Okay, do not get me wrong: I do feel bad for couples that are horrified -the having the baby is not coming together. Many are so desperate as to do those shot things and have the embryo implants. I could have been there-in your shoes and gone through those shots and all that if I had never known the consequences of being on the other side.
Yesterday I wrote an article on here about the “good” side of parenting. Frugal things to do with you family for fun this fall. Do not get me wrong I do enjoy my kids and there are some great moments of family togetherness that makes my heart sore, but there is a downside.
If I had seen ahead-this downside I may have been wishing for an infertile moment. (Now please you that are crying for that child to hold, do not take offense, I understand your side of the looking glass and do feel the pain, but bear with me.)
It’s like this, the feelings of cringe inside, when the child you were nauseous carrying, with the throwing up, weight gain, food cravings and terrible pain of labor come in and says,” That soup looks like the stuff we had at lunch today at school=translation by the way he says it is,”Not again. Yuck..” Then you get the same reaction from the other 2 kids. You sit down and eat the soup thinking it is the best you have ever tasted, and what ungrates you have raised as you stare at their 1/2 eaten bowls. Then there is the guilt, “What did I do wrong to bring up kids that do not want a bowl of one of the best soups I have ever tasted?
Then there is the finding of the broken family picture frames down in the family room. After all you have told that boy to stop bouncing that ball in the house a million times by now. And it is the family picture-the one with him and the mom and dad in it that make sure he has all money he needs for this stuff and that.
And how about the son you warned not to marry this certain girl when you had heard certain scarey stories about how she had been victimized for years and wonder why? What do these issues stem from? Then he is tormented by how she up and left him high and dry. You cannot say, “I told you so,” even though this is you first reaction.
Then another son that makes 3 x as much money as you have ever seen will not even buy his own plane ticket to visit, but makes sure his wife gets to vacation with her mom and dad.
You have been sick as a dog at times and still pulled yourself up by the bootstraps to get those kids clothes washed and their dishes cleaned when they were little, but now they come home and moan about the chore list with their little bit of tasks and whimper how tired they are or they have a tummy ache. Makes you want to gnaw on your tongue.
It is always a joy to be around beggars at the store and you figure you would be a millionaire by now if you were not nickled and dimed by them constantly for “needful” items perceived as “real” needs, not ‘wants” mind you.. Which needs sometimes they are,but hey you could get by…. without.
Fight, fight, fight, squabble.
And there is differences between how the husband sees these conflicts and way to deal with it all and how you were raised and the need to keep peace together as a fronted unit so they can go out and marry and be in the same boat so you can have them on the phone being the loving mom you have to be. Talk about stress. And if you ever have grand kids their jobs have taken them so far away, you will not even get to payback with the fringe benefits of spoiling the darlings and sending them back to them to have to deal with the repercussions.
Do not get me wrong. I love my kids, but there are upsides and downsides to both sides of the coin and unless you have gone through the “children gauntlet” you are not able to look at the other side with perhaps a slight longing of what if?