Over the past few weeks I have had conversations with a few
of my friends, all of which are in different stages of their lives, regarding
pregnancy and kids. This shouldn’t come
as a shock because other than politics and my cat’s relentless desire to bring
me half-dead lizards, I don’t have a whole lot going on besides my little
nugget. In these conversations there has
been a common thread, that there is a lot of shit that they don’t tell you
before you have kids. One might think
this is to not scare you away from having kids, but I’m not so sure because I
distinctly remember being told about the mucus plug falling out and if that
doesn’t make you throw your hands up and run away I have to think that there is
very little that would. Maybe it’s
important for me to know these things in advance because I’m a child of the
information age and believe knowledge is power or in this particular sense that
knowledge is not throwing up when your daughter shits in the tub (to be
discussed later). Either way, here are a
few things I would have appreciated a heads up on.
First up, nipples.
WTF. The memory of this
horrifying change during pregnancy was refreshed when receiving a text from a
friend who is currently pregnant with her first child that read “my nipples
feel like they are on fire”. It’s well
known that your breasts get bigger, stretch marks will probably grace your
body, and your hips get wider. How the
HELL did they forget to mention that your nipples will become the most dynamic
organ on your entire body. Just a small
oversight that your nipples will immediately start changing color, shape,
length (yep), texture and beyond when you are pregnant. No big deal.
Even after I had researched if what was happening to my body was normal,
I still had to ask the doctor to look at them because that shit did not seem
normal. The casual way in which my
doctor looked at my situation and said “oh yeah, completely normal” I got a
sense that during pregnancy your nipples could be blue and about to fall off
and it would still be considered normal.
So, for those of you that haven’t started a family yet, I guarantee you
will still be mortified when your nipples start to change. However, I have at least saved your husband
the humiliation of having to Google it for you because you are too scared to
see the images that may come up (maybe that’s just me).
Next, they warn you about sleepless nights, teething, diaper
changes and blow outs. They do not warn
you about tub shits. I should preface
this section with a little factoid about my husband; he does not handle gross
things well. Anyway, the first time I read about tub shits was when Ella was 9
months old and I ignored it because it hadn’t happened yet and you could set
the clock by her poop schedule. The term
is pretty self-explanatory but , just in case you haven’t figured out what a
tub shit is, it is when your child poos in the bathtub. Fast forward to when Ella is about a year
old. There we are playing peek-a-boo
with the shower curtain when up pops a piece of poo. This particular incident was pretty comical;
she clearly was a bit constipated because it was the Caddyshack floating in the
pool kind of poop. Added to the humor
was the fact that Clayton and I had just taken a boater’s safety course in
Florida where they talked extensively about the importance of protecting the
manatees. So, as the poo was floating in
the tub and I’m scrambling to grab Ella to prevent her from touching it, my
husband is screaming “Don’t touch the manatees, they are a protected species”. The whole scene was hilarious. OK, so tub shits, not so bad. The next night Clayton offers to give Ella a
bath and let me relax (such a nice husband).
I realize she hasn’t pooped for the day and suggest we put a swim diaper
on her as a precaution (I’m a genius). I
lay down on the bed, open Facebook when Clayton comes bursting in holding Ella
at arm’s length, running toward our bathroom, gagging, and dripping poop water
all along the way. He sets her in our
bathtub and starts dry heaving, Ella is crying because she doesn’t know what is
going on, and I’m utterly confused. To
Clayton’s horror, apparently Ella wasn’t constipated anymore and once she
started pooping in the swim diaper it started leaking into the water, rapidly
turning the water brown. As he’s telling
me this as if it’s the biggest atrocity of the current times, I cannot stop laughing
at how dramatic this all is for him and he just keeps repeating “you didn’t see
it, you didn’t see it”. For the sake of
squeamish people tub shits should come with fair warning.
So being pregnant gets you weird nipples, but the payoff is this
incredible little being that you never knew you could love so much. And your toddler may shit in the tub, but at
least you get a laugh out of it and that little person is the funniest, cutest,
sweetest (not always, I’m not delusional) person you’ve ever known. This brings me to last thing that no one told
me- older kids are PERVES. I’m prepared
to have the “where do babies come from?” question because I’ve been warned that
it will come up. However, the degree to
which I will have to address sexual behavior was not fully communicated. This revelation was discovered at the zoo, a fairly
appropriate locale to be reminded that we are animals raising little animals. The zoo has an impressive splash park,
complete with whales, dolphins and other various sea creatures. As you can imagine the dolphin and whale are
very popular for kids to ride. What one
might not expect is that I’ve seen multiple kids enjoying a splash park enema
courtesy of the whale/dolphin’s blowhole. Yep, I wasn’t prepared for that either. In fact, I was rather disturbed. Not because the kids were clearly discovering
their bodies but because parents apparently do not watch their children to stop
them and discuss proper dolphin/whale riding etiquette! So, you’re welcome in advance for preparing
you for the splash park enema conversation that all of us are going to have to
have with our children. My only question
is if these little humans, that aren’t as cute as toddlers, are really as
disgusting as they seem; what is their redeeming quality?
Turns out, maybe there is something to not knowing all of
this before it’s too late.
