Are You Ready for Children?

Are you considering having children? To determine whether you are truly prepared for the experience, we suggest you take this set of simple tests…

MESS TEST:

Smear peanut butter on the sofa and curtains. Now rub your hands in the wet flower bed and rub on the walls. Cover the stains with crayons. Place a fishfinger behind the couch and leave it there all summer.

TOY TEST:

Obtain a 55-gallon box of Lego. (If Lego are not available, you may substitute roofing tacks or broken bottles). Have a friend spread them all over the house. Put on a blindfold. Try to walk to the bathroom or kitchen. Do not scream (this could wake a child at night).

GROCERY STORE TEST:

Borrow one or two small animals (goats are best) and take them with you as you shop at the grocery store. Always keep them in sight and pay for anything they eat or damage.

DRESSING TEST:

Obtain one large, unhappy, live octopus. Stuff into a small net bag making sure that all arms stay inside.

FEEDING TEST:

Obtain a large plastic milk jug. Fill halfway with water. Suspend from the ceiling with a stout cord. Start the jug swinging. Try to insert spoonfuls of soggy cereal (such as Weetabix or Cheerio’s) into the mouth of the jug while pretending to be an airplane. Now dump the contents of the jug on the floor.

NIGHT TEST:

Prepare by obtaining a small cloth bag and fill it with 8 to 12 pounds of sand. Soak it thoroughly in water. At 8:00 PM begin to waltz and hum with the bag until 9:00 PM. Lay down your bag and set your alarm for 10:00 PM. Get up, pick up your bag, and sing every song you have ever heard. Make up about a dozen more new ones and sing these too until 4:00 AM. Set alarm for 5:00 AM. Get up and make breakfast. Keep this up for five years. Look cheerful.

PHYSICAL TEST (WOMEN)

Obtain a large beanbag chair and attach it to the front of your clothes. Leave it there for 9 months. Now remove 10% of the beans.

PHYSICAL TEST (MEN):

Go to the nearest drug store. Set your wallet on the counter. Ask the assistant to help himself. Now proceed to the nearest food store. Go to the head office and arrange for your wages to be directly deposited to the store. Purchase a newspaper. Go home and read it quietly for the last time.

FINAL ASSIGNMENT:

Find a couple who already have a small child. Lecture them on how they can improve their discipline, patience, tolerance, toilet training, and child’s table manners. Suggest many ways they can improve. Emphasise to them that they should never allow their children to run riot.

Enjoy this experience. It will be the last time you will have all the answers.

Hope You all dont mind it, it was just to make u feel laugh n make u feel comfortable.

