disposable diapers and third eyes

It happens in a second: One minute you're a married couple, the next minute the Lord blesses you with a child and the next, women are trying to freak you out with horror stories about motherhood.

You'll spend every moment of every day of the first trimester bent over a toilet, praying for Jesus to return. 

You're better off running yourself over with a silage chopper than sitting through the blood glucose test. 

Your birth plan should include but is not limited to sacred circles, birth mementos and . . . what do you mean you haven't written out a 6,000-word birth plan?!

You're not finding out if it's a boy or girl? What a Neanderthal!

Labor will last for roughly the same amount of time as the entire season of Lent. 

If you use disposable diapers, your child will sprout a third eye.

The serpent didn't tempt Eve with fruit in the Garden of Eden; he actually used formula . . . in a plastic bottle. 

You won't sleep again until you're roughly 65 years old, at which point you . . . still won't sleep. 

While at church, if your children aren't tripping the usher and Army crawling under the pews during prayers, you're doing motherhood wrong. 

Ho-lee smokes. Can we all agree to take a deep breath?

Just observing some of these conversations on Facebook makes me want to cancel our Internet service. They're why I refuse to look at any website that doesn't involve the address www.mayoclinic.org when it comes to pregnancy-related questions.

I also simply won't go on Internet forums about moms and babies and birth. My doctor gave me, among 50 other pamphlets, information on why it's important not to do meth while pregnant. If there are moms out there who are (a) doing meth and (b) doing it while pregnant, they're probably not the women I want to be getting baby advice from online or ANYWHERE. 

Or to quote my dad, "Where'd you get your medical degree? Google University?"

Instead, here's how we roll.

Pregnancy: I eat a donut when I feel like it. Which is pretty routinely. 

Ultrasounds: Good news. It is, in fact, a baby. 

Birth plan: I'm hoping to go into the hospital pregnant and to leave  with my husband who will be holding a baby.

Sleep: We're strong proponents of it. In fact, we'd like to get back to a normal amount of it in due time.  

Life in general: My farmer and I want to be parents, not besties, to our children, and we plan to, by God's grace, raise them to know robust, disciplined, fun lives in conjunction with an ability to work hard.

Feeding: I'm a big fan of it, especially when it comes to children. 

I realize I don't have any children at home yet and it's easy for me to say this now. But I don't think that means I'm necessarily wrong. 

I have a really good mom, and two really good moms who are my sisters and a really good mother-in-law who also happens to be a mom, and frankly, I just don't see why everybody has to get so dramatic. 

So when it comes right down to it, I don't mean to sound like a Staples commercial, but I kind of feel like . . . that was easy.