People with kids or currently pregnant — have you ever heard these phrases during the pregnancy?
“Well, you’d better get your sleep now, because you won’t for the next 18 years!”
“Getting up a lot at night to pee? Get used to it, it’s gonna get worse.”
“Don’t worry, honey, it’s just your body getting used to getting up all the time and running on no sleep.”
If I have to hear one of these phrases once more, I’m going to shove the person ass-first onto a sharpened column of salt backwards and pour lemon juice all over them. With a pickle on top for color.
Hey, inconsiderate asshole — do you think we don’t realize this? Do you think we’re stuck in some sort of hole in the ground where we don’t realize that babies are demanding little suckers that will hound us night and day to feed/bathe/clothe/coddle them? Gee, we kinda thought you could take the same approach with them as we do with our cat — dump a scoop of pellets into a bowl and change the litter once a week. Oh, and of course, a scratching post for those frisky moments.
And for the record, the kid isn’t due to arrive till mid-October at least, which means we still have a few good months to expect decent sleep without a really good reason to be up at night. If we complain about not getting enough sleep, don’t be a jackass and say we shouldn’t complain because it’s, “only going to get worse”. Screw you — what about sleeping now? Don’t I have the right to get some decent shuteye for the moment when I don’t have to be up for someone else?
I’m not entirely sure what people are trying to accomplish by saying such stupid things. I have some theories about these sour little rainclouds:
A Bad Shot at Humor – Are they simply trying to give us a cute quip? If so, your material is horribly outdated and stinks like Tom Cruise’s acting abilities. “Oh, ha ha! 18 years, yes, you’re so right. I never thought of that before!” *puke* Everyone uses these phrases and nobody thinks they are funny, not even remotely. We Americans, especially, have a penchant for restating the obvious in the hopes of it becoming humor, but in this case, it’s not working and hasn’t for the past 50 years. You’re not funny, you’re annoying.
Misery Loves Company – Sometimes I think that people are trying to make everyone else feel as bad as they did. Well, to be frank, I don’t give a rat’s ass if your kid was a shithole and kept you up 24/7 with colic and screaming. I mean, I’m sorry that had to happen to you, but tough crap, it goes with the package. It may very well go with our package, too, or we may be extremely lucky and get a perfect angel. The fact is, it’s Vegas and you’re rolling in a high-stakes game, blindfolded, with some blonde bimbo fondling your junk. Who knows what you’re going to get? I doubt we’ll try to send the package back.
At any rate, it’s time to stop trying to make everyone else feel bad because you’ve had a bad experience. It doesn’t make us any more prepared for the situation and if anything makes us feel crappy for trying to have a kid. They’re not all about keeping you up at night, but hey…if you’re resentful of having to feed your child at night and concentrating on the shitty parts of parenting makes you feel bigger than me, kindly go sit on an anthill with honey in your crack, thanks.
Conversation Fodder – This one drives me up a wall — I don’t know what to say, so I’ll say something inane. Lovely. So you’re not the world’s greatest conversationalist and don’t know what to say — then keep your trap shut! Whipping off a predictable response to a common life event is just being a moron, not a clever person.
In short, unless the parents (or future parents) you are talking to are really, honestly clueless folks, please refrain from saying such things. Yes, we realize that the baby will keep us up at night, we’re quite prepared for it, and in fact, have talked about how we’ll handle it already so everyone’s as happy as can be given the circumstances.
But you know what? We’re not concentrating on it. We are, instead, looking forward to holding our child, snuggling them, kissing that baby softness and smelling that lovely baby smell, having it snuggle up on our shoulders and fall asleep, watching its eyes light up at seeing us, blowing raspberries on the bottoms of its chubby feet until it giggles — all the parts of parenting that make it worth the experience.
We’ll have terrible diapers, long nights, mountains of laundry, billions of bottles to wash, and a hundred other nasties to handle, but we are hoping (and anticipating) that all of these will be outweighed by the good things of the experience. We’re not being ignorant of what the world is like, we’re just choosing to look forward to the glass being half full for once in our lives.
Please quit trying to ruin the sunrise by describing the heat, hrm?
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