You’re So Not Almost Ready for a Baby, Even If You

[ringstrue]

I feel like I could add a few more to this list.

What would you add?

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jezebel.com/5912433/youre-so-not-almost-ready-for-a-baby-even-if-you-think-you-are

Look, you're not ready to have a baby. Hey-O! Yup. You're probably in your late twenties or early thirties, and you've gotten some shit figured out, and now you're pretty sure you're "almost ready" to have a baby. But a baby is the ultimate, cosmic limit-tester of all ultimate cosmic limits, and no matter what you do to prepare, you will still find yourself thrown for a loop. (Also, experiencing that loop and being able to lord it over others is one of the few best senses of entitlement you'll probably ever get in this lifetime, and I finally now understand why all other parents did this to me, too. Bastards.) But, hey. At least I want to explain it to you.

Ready!? Pshaw! Anyone who thinks they are actually ready to stare this beast directly in the eyes isn't wearing her cervical thinkin' cap. It's like, can you be "ready" for a cyclone? Can you be "ready" for the moon? Can you be "ready" for a dinosaur eating a cupcake? It's not like being bisexual in college, where you can get it all out of your system before you actually have to pick a side.

I know, you have a good job and a willing partner, or no partner but that's how you want it, and you love babies and you know babies and you even have a baby bucket list, where you actually are going to do a bunch of stuff like leasing a convertible or buying a white couch, or hanging out with your hot ex-boyfriend before you go marry your best friend, so that you can finally grow up and do this right. Wrong wrong WRONG! You are so cute! But you are so wrong. I get it:

• You think you're ready because you have a good job.
  Jobby goes bye-bye faster than a marble down the gullet of an 8-month-old.
  
  
• You have a willing partner.
  Guarantee, schmarantee!
  
  
• You LOVE babies.
  As a wise person with a baby recently pointed out to me, "Some people are great with babies but not so great with toddlers, or great with toddlers and not so great with teenagers." Just let it marinate.
  
  
• You have a dog.
  Ugh, sorry, but no. If you want your dog to help prepare you for an actual human baby, it only works if you have the worst dog in the universe. It has to be, like, only trainable on Thursdays and it must never eat the first three types of food you offer it. Doesn't sound like any dogs I know! (No, I am not saying a human baby is like an awful dog, I'm saying babies are neither compliant nor necessarily easy to feed.)
  
  
• You're working through a Baby Bucket List.
  Cool idea! But doing a bunch of fun stuff now will just make you want to do more fun stuff later. The not-so-distant memories of Cabo or a couple of hickeys from the Amnesiac Tour of Vegas will not soothe you through a year of sleepless nights, potty training or your first real poopie diaper.
  

If you want to get ready for a baby, take my advice, and do the opposite of fun stuff. I'm not saying babies aren't fun — they are a scientifically proven lovable barrel of monkeys, worth hanging up your Saturday night handjob gig for — but it's not the kind of fun for which you need any practice.

In fact, if I were selling my own Baby Squad™ Fitness Program for Actual Baby Readiness, it would not involve tickets to Europe, but would come with the following drills/regimen for the entire year prior to conception. (Yes, conception! Yes, a year! Not doing anything fun while already pregnant is not actually all that hard and therefore not true readiness training.):

• Practice wrestling a large, slippery fish three times a week.
  
  
• Wake up every two hours at night, punch yourself in the face, walk around for 28 minutes pleading in jibberish. Go back to "sleep." Repeat.
  
  
• Socialize with friends in 18-second increments.
  
  
• Practice asking for the check, boxing up your food and exiting a restaurant in under sixty seconds — two bites into the meal.
  
  
• Watch 38% of any film or television show; never see the ending or resolution.
  
  
• Read the same three paragraphs of a novel once every two weeks; fall asleep.
  
  
• Shower every three to five days, but only for two minutes.
  
  
• Hire a makeup artist to make you up to look 10 years older. Look at yourself in the mirror, then laugh, cry, laugh, cry, laugh, cry. Do not go get a drink.
  
