33 Comments Add your own

• 1. Mama Bub  |  December 8th, 2010 at 10:44 pm

  My minivan changed my life. Also, the new Odyssey’s are ten kinds of pretty.

• 2. SwingCheese  |  December 8th, 2010 at 11:24 pm

  Every time we see my parents, one of them will ask my son: “Where are your mittens?” or “Didn’t you wear your mittens?” or “Aren’t your hands cold?”. The last time my dad made a comment like this, I responded “Gee, Grandpa, mommy has bought me gloves AND mittens, but I just don’t want to leave them on, so I take them off as soon as mommy turns around. But maybe you can talk to me about it and I’ll stop this behavior at once.” Passive-aggressive comments – they’re how we show love in my family.

• 3. Melanie Kerton  |  December 9th, 2010 at 12:02 am

  I own an Odyssey (though not a bright new shiny one) and I adore it for trips especially (my inlaws live 8 hours away and we make at least 6 trips a year)… at any rate, I know I am in the minority but I purposely got the odyssey without the dvd player, my friends kids need a freaking dvd to go the store without complaint and I NEVER even get one out on our 6 hour trips (in fact I drove the kids 11 hours last year (4 & 1 yr old back then) by myself without a dvd player and it was NO BIG DEAL! I really do credit the fact that my kids travel well because they look outside they like seeing cars, trucks, semi’s people who have pets in the car with them etc. My two year old sees more dogs in cars than I had ever noticed before! My son is in love with the GPS, and I don’t think we would have conversations about state lines, rivers, lakes etc if he were “plugged in” I am sure there are parents who have a strict rule about using DVD players only on long trips, but the other day I picked up my friends kids from school (one hazard of owning a minivan is that everyone knows you have room for a couple more heathens) and the first thing they asked for was “toons”…. not in this car sweetheart!

• 4. heidi  |  December 9th, 2010 at 8:26 am

  I have never spent a winter without snow. In fact, I have lived in the northeast my whole life (except that 1.5 year spent in the mountains of Arizona – with SNOW) and I have been dreaming of moving somewhere warm. So… well, there’s that. I feel your cold pain.

  As for the minivan… I have had one since my second was born. I have unnatural love for the minivan. And the newer ones are the absolute best. Fold into the floor seats? IMPERATIVE. Just so you know. Although, we still don’t own one with a DVD player. Not because I’m all anti-movies in the car but didn’t want to spend the cash. We have portable ones Grandma bought the kids a couple of years ago that we pull out for long trips. So I’d say, if you can get a built in one? Do it. Less mess.

  Babies? I have 4. Well, except they’re almost all teens now. So they are marvelous. But I’m done. So done. They are worth the sleepless nights but now I am old and need to sleep. (turning 40 in a week and a half)

  Sorry I hijacked your comments. Love your blog. Feel like we’re friends even though you have no idea who I am. Also, I grew up in Mass.

  BTW, where is your house in FL? Have a friend wanting to move.

• 5. jonniker  |  December 9th, 2010 at 8:30 am

  Well, Melanie, my kid does not travel well on long trips. It is not for lack of trying, and it’s not because she’s always had her DVD player in the car either. It’s not like I’m cranking up Elmo while we head to Target. But long-trip car travel with us is kind of a big deal. A kind of big, awful deal that you should try with us sometime and then see if you would forego the DVD player if you were us. (HAHAHHAHA, OH MY GOD IT IS SO AWFUL, MELANIE)

  She doesn’t sleep in the car (or anywhere but her bed without wailing), so she gets too tired to entertain herself, and it turns into a horrorfest faster than you can say Dora The Explorer.

  I think, like anything, it’s the kids you get. My kid does not travel well, and if a DVD player and Yo Gabba Gabba makes the long trip numbed enough so that I don’t have to spend the entire time listening to an overtired toddler screaming because she can’t keep her eyes open, but can’t bring herself to sleep, either, well, then CRANK THAT SHIT UP AND PUT IT ON REPEAT.

  Heidi: But we ARE friends. I think of you guys the same way.

