Innocence

Last night we were round at our son's Godparent's house for dinner. We also stayed over, so that we could drink and not worry about disturbing our son.

She's the one I mentioned who's pregnant. 13 weeks now.

It was just so hard to engage in any conversation about their future baby without wanting to either shove my fist in my mouth and bite hard, or scream "in your dreams love!"

You know that I adore my son, I had a great pregnancy and clearly want to do it all over again. I'm also sure that some people are this lucky, but the conversations entered into really did make me chuckle. The best of which began with:

"I definitely want to be playing hockey again by the time the baby is 8 weeks old..."

I'd had a few glasses of wine by that point, so couldn't contain a little chuckle, but I think I redeemed myself by saying, "if I were you I wouldn't set yourself too many challenging goals, because if you don't achieve them, you'll feel like you've failed". I guess in her pre-child mind, I can see the logic. She knows she'll have to be "at home with the baby six days a week" as she puts it, but for her the 7th day is the one she gets to do what she wants to do. After all, a baby won't change her life THAT much, will it...

I would love to think that, in a parallel universe, babies sleep for 12 hours a night from 6 weeks, they feed regularly every 4 hours and never cry unless you know what they need. That breast feeding really does make the weight fall off and that after 10 months of it your boobs won't be just that little bit saggier that you'd have hoped. That when your husband returns from work it's ok to just pop off to the gym because you're not so exhausted all you really want to do is go to bed. I'm sure that somewhere there are two year olds who can sleep over at your friend's house and not wake up at 5am and then refuse to have a lunchtime nap when you're hungover and tired. I'm sure this world exists, but I sure don't know anyone in it.

It's not a rant about having children, why would I go back a second time if I didn't enjoy it. What you get back from having a child just can't quite be explained in words. They make the picture complete. You feel a love for your children that is so intense, if you think about it too much you could cry. Children help you to understand why you really are here. My coach at work said something to me that other day: He described life as a bucket of water (stick with me on this one...) What you are born it's like putting your hand in the bucket of water. The level of the water may rise a bit, but when you remove your hand the water level just goes down again. Nothing really changes. I suppose I agree, but what he failed to realise it that if you have children something does change, because you leave a little piece of yourself behind.

So, to my innocent friend: The journey will be a lot harder that you could ever imagine now, but it is a journey that you will rarely regret taking. Enjoy your innocence while you still can.