An Open Letter to Those Who Currently Do Not Have Small Children

This letter is to those who currently do not have small children, possibly falling under one of the following categories:

Single and ready to mingle

Newly married and obliviously blissful

Married for a while without kids

Basically: single/dating/married folks who would maybe, possibly like to one day have children

Dear One or More of the Above,

One day, you may like to become a parent. Recently, I’ve been blessed by becoming Mama to a little angel baby named Annie. She is my heart, my world, my everything. And seeing my husband become a father is pure joy. Really, parenthood is the best thing ever.

During pregnancy, people were always telling us all these negative things, like: “Your lives will never be the same. You won’t be able to do the things you used to do or want to do because of that baby.” First of all, hey, you Negative Nancy! Enough! Second of all, it turns out they were sort of right. Great.

But it’s not quite what you think. Yes, before you have children, you should go to late movies, go out to eat, travel the world, whatever. You can do these things with small children, but it gets a bit more complicated. It takes me an extra hour to get ready to leave the house, and then Annie will still probably decide she needs a new diaper right before leaving, so traveling the world may be a bit much right now.

So do all those things and enjoy those bits of freedom – but most of all, I am here to tell you that first and foremost, before your little bundle of joy arrives, you need to SLEEP ALL THE TIME. SLEEP, my friends! That is what you cannot do when you have a baby, and that is what you’ll miss the most. I promise. And ladies, if you plan to be a nursing mama for any amount of time, go ahead and sleep a little extra. Your little angel baby will wake up hungry every two hours for a while. Around the clock. No matter what. That means you may get an hour or so of sleep in between, if you can even fall asleep. Annie now takes a bottle, so Adam can help feed her, which is awesome. However, even by taking turns during the night, it’s still tough to get more than 3 or  4 hours of sleep at a time. I may even grab a nap during the day, totaling about 6 or 7 hours, which is swell. But I can’t remember what it’s like to sleep through the night, and from what they say, it will be several months before that happens again. I took it all for granted, those nights of sleeping for ten hours straight. Ahh, bliss.

So, friends, if you want to have children one day, please know good, solid rest will no longer be a part of your life. However, it is so worth it. You’ll love your little one so much it hurts your sleepy heart, and when she finally goes to sleep, you may even skip that precious cat nap. You’ll want to pick her up and cuddle her because you miss her. You’ll stay awake and stare at her sweet face. Then you’ll kick yourself a couple of hours later when she wakes up and you’ve still not slept. Still worth it, because – newborn sleep smiles, y’all. Nothing better.