An open letter to people who advised me to have children

Dear People,

I knew this wouldn't be all peaches, unicorns, and rainbows. I expected sleepless nights. I expected my home to become infested by myriad weird, child-clinging bacteria. I expected urine all over my favorite furniture. I expected spit-up on my J. Crew suit. I even expected to outgrow said J. Crew suit (though not quite to this extent, but, hey, whatever). Even the twice-daily Mixing of the Vats of Formula, the Wriggling on the Changing Table, the Struggling to Get Sheets on the Mini-Crib Mattress, the Great Post-Bath Oatmeal Bowl Upset, the constant Lugging of Huge, Heavy Piles of Shit Everywhere We Go, the Delirium Resulting from Exposure to Too Much Electronic-Toy Bach, the Brilliance of the Infant Pain Relieving Medication Containing Red Dye, and the Screaming When I Will Not Provide the Baby With His Own Cup of Steaming Hot Tea are not entirely outside the realm of the unprecedented.

But nobody, and I mean NOBODY, warned me about The Endless, Endless Kicking of the Breasts and Genitals.

And this is information that would have proved useful. As in, condom-coupled-with-spermicide-and-the-sponge-and-the-Pill useful.

Biting of the breasts was one thing; that went with the breastfeeding territory. I signed on for that. But I never imagined, in a million years, that I would be signing on for bright mornings of picking up my sweet, smiling infant son from his crib, lovingly enduring his misguided affection as he gouges me in the eye, gurgles, and blows raspberries in my face, and then kissing the top of his sweet, baby-scented head and carrying him over to the changing table, singing all the while, prior to him serving five rapid-succession swift, efficient kicks to my C-section scar.

Then, of course, I finish changing his watery, poopy diaper (while he wriggles to and fro, trying to shove the Desitin and the dirty diaper in his mouth simultaneously), deposit him into his bouncy seat, and pick up his brother, patting myself on the back for the fact that his brother has only been crying for three minutes while I changed the other baby. The second baby, upset at not being in someone's arms, is equally upset at being in someone's arms, and promptly flings his fist against my breasts, head-butts my chin, and kicks me in the C-section scar, all within a four-second time span.

I might also add that this is when the phone starts to ring--both landline and cell--and the doorbell buzzer buzzes, typically for the delivery of someone else's package, except the carrier is too lazy actually to read the name on the bell and match it to the package.

Need I add that I'm unshowered and unbreakfasted? And that one phone call was about an extremely significant issue and one phone call was about an insignificant issue, and I'm not sure which one pissed me off more?

Sincerely,
Arabella