Personal Narrative: Life Before and After Children

The fact that everything changes when your child is born is true. It is difficult to understand this fact until it happens to you. It is both terrifying and rewarding to compare my life before and after children.

When you do not have children, you are the most important person you know! You can focus on your own immediate needs or desires. If you want to take a nap in the middle of the day, you can. If you want to go shopping, go for a walk in the park, or go to the gym, you can. If there is something interesting on TV, you can sit down, watch it, hear it and enjoy it. If you want to enjoy a quiet, peaceful meal at home, you can.

And then comes the time when natural instincts make you want a child. You feel great if you are in the position that you have a suitable relationship with someone to have a child with. Everything is perfect except the fact that your life already has began to change with pregnancy. You are not what you were before it any more. You have different kinds of worries. You worry about little life that you love more than life itself.

Those worries and this kind of love will stay with you forever. You are not even close to being on the first place. When your child is born, the "battle" begins. Any things from above like eating, shopping, exercising, watching TV, napping is past. None of those things you cannot do anymore in peace or when you have a need for it. You can squeeze them in those five minutes that you have free. You can go shopping together with your child while it cries and fights with you, or you can leave your child at home and feel guilty about what kind of mother you are and then rush home.