• 6. Clare  |  December 9th, 2010 at 9:05 am

  Re mittens. I too had a child who hated mittens, and we lived in the upper peninsula of Michigan, where mittens were not optional. And then a friend told me about L-Bow mittens. They are expensive for kids’ mittens ($20ish/pair) BUT kids cannot get them off. Well, perhaps a determined child could, but it wouldn’t be easy.

  http://www.lbow.com/

• 7. Christine  |  December 9th, 2010 at 9:35 am

  Oh the elbow mitten sounds intriguing. But for me. For Sam, at least if you get them on those strings that attach to the coat? or don’t they have ones that attach to jackets as a set?

  I have no words of advice on anything else.

• 8. Tara  |  December 9th, 2010 at 9:36 am

  I’m 35 weeks pregnant and if I hear “sleep now while you can” or “you look like you’re about to pop” one more time I’m going to FREAK out on someone! Seriously? Most of these comments come from WOMEN! With children of their own! Do they FORGET SO EASILY that sleeping while pregnant is not that easy or fun? Last night I paced my living room till 1am trying to get my restless legs to calm down for heaven’s sake! I will WELCOME feeding a newborn at 3am rather than waking up to heartburn so bad that I puke in the middle of the night. AND I’m 5 weeks away from my due date. My belly is big, but I’m not about to pop. (Lucky me, I’m having a c-section in 2 weeks, but still, technically, I’m not popping anytime soon if I were to let nature take its course.) Do people have no tact!?

• 9. Marie Green  |  December 9th, 2010 at 10:13 am

  As someone who works in the pregnancy biz, and as part of my job spends a great deal of time building pregnant women up and helping them enjoy and love their birth experiences (even if it was bad, it’s still a magical, special day), I get really exhausted by the internets and pregnancy. On the one hand people are bitching that NO ONE TELLS YOU THIS (hint: they told you; you just weren’t ready to hear it) and on the other hand WHY IS EVERYONE TRYING TO SCARE ME?? (they’re not always; sometimes they’re just trying to tell you things honestly so they won’t be accused of withholding information.) It’s like, no matter what you say, you can’t win.

  (I use the term “you” loosely there, because I mean neither YOU, Jonna, nor me… but the “you” at large.)

  Anyway, I hate any form of education that uses a scare-tactic format (car seat people are some of the worst offenders) (so are a group of moms discussing letting kids walk home from school/bus stop OMG), so I try to relate my experiences honestly and balanced- the good and the bad. I see your writing about pregnancy and motherhood to be like this too, and I appreciate that.

  I think mostly what it boils down to is that this format of relating information of pregnancy/childbirth/breastfeeding etc is a new format and one that we- as a collective- are still learning how to navigate. No other generation has had the internet and blogs as a guide for this, and now that we do we’re still ironing out the rules. Also, it’s newly socially acceptable to speak honestly of some of the less appealing aspects of motherhood- which is fantastic and healing for the most part… unless you’re a pregnant woman who’s read one too many “honest” blog posts.

  In all honesty, motherhood has stretched me in ways that nothing else could have, and I am better for it. I’m so endlessly grateful for both the good AND the bad parts, and I’m so proud of myself for triumphing over difficult challenges, and I’m so much more confident in OTHER situations because of my motherhood triumphs. It’s a wonderful, magical, difficult growing process, becoming a mother. It takes you to the end of yourself, and then a little further, and you’d NEVER guess you could love like this, or function on such little sleep like this. It’s such a ride! I highly recommend it!

• 10. hydrogeek  |  December 9th, 2010 at 10:53 am

  I’m not sure, but I may be de-lurking just to tell you of my love for my minivan. We have a Toyota Sienna, and I bought it slightly used so we could afford the built in DVD player and all the options. I was the “NO DVD” mom with my first kid, and I was RIGHT about it, you know? And then? My second kid came. And he was an awful, screaming, horrible, no-good, very bad traveler. I love my DVD player. I love all the room in my minivan. That’s the end of my testimony. Happy shopping!