Ten Things Your Prenatal Instructor Won’t Tell You

Ten Things Your Prenatal Instructor Won’t Tell You By Ann Douglas Author of The Mother of All Pregnancy Books
		Wondering what your prenatal instructor hasn’t told you about labor and delivery? Here are ten things that your prenatal instructor likely won’t mention, but that you definitely need to know: 1. If you wait for every possible labor symptom to kick in before heading off to labor and delivery, you’ll end up giving birth on your bathroom floor. While you may be afraid of embarrassing yourself by showing up at the hospital in false labor, you’ll look even more foolish if you end up giving birth on the side of the highway in the middle of rush hour. 2. There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all labor. You could end up with one of those long, drawn-out labors that everyone that in your life seems to delight in telling you about—or could find your with one of those speedy deliveries that’s bound to make you the envy of your prenatal class buddies. 3. Your birth plan isn’t necessarily a blueprint for the actual delivery. Just as men seem to think it’s a personal failing to look at a roadmap while they’re driving, some babies seem determined to ignore the birth plans that their mommies have so carefully drafted. Bottom line? Your birth plan is a wish list, not a legal document. 4. Pregnancy books are big on euphemisms. This point was hammered home for me by one of the moms I interviewed for a forthcoming pregnancy book: “You know how the pregnancy books all describe the ‘slight burning sensation’ that you’re supposed to experience when the baby’s head begins to crown?” she told me. “Well, it’s like f*&#-ing blowtorch!” 5. You may not feel like bonding with your partner while you’re in labor. Rather than being tempted to whisper sweet nothings in his ear, as those women in the birthing films all seem to do, you may want to kick his sorry butt out of the birthing room altogether. After all, he’s the one who got you in this predicament in the first place! 6. You may not fall head-over-heels in love with your new baby right away. The fact that you’d rather take a nap than spend a lot of time oohing and ahhing over the new arrival does not automatically mean you’ve blown your nomination for Mother of the Year. 7. The blood clots you pass during the first few hours after the delivery could be the size of small lemons. For some reason, prenatal instructors aren’t big on nitty-gritty facts. They like to compare the bleeding that you’ll experience after the delivery to “a heavy menstrual period”—proof positive that members of this profession need to be regulated by some sort of “truth in advertising” code. 8. You may experience some nipple tenderness during the first few days of breastfeeding—even if you’re doing everything right. As any experienced nursing mother can tell you, it takes a little time to break your equipment in. (Aren’t you glad that Mother Nature had the foresight to equip you with a spare?) 9. You’ll be slimmer after the delivery, but you won’t be skinny. As a rule of thumb, you can expect to look about five months pregnant after you deliver—a whole lot slimmer than what you’ve looked in the recent past, but not quite slim enough to be mistaken for a supermodel the first time you hit the grocery store. 10. The real “labor” begins after you give birth. For some reasons, prenatal instructors tend to breeze over those middle-of-the-night feedings and marathon crying sessions. (I’m talking about the baby, by the way: not you!) While those first few weeks of parenthood can be an emotional roller coaster ride for even the most caring and committed parent, they do get better over time. You just have to make it through “boot camp”—the first few weeks postpartum.

Breast Feeding

Breastfeeding is, of course, Nature’s way of providing the absolute best for your baby, so it is advisable to try to feed your baby this way. Not only does breast milk provide essential and perfectly balanced nutrition, and give baby natural antibodies to protect her from infection and illness, but it also helps you to bond with your baby in a very intimate way.Breast milk provides a form of natural protection against many illnesses including ear infections, diarrhoea, gastro-enteritis and tummy upsets, chest infections and wheezing. Your baby will be at less risk of diabetes, eczema and asthma; she will have superior mental development and her teeth will grow in straighter. So for baby there are a lot of advantages. There are benefits for mum too! Less smelly nappies (diapers) are a plus, but it doesn’t stop there. Breastfeeding lowers the risk of ovarian cancer and pre-menopausal breast cancer, your stomach will return to its pre-pregnancy size quicker, and you will also benefit from stronger bones in later life.

If you decide to breastfeed, you should try to feed quite soon after birth so that the instinct to suck remains strong, and this will also help get breastfeeding off to a good start. It may be a very short feed as your baby will be exhausted and not terribly hungry at first – after all she’s been getting all the nutrition she needs via the umbilical cord up until now – but soon enough she will want a more substantial feed.

If you can feed your baby successfully it is advisable to do so for at least 4 months to get the full benefit of the antibodies, however any amount of breast is better than none and you should not feel guilty should you decide or need to give up sooner. It is a personal choice so try not to succumb to pressure from others around you and just be confident in your choice. Do try and introduce one bottle of expressed breast milk a day, as soon as baby is totally proficient at breastfeeding – usually within the first week. This is not only to give you the freedom to go out once in a while, but it is also a chance for your partner or other children to help feed the baby and can be a chance for you to catch up on your sleep. If you wait too long your baby will refuse the bottle and it will be very hard to get her to take one. My own daughter was 2 months premature and I know a lot about the difficulties that can arise when trying to get baby latched on properly and feeding successfully. Premature babies tend to have a lot of problems feeding because they are born too early to have the sucking reflex, and therefore have to learn it. I also know a lot about expressing breast milk and can advise you.