  
• Pack two additional bags of random stuff to carry with you every time you leave the house.
  
  
• Stand around a tennis court and catch fly balls with one hand for two hours a day while also preparing a peanut butter sandwich.
  
  
• Practice wrestling aforementioned large, slippery fish, then dress it in seasonally appropriate outfit, including hat and/or jacket. Then go back, remove all clothing, and apply sunscreen. Re-dress fish.
  
  
• Memorize The Cat in the Hat, then repeat every evening between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m.
  
  
• Make 24 hours of baby-crying audio; hit play the moment you take a phone call, fire up your computer, or begin speaking any sentences to another human that contain important or useful information.
  
  
• Imagine a mental written list of your responsibilities for each day, tear it in half, burn one piece, take a (literal) shit on the other one. (Sorry.)
  

I guess it's no Vegas (or is it?), but this time-tested program will surely almost prepare you for the guerilla tests of strength, endurance and mental well being required for early childrearing — I make no guarantees for teenagers, or especially tweens. I repeat, no one is ever actually ready for a baby (at least not the first one). But if this program does not deaden your taste for spontaneous grown-up indulgence through tedious exposure to surprise challenges, I don't know what else will do the trick. Well, maybe Vegas would. In which case, the drink's on me.

[pixy0stix]

I just can't read these hyperbolic mommy blogger posts anymore.

[One Girl In All The World]

May 25, 2012 10:54:21 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

I just can't read these hyperbolic mommy blogger posts anymore.

Yea I'm right there with you.

[doctordonna]

The 5th bullet point is the reason that I've had to watch the entire newest incarnation of Doctor Who series like 50 times.

Not that that's a bad thing.

[ringstrue]

May 25, 2012 10:54:21 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

I just can't read these hyperbolic mommy blogger posts anymore.

hmm - I didn't take it as mommy martyr-ish at all. More just joking around.

[charminglife]

Is this article supposed to make me feel like I'm ready for a child because I've wrestled a large slippery fish or something? The writer needs to get over herself.

[ttt]

Is it really a secret that being a parent is hard?

And you know what? It's hard, but it's really not THAT hard.

[marie427]

May 25, 2012 11:01:16 GMT -5 ttt said:

Is it really a secret that being a parent is hard?

And you know what? It's hard, but it's really not THAT hard.

Shhhh, don't let any mommy martyrs out there hear you.

And yeah, even I'm sick of these articles/blog entries and I'm not a parent. I don't have to be a parent to know that parenting is hard, but lots of things in life are hard and humans manage just fine.

[Deleted]

May 25, 2012 10:54:21 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

I just can't read these hyperbolic mommy blogger posts anymore.

Right?? My eyes hurt not even 1/8th of the way through.

It isn't easy, trust. But it ain't that hard either and you aren't some kind of superhero once you become a parent.

STFU, yo!

[overture]

I agree. Yeah, it's constant and often tiring and sometimes annoying, but it's not fucking special by any means. Most people do it. And somehow, they manage to remain mostly sane and basically the same people they were before.

[meshaliuknits]

My cat rejects his food as often as the girl child does. So he was good prep, yes?

[ecupirate04]

This article is dumb. I have an almost 2 year old and it has been nothing like this at all. I don't even find it funny so maybe something is wrong with me.

[noodleoo]

I don't get the point of this. No one is ever ready for a baby. Is she basically trying to scare people into not having babies? This is just a bunch of crap that makes her feel like she's so much better/stronger than everyone who doesn't have kids yet. But everyone who becomes a parent learns to deal with these things in their own way.

She's just another mommy martyr on FB.

[One Girl In All The World]

May 25, 2012 12:39:47 GMT -5 ecupirate04 said:

This article is dumb. I have an almost 2 year old and it has been nothing like this at all. I don't even find it funny so maybe something is wrong with me.

That was my thought exactly. It's not clever or cute.