• 11. cindy w  |  December 9th, 2010 at 11:01 am

  My husband’s car will be completely paid off next May. The same month I am due with this baby I’m currently gestating. I am daydreaming of buying a mini-van the second his car is paid off. (In reality, it’ll probably take a few months. Can’t really fathom car-shopping with a newborn.) But yes: THREE ROWS OF SEATS. I can’t wait.

• 12. Cathy  |  December 9th, 2010 at 11:14 am

  Re: pregnant women and the horrors of newbornhood: I’ve been trying to remind myself lately that suffering isn’t relative, at least not in the moment when you’re experiencing it. That is, knowing it may/will get worse is *not* the same as having it feel better now. I remember so vividly driving my newborn to that six-week postpartum check-up and seeing the pregnant women sitting in the birth center waiting room and having to fight the urge to yell, “Keep them inside! Do not let them out!” But now I’m 10 weeks pregnant and hating the nausea/constant illness/no immune system/exhaustion, and the knowledge that other, more severe forms of stress are on the horizon just doesn’t really make the nausea feel less like nausea. Feeling crappy is feeling crappy, and however sleep-deprived I am when the baby comes, I won’t be nauseous anymore, and that will be nice.

  As far as the general atmosphere of doom and gloom around pregnancy and parenting goes, I’m agnostic. It did and does help me to know that finding these experiences largely difficult or unpleasant is on the spectrum of normal (so is enjoying them, of course), and not predictive of one’s overall experience of being a parent. And, like Marie, I took a kind of satisfaction in the difficulty — for me, the whole pregnancy+first year are about love as a verb more than love as a feeling, and it’s very reassuring to know that I have that capacity in me. So I do often say things to friends with new babies, like, “Oh, I hope you find so much joy in this. And if you happen to find it really hard or even unpleasant, like I did, I can reassure you that the joy-to-stress ration just improves and improves.” Which is, maybe, condescending or defeatist in some ears, and I’d hope they feel free to tune me out. But for me it was so immensely stress-relieving to be able to accept the unpleasantness as a feature of the situation, not as a reflection of my fitness for it.

• 13. Liz  |  December 9th, 2010 at 11:16 am

  Ok, so on any other blog I’d feel dumb for sharing this, but it’s you, and I know how you feel about your dog, so:

  When my dog was sick last year – very sick, up every hour on the hour sick, me in my PJs at 7am at the vet waiting for them to open sick (and yes I get it he is just a dog but hush up already), the most frequent thing I heard was “Well,t his is great practice for motherhood! Get used to those sleepness nights!”

  Like, HOW? Is my getting less sleep NOW going to make it suck less THEN? REALLY? Because I don’t think so, and now I’m annoyed and kind of hate you AND I’m overtired and it will STILL kind of suck when I have kids, lessened not even a little bit by this experience. GOD

  Anyway, that was me, agreeing with you. Moving on to the minivan: omg, DVD, do it. Life’s too short to worry about the ramifications of “is it theoretically good to let a child watch TV in the car” – survival is about adaptation, right? So good on ya for adapting the car situation so you will all live through your next drive.

• 14. Amy  |  December 9th, 2010 at 11:17 am

  Errgg, the toddler hating mittens thing. I am right there with you. Mine won’t even allow me to put them on her. Nor will she allow me to cover her with a blanket once I have put her in her carseat in the morning. It is 10 degrees out and she’s shivering, but she will not allow it! Nor will she allow me to leave the house for one second to start the car. I guess I’m not going to win this one…

• 15. Brenna  |  December 9th, 2010 at 11:18 am

  My 2 cents on mini-vans: we love our Kia Sedona, and Chevys make my kids vomit. No, seriously. This isn’t silly brand hate speaking. Both my older kids consistently get carsick in Chevys.

