TMI -- Too Much Information!!!

I have a mantra here in Brussels that you can’t have friends unless you like kids. I say this because for the last ten months, about 99.9% of the women I have met and become friends with have children. This is wonderful for them and it is great for me—I get to be the sweet friend who plays with the kids when they are cute, but then when the three year old child needs to go poop behind a bush because there are no public restrooms here, I don’t have to wipe their butt and pick up their poop in a plastic bag as if they were a dog. (By the way, that is a true experience.)

But I have begun to realize that I need to have more friendships with people who do NOT have children. Originally Kyle and I had planned on having kids around 29 or30. After having this many friends with this many kids, the ideal age for children is becoming 30++. In the last ten months, I have learned WAY too much about child rearing, and more importantly, child birth. As of last year, I did not know what an episiotomy was (if you don’t know what it is—trust me, stay that way!). I also didn’t know about how your child’s first bowel movement is like tar or how after birth all of your insides are screwed up for days or how long the epidural needle that they stick into your back is. (I know many, many more horrible facts about the birthing process, but I don't want to scar others the way I have been scarred.) After going to about a bazillion coffees with mothers, I now know all of these things. And as if I don’t have enough issues with the birthing process, three friends were recently discussing how they have each POOPED ON THE TOILET WHILE BREASTFEEDING!!!!! That thought alone set me back five years for the thought of kids. Now I am really having trouble walking down the street and seeing a woman with a child and not thinking, "Have you had all this happen to you also? And yet you look so normal!"

Last night I was playing bunco with a bunch of women that all have kids. I was telling them why I am not ready to have children and one said, “Honey, don’t worry about the time you are in labor, worry about the next 18 years!!!” Great, as if I don’t have enough issues already!!!