What's the math on that? I mean, if you're getting full-time daycare and all-new clothes, yeah, you're easily spending more than ten Gs. But it doesn't have to be that expensive... depends on the family's situation. Am I missing something? It's not like they need pony lessons when they're two.

So.... I take it all back. All of it! I have to explain that I have very few mom friends, and those who are live far away. So although I'm a new mother myself, I spend almost no time with other mothers. (And I work, so I don't do a lot of mommy yoga or stuff like that. I go to grown-up dance classes!) Well, I thought…

I love you for this.

I had a four-day labour, with drugs on day 4, and a c-section after two hours of pushing. (With long labours, it often doesn't get super painful as fast, but it's freakin' exhausting.) A c-section was totally the easy way out when compared to dying with a kid in my uterus, but otherwise, not so easy — it sucks not…

Well, it's always nice when these things turn into actual conversations!

Um... in this and in other posts, the OP has complained about her sister-in-law/friend asking for help with babysitting. That's part of what pissed her off. So frankly, as the parent, you're kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Yeah, thanks for this. I love how referring to kids as a "choice" — which they are, of course, but a pretty damn normal one and not some kind of exotic habit or occupation — means that you get to say you think new parents should not ever mention what they're dealing with, or ask for help, or whatever. I guess it's…

Well, that's good. :) I will say this, since having a child, I have a lot more understanding for parents who are selfish about their parenting, by which I mean parents who put survival with baby first and worry about the other things later. My husband and I were the kind of people who didn't want to "change" because…

A little bit of both, I guess. I can think of a lot of good reasons to keep a baby in one's lap, to be honest, ranging from baby getting even fussier if not held in lap at that point, to baby about to crawl off and do something dangerous right now. I let mine roam most of the time, but when he has to be held, he has…

CrabbyChic1 wasn't the OP. Again, we don't know from the OP if her self-described "low tolerance" is for an hour of a baby screaming into a phone (which I imagine would get annoying for the mom too), or for a bit of it. Would I try to carry on a conversation with someone if my child is screaming into the phone and…

It wasn't really clear from the OP if she was actually being asked to babysit. But it seems to annoy her that she hears the children's voices even over the phone, or that their mother talks about them. In my experience of people with cats, they also do, in fact, talk about their pets and the pets' doings quite a bit,…

Even watching the kid for an hour or two in the home, so that mom and dad can sleep, is so wonderful. I found that even when my baby napped, I couldn't fall asleep unless someone was watching him, because I was so worried... or with a newborn, you can take him out in a stroller and walk around for an hour. Baby will…

People did this for me, just more casually, and it makes me want to cry so hard with gratitude.

So, so true. I generally can't stand statements like, "you really can't understand it until you live through it," but the truth is, I had no freakin' idea how little time you have to yourself as a new parent until I became one. And the loss of self... the loss of sleep... the postpartum depression... the sheer…

Can I ask something? Do you have any friends with pets? Do you expect them to get rid of their pets everytime they, I dunno, talk to you on the phone? Does the barking in the background drive you nuts? Or is it just children?

You clearly have no understanding of the difference between caring for a human being and going to see a band.

Wow, you're twenty-five years old and you know what things have ALWAYS been like. Sounds like you could sell your time machine and leave that server a whole ten bucks!

I know — it doesn't sound like the Anglican church at all. And my friend, who grew up in the Anglican church and went through Div school to become an Anglican priest, was pretty shocked by it too. My experience of my Anglican div school (in a different country than yours, but a liberal one) was that practically…

One of my friends did priest training for the Anglican church. During his psychological screening, they started to suspect that he was a closeted homosexual and therefore a potential abuser (he's actually married to a woman and very gay positive, imagine that), and sent him to a Catholic degaying camp. He was pretty…