• 16. Josefina  |  December 9th, 2010 at 11:19 am

  (1) I never thought I’d say it, but a minivan sounds delicious.
  (2) I am not a pregnant woman, so the “honest” blog posts don’t horrify me, or scare me, or make me think twice, or anything. I agree with you that finding a balance between the horrifying and the wonderfulness of the experience of birth, parenting, etc. is important, and something that I have to do for myself by picking and choosing whose posts I am going to read on a given day. That’s the best way I can find to handle *that* issue.
  (3) However, I think the problem is that if you haven’t had a child yet, finding balance may be difficult because you don’t know what that will feel like for you, not having experienced any of the good parts or the bad parts. So yes, I guess I see your point.
  (4) BUT I agree with Marie Green in that sometimes I feel like I can’t win, no matter what I say. If I keep it to myself, that’s not good, but if I say it, I feel sometimes that people want to punch me in the face. My perspective is that I was COMPLETELY unprepared for the experience because no one told me anything unlovely about it. I think this led to me having a much more difficult time with birth, and with having an infant. I felt very alone in my confusion and lack of complete bliss. It was a really dark time for me that I wish on no one. If I had realized that most everyone had the same feelings I did at one time or another, it would have made things much better for me, so maybe I tend to be more vocal than I should about unlovely details. I don’t really know what to do about that. It’s not coming from a mean place, I promise.

• 17. Olivia  |  December 9th, 2010 at 12:09 pm

  I agree with Marie Green on the can’t win of pregnancy talk. If you are happy about it other women glare at you, and if you complain you are an ungrateful wench. And everytime I hear some woman say “Nobody talks about …” I want to slap her. EVERYONE talks about how hard motherhood is. Especially with the invention of blogs, there is no avoiding conversations about the dificulties (and the wonderful things) about motherhood.

  Mittens. Having trouble with my toddler on this too. Not sure I can justify $20 for elbow mittens, but wondering if sewing babylegs onto a pair of mittens would work.

• 18. laura  |  December 9th, 2010 at 1:02 pm

  we have a kia minivan, not the beloved Odyssey which I still dream about, but any ways i dont think i could not live without a minivan, the room, the storage, the so many compartments to stick crap, not to mention 8 cup holders, those little charger hole things. not to mention i have 4 carseats in mine and still room. you will love it !!

• 19. jonniker  |  December 9th, 2010 at 1:14 pm

  This is such a good discussion! I agree you can’t win, Marie. I also agree that people DO tell you, but you aren’t ready to hear it. Although no one really did tell me about the vagina that ate Manhattan. That was a shock.

  I think there’s a big difference, too, in tone. I don’t mind the blog posts, really, and I found people like Sundry and Amalah to be HUGE in helping me to prepare for having a kid. But they write about parenthood in such a lovely, balanced way.

  There is a difference in someone who says “Hey, I found XX hard, you might find it hard too, and if you do, I am here to help and to tell you it will get better!” and the people who take a smug sort of glee in telling the pregnant woman that whatever life or aspirations she had are shot to hell because now she’s going to have a baby and her life as she knows it is over! Oh, and if you liked sleep, kiss it goodbye FOREVER!

  People say those things ALL THE TIME to people who are pregnant, and it’s so insulting and upsetting and scary.

  I hated having a newborn. I am not a newborn person, mostly because mine screamed 24/7. But it got better and that wasn’t my WHOLE LIFE, the way I honestly thought it was, the way people were talking to me.

  In retrospect — and I hope I remember this the second time — the sleep deprivation/all-consuming nature of a newborn is very temporary in the whole grand scheme of things. It is long, but in the course of your life with a kid, it ends quickly. And dude, my kid didn’t sleep through the night until she was 14 months, so if I say it felt quick, I mean it.

• 20. Jess  |  December 9th, 2010 at 3:06 pm

  Jonna, I think your point about HOW you present your perspective making all the difference is so crucial. Because that’s the thing–every time I read a post or talk to someone who says they’re FINALLY going to tell me what nobody ever says, it IS things that I already know. So I feel like I am prepared insofar as I know of the types of things that will happen. But I also know that it will be a shock when some of them happen because knowing theoretically that it might be a certain way and actually experiencing that for yourself are very different. So I do appreciate hearing about different people’s experiences, and I have also found that pregnancy is nothing like I was expecting–I like it WAY MORE than I thought I would. I am having an easy pregnancy, but that doesn’t mean it’s not uncomfortable or challenging or that I don’t cry at the drop of a hat and get up every three minutes to pee–but I LIKE those things, that’s what’s been different for me. They are objectively bothersome things, and I can absolutely understand why some pregnant women are so bothered by them, but they do not bother me. And that has been a lovely surprise.

