Familial Sacrifice
What is sacrificed when adding a child to the family? Free time? Sleep? Showering within three hours of exercising? We figured we'd exchange these things for a little bundle of joy, but it was expected and therefore okay. However, it was all the unintended things we sacrificed that we miss the most.
When I was pregnant with Lola, cheese and ice cream made me exceedingly nauseous -- in fact, it was how we determined I was pregnant in the first place. Now, it's easy for one person to avoid ice cream and everyone else still enjoy it, so that was only a hardship for me. Eliminating cheese from the diet was much harder. Eric, Samantha, and Raina could eat blocks of cheese, but I refused to cook them anything I couldn't eat myself, so an entire repertiore of food was lost for 9 months. No lasagna or pizza or casseroles: essentially, we crossed out Italian, Mexican, and Southern foods for the pregnancy's duration. We all rejoiced when Lola was born and I could eat cheese again. We had missed it tremendously.
I exclusively breastfed Lola for a long time and we determined that she had an extreme aversion to garlic. If I ate the tiniest amount of garlic, she'd cry and have horrible gas pains and an irritated bottom. It took us quite a while to pinpoint garlic as the culprit, so she suffered for a while. Now, unfortunately, the adults are suffering because I cannot make anything with garlic. And ALL good recipes start with "saute some garlic in olive oil." We anxiously await the day that I officially stop nursing Lola and we re-introduce garlic to our lives.
When I was pregnant with Lola, cheese and ice cream made me exceedingly nauseous -- in fact, it was how we determined I was pregnant in the first place. Now, it's easy for one person to avoid ice cream and everyone else still enjoy it, so that was only a hardship for me. Eliminating cheese from the diet was much harder. Eric, Samantha, and Raina could eat blocks of cheese, but I refused to cook them anything I couldn't eat myself, so an entire repertiore of food was lost for 9 months. No lasagna or pizza or casseroles: essentially, we crossed out Italian, Mexican, and Southern foods for the pregnancy's duration. We all rejoiced when Lola was born and I could eat cheese again. We had missed it tremendously.
I exclusively breastfed Lola for a long time and we determined that she had an extreme aversion to garlic. If I ate the tiniest amount of garlic, she'd cry and have horrible gas pains and an irritated bottom. It took us quite a while to pinpoint garlic as the culprit, so she suffered for a while. Now, unfortunately, the adults are suffering because I cannot make anything with garlic. And ALL good recipes start with "saute some garlic in olive oil." We anxiously await the day that I officially stop nursing Lola and we re-introduce garlic to our lives.
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