[Deleted]

I thought it was funny but I'm also insanely sleep deprived

[wawa]

I keep rereading it to figure out where it's funny. eh.

[lyssbobiss, Command, B613]

I thought it was funny. But I bitch about mommyhood frequently so I'm fully encased in my martyr uniform.

[pescalita]

May 25, 2012 12:22:26 GMT -5 overture said:

I agree. Yeah, it's constant and often tiring and sometimes annoying, but it's not fucking special by any means. Most people do it. And somehow, they manage to remain mostly sane and basically the same people they were before.

A FB friend shared this earlier in the week and I felt the same way.

I mean, the author even admits this pretty much: "Also, experiencing that loop and being able to lord it over others is one of the few best senses of entitlement you'll probably ever get in this lifetime, and I finally now understand why all other parents did this to me, too. Bastards."

[JLN]

May 26, 2012 5:25:44 GMT -5 mr+ms said:

May 25, 2012 13:24:17 GMT -5 @lauriergirl28 said:

I thought it was funny but I'm also insanely sleep deprived

Of course the baby stuff is not that hard. The hard part is dong things like it all while chronically sleep deprived and wanting to strangle the baby's other parent a few times a day for various reasons.

Truer words have never been spoken.

I found it funny, but I don't take mommy blogs like this seriously. Plus, a couple of those seem to be true in our house. yeah, notice I'm posting at 4am on a Saturday. See what I'm talking about?

[heyjude]

This has STFUParents written all over it.

I kinda want to smack her. I'm glad I socialize w/ a bunch of ladies who feel the same way.

[SusanBAnthony]

I thought is was funny. Parts of it were dumb (the fish) but mostly funny.

This coming from someone who had PPD after #1, basically bc i didn't understand what all parenting would entail, and that my kid would never sleep. And my opinion about how hard it is has not really changed since then, I just got used to it.

[shadow]

I love that so many parents, myself included, can't help but share/complain about how tough it is raising kids, but we still continue to do it, want people to feel for us and how hard we have it, while at the same time wonder why on earth our childless friends wouldn't want to have kids of their own.

[heyjude]

The whole "parenting sucks, wahhhh" thing is kinda old. It's been done mommy blogger, it's been done.

[laurenpetro]

May 26, 2012 9:39:36 GMT -5 @bunnybean said:

I'm filing the "parenting is so hard" meme we see everywhere these days under the same file that really anything is so hard. OMG, getting a master's degree is SO HARD. No, it's really not. It only is if you make it hard. Being a teacher is SO HARD. Again, no. Stop working harder than you need to. It's a job like anything else, and it has its perks and its shitty points, just like anything. And people who "work too hard" are really annoying. I have a teacher friend who stays up until 1 am grading and lesson planning. Stop that shit. Stop trying to have a wonderful lesson where kids get to practice a medieval marketplace every day. Sometimes, notes off the PowerPoint and a group activity is just fine.

And no, you don't have to make your kids paints out of corn syrup from Pinterest to be a good mommy. There's this magical company called Crayola that already does this for you. Go to fucking Walmart, buy some paint, and call it a damn day.

Hey Bunny, can you have a chat with my DH? He wears the fact that he works 6-7 days a week like a badge of pride around our house. He works his full work day, then comes home and works 4-5 hours a night. I don't mind it in the least, but don't look at me like I'm a fucking idiot when I tell you that not being able to work ONE night because your blackberry is broken isn't a bad thing. Dude, I know your boss and I know he told you it to work do hard and watch the game, so shut the fuck up.

[shouldbworkin]

May 25, 2012 11:00:03 GMT -5 ringstrue said:

May 25, 2012 10:54:21 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

I just can't read these hyperbolic mommy blogger posts anymore.

hmm - I didn't take it as mommy martyr-ish at all. More just joking around.

And, it's not really so far off base either. I'm living through 80% of that right now (again, for some reason ... should have read this article first I guess).

I think it's funny. It's not that being a parent is hard, it's just not really all that glamorous.