Birthed child pains

The pain of children doesn't end at childbirth. Sure, it was more direct during that pregnancy thing. Bladder kicks, stretching muscles and tendons, hemorrhoids, and the usual discomforts, not to mention the actual birthing process, I don't care how the baby or babies come out. It all hurts and it hurts a. lot. For some reason we choose to subject ourselves to it more than once quite frequently but we don't realize what we're in for in the long haul do we? The whole stinking process of raising kids is painful, and I'm not talking about the mental stuff!

First, there's the back breaking lifting and carrying and toting and rocking and walking of the baby or babies. My back hurt like hell during the first few months! I still don't now how women wear those baby carrier things, my shoulders would ache for days after. Sure, I had huge babies but people wear those with their babies all kinds of sizes and I just don't see how.

Next, at some point you baby proof and baby gates are in half the doors in the house. Baby gates are not for keeping kids in or out of a room, they're for torturing parents! Every time I walk in or out of a door I get a new bruise from knocking my thigh against the frame. I can't even open the things fast enough to keep from kicking the stupid gate on the way through. Unbelievable. Where's the stupid remote control that opens the door and slides the frame into the wall?

Then, inevitably, the kids decide you're a trampoline, punching bag, gym mat or whatever and start jumping on you, pounding on you, crawling all over you and generally treating you like a great big stuffed animal. Try telling them to be gentle when they realize that when they pound on your belly it jiggles in a very amusing way. Try getting them to stop jumping on you when they realize it's such a soft place to land. It just doesn't work.

Not to mention the endless round of unintentional head butts, book corner to cheek hits, plastic hammer whacks and random full on kicks by children not entirely sure how to coordinate their body parts yet. I have bruises all over, especially on my face, but that's probably because I'm stupid enough to lean in again and again while making smoochy smoochy noises to kiss bellies and faces and feet of flailing children. I suppose I'll never be able to resist. The learning curve is defeated by sheer hormonal attraction to baby belly. Ach.

I'm sure I've missed a few, but you get the general idea. Raising children is cause for many injuries, bruises, strains, headaches and general malaise. And I'm not even talking about the illnesses they give you. Cold after cold after flu after cold. Good gracious. I need a vacation.

This old house

Oh my poor house. First it has to suffer the indignities of three cats. Peeing in closets, barfing on stairs and under beds, pooping just slightly out of the litter box on the bathroom floor. What a life. This beautiful 1914 sophisticated house with original wood floors and doors and plaster walls. It was not built for a cat loving woman who lets animals be animals and presumes that if a cat is misbehaving it is the human's fault. How horribly unfitting for a grande dame of a house to have furballs ruling the roost.

But then it gets worse. Babies arrive. Not just one cute manageable tug with some misplaced drooling and smelly diapers but three. Three drooling, running, pooping, eating, food throwing, tissue scattering, cat chasing, garbage eating, sticky fingered children. Unmanageable. Except by the rule of gates and bars on the windows and locks and catches screwed into the original wood work on each door. Plaster drilled into and abused for the cause of children not falling down stairs, climbing up stairs, sticking fingers into kitchen appliances, touching breakables, opening windows, cracking open heads or generally not getting into places they are not allowed.

So here I sit in the prison that has been made out of a beautiful home. Gate after gate in door after door and stairwells as well. Latches made for smarter people than I, window gates, doorknob protectors and so on wondering, how the heck am I ever going to sell this house to anyone else with all these holes in it?