| Issue #33, November 10, 2006 |
The Sheltered Islander By Sally Flynn
Sheltered Islander #423
Members Only
I recently learned that three of my over 38 friends are pregnant for the first time. To them I say, you really have to stop drinking. You just jumped off the career track for the next ten years. Welcome to Mommyland...here are the guidelines:
1. Husband has to sleep in the barn until the vasectomy heals.
2. If he insists you have a natural, drug-free childbirth, you insist that he has a natural, drug-free vasectomy.
3. The last book you read is the last book you will read for years to come.
4. All of a sudden, you will see strollers and pregnant women everywhere.
5. With a baby in diapers, you will not know who you are, where you are, or what day it is till 2020. You will not remember when you last changed your underwear or when you last brushed your teeth.
6. Your life as an educated, intelligent adult with something to contribute is over. You will develop that secret lobe of the female brain, the Motherlobe, where you will store the motherload of Mommy knowledge. You will know all the words to Wee Sing videos and all the songs to every Disney movie. Your exercise will be limited to fetching items for the kids, running to save things from being thrown in the toilet, and speed packing diaper bags.
7. Pick a Soap Opera. Your days will be so repetitious that you will rely on a soap opera to help you keep track of what day it is, to provide the sound of adult conversation in the background so you don’t lose your ability to converse, and to remind you that sometime in the future, you will be able to wear clean clothes again, just like they do on TV.
8. Remember that most parenting books were written by men who were never in the trenches! I refuse to listen to their advice because they have never experienced the unrelenting aggravation and fatigue that Moms live with 26 hours a day. No, not 24 hours, you have to add 2 extra hours for Moms with infants or they’ll get no sleep at all.
9. Truth be told, if those kids are alive when your hubby walks through the door at 5 p.m., you have done your job... Parenting books make good wedges to level a tippy table. If you want to use a parenting book for parenting purposes, attach it to a stick first to create a nice flat paddle.
10. Welcome to fast food. You will have every fast food menu and prices memorized in no time.
11. Cooking will now be limited to whatever can be made in a crock pot or in one pan, nothing will have more than four ingredients or need more than salt and pepper for seasoning.
12. I can’t explain this, but when a woman becomes a mother, the husband unconsciously de-evolves into a son. Suddenly, they can’t help around the house, they can’t watch the kids, can’t wash their clothes or figure out how to get dishes to the sink. I call it Baby Envy. They resent all the attention you give to the baby, so they compete by becoming helpless. Think I’m kidding? Have you ever left your hubby written instructions on microwaving a Hungry Man dinner so you could go out one evening? Written instructions for child care that included the kids’ bedtimes, and emergency phone numbers?
13. Get ready to hear, “You’re not working, you’re home with kids,” over and over. Ask that person to baby-sit for you someday. Stay away from the house until they offer you enough money to come back.
14. Put a soft light in the bathroom. Stand naked in front of the mirror. Say a fond farewell to any remaining firmness in your boobs or flatness for your stomach. All the sacrifices you made in the line of beauty are now moot. Men love to show off a good scar they got in combat, there’s a kind of prestige to a good scar. Too bad society won’t give us credit for stretch marks as mark of pride for having grown a new person. The old Soviet Union used to give a medal to women who had eight or more children who lived to adulthood. I’d give a medal to any woman who went through eight pregnancies!
15. Thought you’d never become a frazzled Mom? Never be caught dead running into a store with dirty clothes and your hair looking like hell? Welcome to the club, honey.
 |