  But the comments of “this is how it was for me and it is going to be exactly like this for you and by ‘this’ I mean ‘misery and woe that will last the rest of your life’”? Those are not helpful or productive. And like TJ said in her post–or maybe it was in her response to one of the comments on the post–it’s very frustrating when people who already have kids act like anything you say or believe to the contrary of what they are telling you is just your own naivete and has no merit or value. Like you don’t know yourself or how you tend to react to things at all. I mean, I THOUGHT I would like being pregnant, and it turned out that I do–even MORE than I expected to–DESPITE how I felt like I was surrounded by people telling me how miserable their own pregnancy experiences were.

  Also? I am really sick of people telling me that once I have a kid, I am never going to have sex again. I REALLY don’t think that’s true (for one thing, if that WERE true, how would people ever have more than one kid?), but if I say something about how I don’t think that’s true, I am faced with a smug “just wait and see, you innocent newbie” reaction. AND? Even if it WERE true, why would you take great pleasure and delight in telling me that? How is that helpful in any way?

• 21. agirlandaboy  |  December 9th, 2010 at 3:15 pm

  Yes, what Marie said, and then what you said after. You CAN’T win, and there’s no one-size-fits-all way to treat an entire world of pregnant-but-otherwise-totally-different people.

  The sad thing is it doesn’t stop. When you have a newborn, people with toddlers say, “Oh, just you wait!” When you have a toddler, people with school-age kids sayd, “Oh, just you wait!” Etc. Its’ like…we’re competing…on who is more annoyed by their children? Really?

• 22. craftyashley  |  December 9th, 2010 at 7:14 pm

  I’m sorry, but minivans are UGLY! Horrible! Especially after the new redesign of the Sienna and Odyssey. How do you make it worse? Didn’t think it was possible, but Honda and Toyota managed it! Might I suggest the GMC Acadia or the Mazda CR-9? I’m deciding on which one to get myself.

• 23. jonniker  |  December 9th, 2010 at 7:28 pm

  Ashley, our Accord is a 1998 model. We are not car people, at least when it comes to what something looks like. Give me a stunning interior packed with things like three rows of seats and cup holders over anything pretty any day.

  I’m personally still coveting the Odyssey. I’ll send you pictures!

• 24. Marie Green  |  December 9th, 2010 at 7:35 pm

  Oh, the whole “can’t have an opinion because your a silly newbie first-timer”! I HATED that. I remember so clearly sitting in a breastfeeding class being EMBARRASSED to tell anyone I was expecting twins because I thought I’d get the pity-look that said “poor stupid girl, thinking she can nurse TWINS”. I avoided that reaction as much as I could because I hated it so. (And I DID nurse twins- they never had an ounce of formula- so THERE.) (And to be fair, I don’t think the women teaching that class- my eventual future coworkers- WOULD haven given me that reaction… I was just so sensitive to it, that I was AFRAID of being patted on the head at every turn.)

  And Jonna, you’re right about the blog posts not being as bad as the LIVE HUMANS pregnant women have to face. I wasn’t thinking of that slant when I was commenting this morning. The live human were WAY WORSE. Like my FIL who had to follow me around reminding me that I held my (4 and 5 lb) babies TOO MUCH and I was SPOILING THEM. GAH. NO LIKE.

  I always like to tell people how I’m sleeping 8 hours a night (could be many more, if I went to bed earlier), how I have free time throughout my day for myself, how my kids dress themselves and pour their own cereal. How on the weekends, the 7 year olds take the 4 year old downstairs, feed her, and turn on a tv show for her, while David and I SLEEP IN. I mean, I’m still considered a “young mom” with “little kids”, and yet they DO get big and self-sufficient fairly quickly!

