Why I Put Up With Pregnancy
This picture says it all. These kids are the joy of my life!I'd always wanted to have kids, but when I was younger I never was a "kid" kind of person, if you know what I mean. I never got excited about babies, and I sure was not the first person anyone thought of for babysitting. As a teenager I'd always planned to have a couple of kids eventually, but under no circumstances was I going to be a stay-at-home mom. Drive a minivan? Chauffeur kids in four different directions? Have nothing better to do with my life than wipe runny noses and fold laundry???? Heavens, NO!!!! I was going to be career woman--staying home was for women who had nothing better to do or no ambition or simply weren't talented enough to do something more important.
What an arrogant girl I was!
Sometime in college that began to change, and by the time I was home from my mission, I had a whole different perspective, and I knew I wanted to be home for my kids. But that was all an abstract idea. I still had little experience taking care of young children and zero experience with babies. I got the wake-up call of my life when I had M. (In fact, I was so out of my depth I stayed at my mom's house for two weeks, too terrified to take care of the baby without my mom right there to help.)
Yesterday I gave K his first tub bath, and I realized how far I've come. I wasn't nervous at all, nor rattled when he cried, and easily supervised B at the same time while she "helped." I love my minivan-chauffeuring life! (Why did I have anything against them again? I need the room!) I've been wiping a lot of runny noses lately (both B and J have colds), and the mounds of laundry are truly endless. However, I've never felt more challenged or more filled with love. It takes every bit of energy, talent, ingenuity, intelligence, and endurance the Lord blessed me with to be a mother. Sure, my job as a fire protection consultant challenged me too, but not quite as much. And there was no joy involved either.
I have the best job on earth!!!!!
Comments
I've always found it interesting that it's not the men I've run across who put women down for staying at home. All of those I've spoken to actually admire the willingness to do so. It's always the other women, and specifically working mothers, who shoot an accusing eye at us voluntary SAHMs. I even ran across a blog once with a commenter that said SAHMs are the worst people in the country, that they're worthless leeches who contribute nothing to society and drain everything from it and would be better off shot. And it was a woman who said it. Satan knows exactly how to get at the family, and it is by using women against other fellow women to destroy it. Sneaky, sneaky.
It's not an easy one either.
You have very cute kids! keep posting pictures!
Shelly