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Tag Archives: Pregnancy
Project 365 Challenge: Are You Thinking of Having a Baby?
“I really want to have a baby!”
This is what a co-worker told me the other day. She also told me that her husband is not excited about the idea and she feels he is not ready to be a father. In addition, their relationship is, according to her, not in a very good place right now. And, she complained that she had trouble sleeping at night and didn’t function well if her sleep was disturbed.
Hmmmm….sounds like a recipe for disaster, wouldn’t you agree?
Deciding to have a baby is not like deciding to order fries with your meal or deciding to buy a red dress for a party. When the fries arrive, you can always throw them away if you’ve changed your mind or ask the waitress if you can have a baked potato instead. If the red dress doesn’t look good when you get it home, you can always return it or exchange it for a different one.
Becoming a parent is a forever decision…one not to be taken lightly. The people involved need to understand the implications and agree that it is something they both wish to undertake. Of course, sometimes pregnancies are unplanned and a surprise.
I’m always encouraging parents to read picture books with their children because part of my Positive Parental Participation program involves the utilization of the messages in picture books to help young children cope with many of the challenges they face in those early years.
One can say the same thing about movies. And, many movies contain important messages for adults.
My husband and I watched 9 Months with Hugh Grant and Julianne Moore on Netflix last night. If you are contemplating having a baby, this is the movie for you! It’s a light-hearted look at a young successful couple who have been living together very happily for five years. When Julianne discovers she is pregnant, Hugh is not happy about it, but she tells him that the baby won’t change their life. Then she tells him he will have to sell his sports car and get rid of the cat he has had for thirteen years. His disconnect causes her to leave him and she tells him, “You’re not ready to be a father!”
Will Hugh ultimately accept the situation? At the end of the movie, is he ready to be a father? Watch the film if you want a hilarious look at pregnancy, labor and delivery…with Robin Williams as the obstetrician, you are guaranteed to be rolling on the floor, laughing till it hurts.
But the movie has a serious side…it asks couples: are you ready to have a baby? It will change your life. It won’t make a weak marriage stronger. It will test the limits of your patience.
What are your thoughts? Please share them with us.
Giving Thanks for Painful Things
In honor of Thanksgiving, I did a post the other day on giving thanks.
I mentioned my good health, my wonderful children and my loving husband.
Then I read a post by another blogger who just launched her new book, The Golden Sky, a memoir that tells about her painful loss of a son. I noticed that she was calling for other parents to contribute their stories about the death of a child and it touched a chord in my heart.
Thirty-seven years ago, I was pregnant with our second child. Our son was a year and a half old and my husband and I were very excited! Everything was going so smoothly…every check-up at the doctor’s office was a blue-ribbon one.
Something woke me in the middle of the night…not a pain…not even a feeling of discomfort. I guess I would call it a feeling of disquiet. Getting out of bed because of some cramping, I thought I would take a warm bath. I was six months pregnant and we had attended the Lamaze classes two years before…I assumed this was some type of false labor. As I reclined in the bath, I suddenly felt as if I had to go to the bathroom…really badly…and that’s when the nightmare started! Sitting on the toilet, I had an overwhelming sense of urgency to PUSH…my water broke…and I hobbled to the bedroom, calling for my husband to wake up.
The rest of the night was a blur. The ambulance got me to the hospital quickly…my husband had brought our son next door to our neighbor’s house to stay till he got home…my doctor was at the hospital waiting for me and he comforted me, telling me they would do everything they could.
Jeremy weighed one and a half pounds…a very tiny preemie, especially for 1974. The doctors were not able to save him and my husband and I mourned the loss of this precious life.
I can’t tell you how much I wanted to get pregnant again…as quickly as possible. I’m sure if this has happened to you, you understand. Of course we had our son…but there was still an empty space in our hearts. And, even though I did get pregnant again a year later and, thanks to my wonderful doctor (it turned out I had an incompetent cervix which means that at any time during a pregnancy, the cervix can start dilating, with no pain and no warning), had a healthy pregnancy and birth, that painful loss will never be totally erased.
So why do I say that we need to give thanks for painful things? I think for two reasons: we grow stronger and more able to cope with life’s challenges and we also learn to cherish more what we do have.
I hope you will all go and visit Elisabeth’s blog, http://ecwrites.blogspot.com/p/golden-sky-my-journal-about-zeke_02.html and find out about the wonderful prizes that will be awarded to celebrate the launch of her new book. She shares her painful journey and will certainly help others who face similar tragedies.
VIVIAN KIRKFIELD - Writer for Children 