That was my view for a long while. No kids until I was 31 and had been married for 5 years. Now, they are easily the best thing I have done with my life. Not saying you have to have kids in order to have a fulfilling life, just saying personally, I would have little to show for my 38 years on the planet at this point otherwise.
Life is always better when you share it.
Marxeil,
My son had the same issue. We spent two months of hell after he was born in 2000, but ended up going to a specialist who set him up with a proscription to Pirlosec and 24 hrs later and a week on the meds he was cured. To this day he will still occassionaly get what I think of as heart burn, but that is maybe one meal every six months or so.
Fargull
I do share it. I share it with my wife, my Xbox, my soon-to-be-born dog, and Satan. Not necessarily in that order.
This planet has enough people in it anyways. More room for my progeny. ;) Although, sometimes I feel a pang of guilt over what state the world I brought them into will be in when I have to push them out of the nest.
How the hell do you have a soon-to-be-born dog? Is it preordered from a breeder? Do you have some non-dog thing that is currently pregnant around the house?
We did indeed pre-order it from a breeder. We put a down payment for the first pick of the males from a litter that’s about to be born sometime in the next few days. We get the dog eight weeks after it’s born.
Did You Know: We are guessing that the general public is not aware of how doomed black dogs are when they are brought to a pound because black dogs, particularly black labs or lab mixes, are euthanized at a horrifying rate at many pounds & shelters because people pass them up for lighter colored dogs. If you are thinking about adopting a dog please don’t overlook black dogs because they are just as loving & wonderful as lighter colored dogs!
We would have loved to get a rescue or pound dog, but sadly our living arrangements make it impossible. Technically, our apartment building restricts pets, but about a third of the building has pets anyway in a don’t-ask-don’t-tell arrangement. The rescue pounds up here in Ontario (or at least in my neck of the woods) will not give you a dog without express written permission of our landlord, which we can’t get. So, no rescue dog for us.
That left us with breeders. We found a guy in Guelph who breeds mini-schnauzers, a breed both me and my wife like, and who doesn’t dock the ears. (He docks the tail, though. The only person we found in Canada who doesn’t dock at all is in Prince Edward Island, which is a bit of a drive.) So that’s what we’re getting.
You may have won the battle, but I’ll be back with annoying image macros when you least expect it!
Wait 'till I flame out Rimbo-style when I post massively large pictures of me and my wife drunkenly teaching our dog how to dance.
Yeah man, it’s easy to focus on the negative with kids, and then ignore the unbelievably stunning positives. Like this morning my 3.5-year-old girl and my 1-year-old boy were playing together in her room – she was giving him dolls and he was checking them out with great fascination, and then he stood up and fell over and bonked his head on the bed a bit, and cried a bit, and she stroked his head gently and said “Poor baby, it’s OK, you’ll feel better.”
OH MY FUCKING GOD, I am SO GLAD I got to create two new little people who can be so sweet to each other. Best fucking feeling I’ve yet had since I started breathing. And the ride has only really just begun.
At the end of my life, that’s the shit I’m gonna remember and be shatteringly grateful for, not the late nights and troubles.
Marx, it’s also worth nothing that they make several different meds that your pediatrician can try. Close friends just went through this with their kid (from the time he was 3 weeks to 6 weeks he was crazy colicky), and meds cleared it right up. They’re back to 5 hours of straight sleep per night, which is bliss with an infant.
It gets better, brother, trust me. The truly scary shit is that a year from now, you’ll look back and say “ah, it wasn’t that tough.”
I would go as far as to say you have to raise kids in order to have a fulfilling life. You can adopt, of course. Not having the experience of raising kids is like not having the experience of ever leaving the house – spending your entire life in a single room with no windows. If you do it right, it absolutely and irreversibly changes who you are and how you see the world. Letting the stories of difficulties scare you into not raising kids is like letting the fear of sunburn prevent you from ever stepping out of the house. And of course, if you don’t leave, you’ll never really know what the experience is like.
That’s awesome. My kid can absolutely drive me up the wall (such as coming into my bed at 5AM last night, kicking me and screaming) but then one little smile from him at just the right time … and a week’s worth of hell is worth it. How dey do dat?
Well, chose not to go that far as I beleive some folks are not cut out to be good parents. My Dad was not and he now admits it. He never quite knew how to deal with or handle little people. Maybe the 50’s, stern upbringing his Dad gave him. Dunno. He was not mean, it just felt like he was going by a checklist of minimum requirements and once he did those, he had no clue as to where to go from there. If I had two parents like that…ugh, don’t wanna think about it.
That said, you are right, your perspective on many, many things change and rarely for the worse when you have little ones. I can turn around and point to them and say, “Look what I did do”. I did not want it to sound like those who do not have kids are worthless. Some people with the forum hair triggers and no kids may read it that way. :)
You’re probably right. I wouldn’t know. For me, for most people I talk to, it sounds like most parents’ experience is a guessing game. We’re trying to figure things out as we go, and we all just try not to muck things up too much. We do our best, but so much is out of our hands.
Well, that’s why I say “raise,” because it’s not about who gives birth, it’s about who’s involved with the kid.
Did you get a pre-order bonus? Like, a ferret?