Three years ago I went to Egypt. I expected to return home with a tan, some rockin' pictures and maybe a hookah for display.

I didn't expect to come back with a husband. For that matter, my mother didn't expect it either. But when I arrived home to the good old continental United States, I came back holding the hand of the man I was to wed eight short months later. My mother panicked when we told her we wanted to get married, and she insisted we meet with Tim, a family friend who also was a pastor. We obliged.

During our prenuptial counseling session, Tim decided we probably were on the right track concerning marriage. He gave us his blessing, asked to meet with us again and promised to try and help soothe my mother's panic-stricken mind. He left us that day with one specific thing to think about: children.

"They are wonderful," Tim said, "but they are time vampires."

He advised John and me to talk about our future plans for children before we married.

"Time vampires?" we asked each other.

We were sure that kids, indeed, did take up quite a chunk of time; but as we talked about our life desires, we decided a few little ones would be part of our future.

The wedding was blissful. The honeymoon was spectacular. The newly-wed period was short lived; we found out only a little after a year of being married that we were going to be the proud parents of a baby.

"A baby?" we asked.

"A baby," our obstetrician confirmed.

"Well, that ought to be fun," John said to me.

I agreed. Visions of cute little baby fingers and toes danced in my head. And then we both simultaneously thought of the same words Tim had spoken to us right before our engagement. Oh, yes -- the wonderful time vampires.

"We don't have to be 'those' kind of parents," John said referring to all of the couples we had known whose lives were dictated by their babies.

"Yeah, our entire world doesn't have to revolve around the baby," I reaffirmed. "We can just integrate the baby into lives."

Good, we agreed. We would not be victims of a time vampire. We would still cook together, watch movies after baby went to sleep in his crib, cuddle with each other in the morning before baby awoke and spend time with our friends while baby slept peacefully for the babysitter. We wouldn't forgo invitations to parties or let our appearances fall. And we definitely would have alone time at night because we were never-ever-ever going to share a bed with the baby. After all, we reasoned, we were the adults, and a baby is just a baby. Babies only eat, sleep and poop, right? Wrong.

The glorious moment Gabe came into the world marked the second we waved goodbye to our old way of life. As we held him for the first time, he smiled a tiny baby smile and gazed at us with his beautiful, wide, innocent eyes. We nearly exploded with love for our tiny little angel. I felt like my heart had left my body and formed into the beautiful baby I was holding. I never could have known this new awesome love would explode in our hearts the moment of Gabe's birth. Our lives were turned upside down. No one told us this was going to happen. And now at five months postpartum, we're experiencing the impalement on lives from our wonderful time vampire.

Sleeping in on Saturdays and cuddling? Yes, that still happens if you consider 6:30 a.m. a late start to the day.
Date nights? Sure, as long as eating pizza, having a (yes, only one!) beer and watching Grey's Anatomy together with baby snuggled in mama's lap nursing counts as a date. Who has time to cook dinner and rent a movie anyway?

 

Long, hot, rejuvenating showers? I usually get five minutes, tops, to shower daily; Gabe often ends up in the shower with me. (After all, baby needs to be clean, too.) I've said goodbye to all of my body scrubs, leave-in hair-conditioner treatments and leg razor. I've rationalized that the long hair on my legs is actually a method of keeping warm in the cold Chicago winter.

Packing up and leaving for a spur-of-the-moment trip? Of course, as long as spur-of-the-moment actually means taking four hours to pack up all of the assorted necessities baby will need for the journey and preparing baby for the journey by nursing and changing the diaper. Often this preparation must be repeated a few times as the eating leads to pooping and the pooping leads to more eating.

Going out to dinner with friends? Absolutely, as long as we go to a restaurant that doesn't allow smoking and also doesn't mind if every single thing on the table ends up either in baby's mouth or on the floor because who can find a competent babysitter these days and pump enough breast milk to last an entire four hours?

We have lots of time, we tell ourselves, because obviously we aren't "those" parents. In fact, we have so much time that we are in the process of planning a spur-of-the-moment shopping trip to look for a new king-sized bed to replace the comfy, but too-small pillow-top bed we bought a few months before baby was born; it's just not big enough for all three of us to sleep comfortably all night and then cuddle in when we wake up at a late 6:30 a.m. on Saturdays.
We recently spoke with a friend and her husband over the phone (who has time to go out to dinner these days?) who are expecting their first little one in a few short months.

We told them about our wonderful little time vampire, our search for a king-sized bed and our pizza and Grey's Anatomy date nights.

"Oh," said our friend, "we registered for a really nice crib." John and I smiled at each other. I'm sure they won't ever be "those" parents either.
 
Hyacynth Filippi Worth is a stay-at-home mom to Gabe, (8/11/07) wife to John and Christ follower. She reported for several newspapers throughout college and worked as a reporter for the Peoria Journal Star and The Northwest Herald after her 2005 graduation from Bradley University. She earned her Illinois teaching certificate in 2007 and plans to teach the kiddos about journalism after her own little one goes off to school. Her observations and experiences about motherhood are just waiting to be read at www.raisinggabeandhope.blogspot.com.