• 25. Suzanne  |  December 9th, 2010 at 8:07 pm

  I have just gone through some of the most unpleasant and awful and uncomfortable pregnancy-related stuff ever – and I was almost! done! with no problems! – and instead of wanting to tell all my friends, I fear I may lead to the extinction of the human race if I start accosting random women on the streets and telling them just how MUCH FUN it is to have kidney stones while 37 weeks pregnant. The gleeful “ahahaha you are SO SCREWED” feeling is sort of sadistic, especially when talking to the already impregnated.

  I tell everyone I know I LOVE my minivan. It’s not even a fancy minivan, just a low-end Dodge Grand Caravan (the kind that Dexter has suddenly started trying to sell me which may be the worst actor/product endorsement ever) but fold down seats and enough room to travel WITH A DOG and all the luggage we want is priceless. And for the record, my parents are still driving THEIR first generation Odyssey and they love it.

• 26. SwingCheese  |  December 9th, 2010 at 11:41 pm

  @Jess: LOL, no one mentioned to me (or my husband) that I’d never have sex again!!!

  But you (and others) are absolutely right: it’s the condescending air with which these pronouncements are given, as if the speaker’s experience will be handed down from on high for you to repeat. As far as no more sex goes, well, that is more indicative of the speaker’s issues anything else. But the number of Irish twins in my (extended) family alone would indicate that sex after child-birth is definitely an option.

• 27. Amy (Frugan)  |  December 10th, 2010 at 5:19 am

  Just the other day I went into your archives and read this post : http://www.jonniker.com/2009/03/25/the-time-of-times/ And was reminded once again of the fact (woah earth-shattering revelation!) that people have really different experiences. You found early motherhood a relief compared to pregnancy. I found it a total shock. I didn’t have a fairy-tale, I’ve never felt so beautiful, earth mother pregnancy. There was pain and a whole lot of heartburn, but it was fine. So fine that I felt it in no way prepared me for motherhood and when my baby arrived I thought, what the hell were the last nine months good for? I read stuff, of course, but as Marie says, I wasn’t ready to really hear it. For me, the first 9 months of motherhood were the real pregnancy, in which I finally had the tools to prepare for being a parent.

  During that first year, I told a lot of pregnant women, “If you think it’s hard, remember, you can always call me.” When I didn’t receive any calls, I had to accept that not everyone is lying. Some people don’t actually find the infant stage that difficult. They feel happy and don’t need the amount of support I needed. My best friend is about to have her first baby and I said instead, “Listen, don’t feel like I am expecting you to have the same experience as me. It is going to be awesome.” If it’s not, she knows she can call me.

  I found Ask Moxie’s recent “It gets better” post to be one of the truest, most satisfying things I have read about early motherhood. But I would never send it to a pregnant lady. Or to a new mother, unless I knew how she was feeling. However, I would also never say to a pregnant woman or new mother, “Isn’t it just wonderful?” Because hearing that over and over and having to think “no” is the f-ing worst.

  Not everyone is going to feel like you do during pregnancy and motherhood, and all that matters is that we find people who are like us when we need them. Screw anyone or any book that makes you feel bad, whether it’s due to too much positivity or too much negativity.

• 28. Swistle  |  December 10th, 2010 at 6:49 am

  1. I feel so totally trapped about the negative stories. I feel like if we TELL the stories, people say “Everyone always told me all this crappy stuff, trying to scare me!!” and if we DON’T tell the stories, people say, “No one tells you it’ll be like this!!” I think you’re right that the key is balance—although EVEN SO, there are so many people going around saying NO ONE EVER TOLD THEM labor would hurt, and other people going around saying EVERYONE ALWAYS TOLD THEM it would be hell. SIGH! LISTENING EARS, people. LISTENING EARS.

