You will also meet those well intentioned people, who will find it necessary to tell you that they were never sick...not even once, their whole pregnancies. REFRAIN from punching them in their faces.

Then you add the vomit ting to the nausea and the fun really starts. This is much more tolerable with your first pregnancy. You have only yourself and your husband to worry about. The good thing about your first pregnancy, is your husband is still so enamored by the idea of his wife carrying his offspring, that they don't mind eating peanut butter sandwiches and frozen pizza rolls for dinner for 6 straight months. The consecutive children and the sickness they cause creates a problem. You can no longer lie down when you aren't feeling well and you may often have an audience while you relive the last three meals you've eaten. You may even be insane enough to have children a year apart, and have the joy of an infant crawling around your knees while you kneel at the toilet. If you are lucky, this part will only last a few months. If you are not one of these blessed ladies, you will, like me, puke for nine months. This puking will not be a once a day thing either. Your body will have other ideas.

We add in the food/smell aversions. You may feel perfectly fine and then you have to cook hamburger or smell peaches or sweet potatoes and think you may just die right then. You may even be forced to ban microwave popcorn from your home for years...even when you aren't pregnant. The smell may bring back such horrid memories that you dry heave when you smell it. Your husband may even smell funky to you, even right after a shower - this is honestly how I knew I was pregnant with my third! The smell of my sweet husband, even directly following a shower made me ill.

You can throw in a bit of swelling too. Just for good measure. Your feet and ankles, could potentially swell so much that flip flops become tight. You will sit and take them off and find that you have what the doctors affectionately refer to as "pitting edema", and be thrilled with the restrictions they try to place you on for it.

You can add the benefit of excessive weight gain. You may be able to step on the scale during one of your monthly visits and find that you have indeed gained 12, yes 12 pounds in one month. You can then relive that fact over again when the doctor lets you know that, that type of weight gain is unacceptable. He won't even budge an inch when you tell him you are always starving and that the baby HAS to drink a full pitcher of kool aid every day.

You may even add the joy of high blood pressure to one of your pregnancies or perhaps pre term labor. These items will land you on bed rest. Bed rest is all well and good for the first few days....and it's a laughable concept when you have an 11 month old at home. You will ask about the doctors definition of "modified bed rest" and hope your doing that.

You will have this lovely sciatic pain and some odd pain in your pelvis that makes you feel like your bones are actually cracking in half. You will be assured that it's a normal feeling and it just your bodies way of preparing for delivery...WHAT THE.... If that's how if feels in preparation what will the actual process feel like!?!?

You will have to limit your caffeine intake, nix all ibuprofen. You will call your ob or pharmacist a zillion times asking for medication classifications. You will hope and pray that the pepto bismol you took will not give your child Rye's disease and you will not look up Rye's disease after praying that.

If you are one of the lucky ones that have heartburn, your baby will not have hair...at least mine didn't and I had heartburn that could kill a person. You will try TUMS and realize that they make you throw up - which is great, considering you already throw up at the drop of a hat. You will take Zantac like they are Tic Tacs and will eventually beg for something to help with this heartburn.

There will be moments, especially in subsequent pregnancies, where you will sneeze, laugh or cough and you will wet your pants...and not just a little bit. You won't even know you have to pee until you do it. You will become an item of entertainment to friends and family. They will take bets and laugh each time you sneeze.

You will get jabbed, punched, kicked, rolled, hiccuped and have your innards beat on a daily basis.

Your sleep patterns will change and you will pee, more in the night, in nine months, than you have in your life up to this point.

you will have multiple blood tests run and get to drink some yummy orange pop stuff...that they tell you you can't throw up. Which is difficult, if you have the evil sickness that I already mentioned.

Your feet might even grow TWO full sizes. You may be one of the lucky ones that experience stretch marks and odd pregnancy rashes.

These moments are all prior to labor... Labor is where the fun really starts...

More poking and prodding will ensue. You might vomit some more and have diarrhea...all at the same time.

There will come a moment, when you no longer care who sees you naked. Yes, I said it. You might find a moment, be it ever so brief, that if someone promises to get the child that is threatening to burst through your skin out, you would let them in to see you in all your glory.

You might have that moment, when your "drug man" comes in, that you only thought was made for TV. He will give you some potentially magic drugs and you will want to kiss him and name your child after him....even if he does smell like hard liquor.

Contract, push, contract, push, yell, scream, contract....fail miserably and have baby chopped out of you.

You may even, like me, be so drugged by this point that you don't even realize that you haven't seen your son in several hours because he's in the special care nursery. Your dear sister will tell you this months later...and you will freak that you didn't know this.

My husband is convinced that God made woman to have children for all of these reasons. He said the first time he puked he would have been done having children. He found it insane that I would willingly subject myself, multiple times to these "activities".

The funny thing is...despite this insane road, I'd still do it again! I don't mind the sagging, stretch marks and bigger feet. I don't care so much about the eroded esophagus or calcium depleted teeth.

I love my children more than I ever thought possible. I daily wear my heart on my sleeve.

I would do it all over again, even knowing what I know and having felt what I felt. I will continue to beg God to bless my friends with children of their own too. This must equal insanity.