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Rye, Barly and contaminated oats too sis. * I have celiac after all*

Can i just laugh for a minute at this? Just for a minute.

Ok, now that im done laughing.
When you get pregnant your body and hormone system do NOT tell you that you love being pregnant. In reality it tells you that being pregnant is pure hell for the most part. Yes there is the rare woman who absolutely LOVES being pregnant, however the other 99% of us spend most of that *usually over 10 months* just miserable. Theres the nausea, vomitting, cramping, stabbing pains all over your midsection-back-hips, the leg cramps, the hip cramps, your boobs can hurt so bad you'd swear they were being ripped off, the gas, the bloating, the constipation and or diahrea, the hips widening *which does hurt by the way* and of course the eventual birth process that can feel like your being ripped open from the inside for anywhere from an hour to several days before the baby is finally out.

And all of that joy is with a normal healthy pregnancy. When you get pregnant your body and hormones do everything short of beat you with a stick. When you factor in complications, difficult pregnancies and the fact that in the US alone over a million women each year lose a pregnancy or deliver a stillborn and i'd have to say that our bodies and hormones see pregnancy as a time to show us how much they hate us.

For the record, ive been through it 5 times and thanks to the hatred of mother nature i only have 2 sons living to show for it all.

As an adopted child I would still choose pregnancy. I am, alas, a male, but don't think me insensitive. When my wife first started on the pill, she was... Well, the campus police had to respond to a tantrum she had that escalated over someone having sat in the seat that she usually used. The hormonal adjustments during pregnancy will be worse. Call me a chauvanist if you like, but I am going to have to say that the pregnancy will be approximately as hard on me as it is on her.
Still, I quite like the idea of a child that shares my genes. I know that it's irrational but... Maybe it's my passion as an artist, but I like to develop my own creations rather than work with the creation of someone else... But maybe I'm just rationalizing and it's a decision I was influenced to on a more instinctual level.
A note to some who I feel have missunderstood something; most adoptions happen, not from an orphanage at age five, but it occurs days, if not hours after delivery and was pre-arranged.

I see. I don't really care whose "work" it is, and also wouldn't want to subject my wife to the discomforts and unpleasantness of pregnancy and the pains of childbirth. So I don't get to feel the baby kicking or watch my children get born. Big deal. I'd still love them even though they weren't related to me.

But as a "special" person myself, I know what such children are like and do not want to raise any like that. Learning/behavioral disorders are hereditary, you know.

Well, I have a rather unique perspective: I was married before, and had one child from that marriage. We divorced, rather bitterly. and I remarried 3 years later. My new husband has been part of my and my son's life since my son was 6 months old. My husband is the only father he's ever really known. We had our first baby together last February. My husband is working on adopting my first child. As a woman who has gone through pregnancy and childbirth, all I can tell you is that it's a very unique experience, different for every woman. With my first, I had no morning sickness, but I ended up with gallstones. My second pregnancy I had some morning sickness, but nothing really to be concerned about. They were both relatively trouble free. My deliveries were both c-section out of necessity. My first son was so tangled in the umbilical cord that he couldn't descend into the birth canal, and since I had had one c/s before, I had to have a second one. They don't do VBACs here, unfortunately. Before I got pregnant for the first time, I had 2 miscarriages. I didn't think I could stay pregnant, and then during the pregnancy, the issues in my marriage (abuse, cheating, drugs, etc) came to the forefront and I decided I could not put my child through that. I could handle it myself, but I wasn't about to let an innocent baby be hurt.

My husband sees my older son as his, since he's been with us for everything except the conception and birth. He always thought that he would never be able to love a child that wasn't his own. He was so wrong. He's loved my little boy since he laid eyes on him on the night of our first date.

The adoption will cost us almost $1,400, and that's with a hefty price cut (we know our lawyer VERY well - she's family). Usually, lawyer's fees alone are over 2k, then you have the home visit to make sure that you are doing right by the child, and you have the court date, and possibly a fight by the biological parent(s), which costs more money. Adoption is great, and I wish that more people would adopt, but it can take a long time and a lot of money. Why do you think these "fashionable" celebs go out of the country (United States) to adopt kids? It's easier, cheaper, and faster.

I went for childbirth... mainly because I had no choice! (I fell pregnant unexpectedly) Though if I had not had kids and had eventually wanted, adoption or fostering was my preferred way of raising kids!

On childbirth and pregnancy being horrible and unendurable...

I think part of it is that women are told by their family and friends that pregnancy and labour are "awful, horrible and hard to endure, painful, the worst thing they've gone through" so there's this expectation that it's gonna be bad... when it really isn't. Plenty of women do it every day. It's not a terminal disease. It's not unendurable. It's a natural part of life that is not nearly as bad as some women make it out to be.

Before any mothers out there raise their hackles at me... I have been pregnant. I'm a mother too. I've experienced a drug free labour and a vaginal birth. I had issues during my pregnancy

It wasn't a perfect pregnancy, but I can't say I suffered at all. I had morning sickness, I had all sorts of physical issues and gestational diabetes, too. But I can't complain! I have some incredibly fond memories of pregnancy that to other people might seem ridiculous, but to me... make me proud to have experienced it.

Labour for me was hilarious! I laughed through my screams because I thought all of it so silly and abstract and out of my realm! Yep, I screamed. It was painful at times. But mentally, I could cope with it because I entered the situation looking forward to my own experience of it. I wanted to remember it because it was so fleeting! I'd read so much about it and I was fascinated by how my own experience of it would unfold.

At times, my friends would tell me I was fooling myself about labour and birth, that I was talking s**t and that it wasn't something to look forward to because most women hate it. But I think that it was one of the most positive experiences I have ever had.

Most women tell me I must be lying or joking that I feel this way... but I think that's just their own jealousy because they hated their experiences with it. That just because they hated it and in their own mind they suffered, that no one could possibly like it. That all women must suffer because they did. I think that's doing a huge disservice to other women, really.

I never listened to my friends who complained about pregnancy and childbirth as if it were an ailment or a terminal disease instead of a natural part of being human. I really dislike that women spread this horrible s**t about how childbirth is to other women who have never gone through it. It just raises negative expectations and basically fools those women into believing it is way worse than it actually is.

I don't like the way it is put out there as if it is something so bad when it is not for most women. If it was, they would not keep doing it. The human race would die out. I think some women just like a whinge, really.