  2. And indeed, the most annoying of all is the “Just wait, you’ll see how you are” said in smug tones. I was lucky in that I think I only had two in-person people (not counting one-offs in stores) who Would! Not! Quit! with that (it was my mother-in-law and a friend who had her baby a year before I got pregnant). But two was MORE THAN PLENTY. And in my head _I_ was thinking “Just wait, you’ll see YOU’RE the one who’s wrong.” But then they WERE wrong, and they didn’t CARE, they just moved right on to the next thing they knew better about than I did!! I DIDN’T change my mind about how much I wanted babies when I had one, so then they were like, “Yeah, just wait until he’s older.” And then he was older and I STILL thought the having-babies idea was a good one, so then it was, “Well, but just wait until you have two!” SO infuriating. Although I can also see how irritating it is to hear first-time pregnant people talking in certain smug/knowing/judgey ways (the whole “I’LL never…” category, just for starters). It’s just, I WASN’T doing that, so it was really stupid of them to attack me as if I was all crazy-talking it up, rather than what I WAS doing which was saying “I don’t really know how it’ll be yet—guess I’ll see when I get there!” and, like, READING LOTS OF BOOKS on the subject so I wouldn’t be someone saying “NO ONE EVER TOLD ME IT WOULD BE LIKE THIS. IT’S A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE.”

  3. I love, love, LOVE our minivan. LOVE IT. Might want to drive one even after the kids leave home. I hate driving our regular car now. And ours is an older minivan (a 2000 Toyota Sienna), so the seats aren’t awesome folding-in ones, and there’s no DVD player, and there’s no remote door-opening/closing, and I STILL love it love it love it. I pet it and talk to it.

• 29. jonniker  |  December 10th, 2010 at 8:31 am

  Amy, that post was, um, well, before things got REALLY BAD. Did you read the ones after that? Because HAHAHAHAHAHA, THINGS GOT BAD.

  My point isn’t that motherhood is the same for everyone, or even that the people who say hey, this might be hard and you can call me, are bad. It’s not those people who are the problem. It’s the people who say, as many did to me, “Sleep now, because you’ll never sleep again!” (Not true: YOU WILL.) Or, when I mentioned that at some point I wanted to pursue a writing career, “Do it now! Because once the baby comes, it’s all over!”

  That’s not true. None of that is true. It doesn’t matter how much you love or hate infanthood: you get out of it and you sleep again, and you have time to yourself again. Maybe not right away, but that horror is NOT the REST OF YOUR LIFE. But if I only went by the people who were warning me about how awful it was going to be, then I’d think that was true.

• 30. Amy (Frugan)  |  December 10th, 2010 at 9:11 am

  Oh I totally agree. I didn’t think you were saying everyone had the same experience, more that I still have to remind myself. I had a tendency for a long time to think that people who said they loved their baby’s infancy were big fat freakin liars! Now I realize that’s not true, just as it’s true that some people don’t mind pregancy. Though who are these people who love love love it?

  I will go back and read those entries. I started reading about a year ago, but if Sam cried anything like my daughter did (about a month older), I certainly get the bad.

• 31. Annie  |  December 10th, 2010 at 11:48 am

  Oh, crap. You’re telling me the annoying, unsolicited advice that exists only to make other women feel better about themselves doesn’t stop after you have your wedding? I will endure this again whenever my husband and I start having kids? Sheesh. What’s wrong with women? (End sarcasm. Kinda.)

• 32. Lindsay  |  December 10th, 2010 at 3:53 pm

  Hey what an encouraging thing for you to write. I’m terrified of the whole pregnancy thing and years away from it. Today I am home sick and feeling sorry for myself and was thinking there’s no way I have the skills to endure pregnancy if I am this wimpy about plain run of the mill flu symptoms.

• 33. TwoBusy  |  December 14th, 2010 at 7:47 am

  If you DO decide to head down the thorny path to minivan-dom… may I gently suggest that you take into account the fact that the Odyssey does NOT have AWD (and, subsequently, you might consider comparing/contrasting vs. the Toyota Sienna, which does)?

  Also, that Florida idea sounds great. What could possibly go wrong?

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