Originally written by an anonymous reader (no idea why she did not want to be associated with this), but edited and reworked by the Misanthropic Bitch

This is an open letter to anyone who is considering motherhood. Yes, you. Whether you are a clueless teenager involved in your first relationship or an equally clueless thirtysomething married woman, your real reasons for considering parenthood are tragically the same. You like the idea of the attention you will inevitably get. Baby showers, pats on the bloated belly, total strangers cooing at you and smiling, family members who do not even like you rushing to carry your purse for you and bring you a drink, and let us not forget six cushy weeks of maternity leave from work - maybe longer if your husband or (in)significant other is a real sucker. Maybe you are even misguided and deluded enough to believe that you are going to give birth to a perfect little human who is going to love you unconditionally for the rest of your life. Therefore, I feel it is my duty to provide you with the Undeniable Truth About Motherhood.

1) YOU ARE GOING TO GET FAT. You are not going to grow a cute basketball-shaped belly that will disappear as soon as you pop out the rugrat. You are going to pork out like Rosie O'Donnell if she was locked in a BJ's Wholesale Club for a month with a Gold Card. See those hips? They are going to become a shelf you could serve dinner on. Take a look at your boobs. Now visualize them being deflated like beach balls with a leak, until they are hanging at your waist, which is something you will no longer have. See your stomach? It is going to look like an accordion-pleated, cottage-cheese stuffed goat bladder. Your baby's daddy is going to tell you a lot of lies about how you still look beautiful while he is spending lunch hour at the Motel 6 with Candie from the office. And don't think for a minute that a ten-minute walk around the block with one of those fancy-schmancy running strollers will give you your old body back. Your metabolism has changed forever and even if you lose the weight, you will have the skin of a 200 pound woman hanging on a 120 pound body.

2) YOUR SEX LIFE WILL END. Having fun trying to get pregnant? Sure you are. It is the most sex your husband has ever had, after all. Enjoy it, because your sex life is about to end permanently. Every parent I know agrees that this is true. You will never be spontaneous again, because the first time you try, Junior will be squeaking, "Mommy, why are you kissing Daddy's pee- pee?" The old joke about headlights and a snake in the grass does not seem so funny now, does it? And that is the best case scenario.

The only serious urge left for you will be the urge to lumber to the kitchen for another Ho-Ho. If you do attempt to resume having sex, you will quickly find that your skin was not the only thing stretched out by pregnancy and labor. Just imagine poking your pinky finger in and out of a Dixie Cup if you want to visualize what post-pregnancy sex is like. Luckily for the father of your children, there are a lot of women like myself who only want sex from a man. I am sure one of us will find him.

3) YOU WILL NEVER HAVE MONEY AGAIN. Unless you are in Bill Gate's tax bracket, having a child will bankrupt you. Parenthood is the most expensive and least rewarding hobby known to man. If I buy an old Mercedes and spend $10,000 fixing it up to mint condition, at the end I have a beautiful, classic car. If I have a baby and spend every cent I make feeding it, clothing it, paying its medical bills and buying it every Beanie Baby ever made, at the end I have a teenager who hates my guts and everything I stand for (but does, however, want me to keep paying his bills).

Most amusing is the parental myth that a child will support you financially in your old age. By the time you reach your so-called "golden years," your kids will be shipping you off to a nursing home staffed by ex-convicts itching to get at your money and few precious mementos. Most of middle-aged adults are still hitting up their retired parents for money, and most of the parents are so stupid, they are still giving it. Why don't they just lie on their kids' porches with DOORMAT painted on their chests?

4) YOU DO NOT HAVE A BABY, IT HAS YOU. Your freedom is gone... forever. Do you like to go to movies? Bars? Concerts? Well, forget all of it. You are now chained to your house. Forget vacations - there are very few places you can take a baby (and a lot of people like me willing to rip your moronic head off if you bring a baby to my peaceful, serene vacation spot). Forget leaving it with a babysitter - your chances of finding one who will not trash your house and host the Midwest Hell's Angels Annual Convention the second your car has turned the corner are minimal at best. Not to mention that the same family which applauded you for choosing to breed in the first place will not raise a hand to help you once the anklebiter has arrived. The same goes for those folks at your church who convinced you that you were bound for a fiery afterlife if you did not start popping out the next generation of god-fearing Christians. You are alone...you and the most disgusting, repugnant, filthy creature on earth - your baby.

5) BABIES ARE HORRIBLE. Stop watching those damn diaper commercials! Do you think those are real babies? You will notice the actual sounds of real babies have been omitted. Instead there is a pleasing announcer's voice or background music playing. Real babies shriek their fucking heads off 24/7, with the volume level highest around 3 A.M, and it is a sound that could shatter glass. It is easily the most annoying sound on earth, and there is no way to stop it. Nor do you see a diaper that is actually being used in those commercials. Baby shit might be the most repulsive smelling substance on the planet. As if the normal variety was not bad enough, babies constantly have diarrhea. They are also very fond of puking on their handlers. They do not eat food; they spit it and later, throw it. They squirt urine at you when you bathe them. No person in their right mind would adopt a pet that had the habits of the average baby. We would be gassing them in shelters by the thousands, which is not such a bad idea when you think about it.

6) CHILDREN ARE WORSE. Once a baby becomes a child, it becomes even worse than it was as a baby. Once it can move, it can and will break things. The more valuable the items are, the greater the chance it will smash them to smithereens the second your back is turned. Whatever you tell it to do, it will do the opposite. It will crayon on your walls, cram candy between the seats of your car and set the dog's tail on fire. It will microwave the goldfish just to see what happens, Mommy. It will run through the white-carpeted living room with muddy boots, smash the china cabinet with a baseball and skateboard into the neighbor's Lexus.

Then it will go to school and you will have the privilege of attending PTA meetings that are every bit as exciting as watching campaign finance hearings on C-SPAN and sitting through conferences with some touchy-feely guidance counselor who says little Johnny is flunking math because you yelled at him once when he shot an arrow at the cat.

Every time you take it out in public, there is a good chance it will throw a hissy fit. If you try to take it to a nice restaurant or cultural event, you will be regarded stonily by dozens of adults with that "don't you dare sit next to me" look on their face. Give up and get used to saying, "Yes, I would like fries with that. Oh, and super-size it."

Forget all adult activities in general. You are going to be spending the best years of your life at Chuck E Cheese, watching a giant rat sing to you and having nerf balls bounced off your head.

7) TEENAGERS MAKE CHILDREN LOOK FUN. Ah, those teenage years. If you are too old to remember the misery you put your parents through at this point, let me recap it for you. Teenagers hate their parents. They do anything they can to offend their parents and anyone else with taste. They paint their faces white and dress up like vampires. They pierce holes all over their body. They experiment with every drug in the book and wrap your car around telephone poles and mailboxes. They dye their hair chartreuse. They do not want to work, but they do not want to go to school either. What they mostly want to do is steal cars with their friends and have sex whenever possible, usually with the person who will most offend their parents and leading to the very real possibility that you will end up with - you guessed it - another baby to take care of, thus starting the entire process all over again.

If you still want to have a baby, go ahead. But could you move to another country before you do it? I'm sick and tired of sitting at the booth next to you.



Questions?