Year: 2009

—Thanks to Mom for forwarding this to me. 😀

The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 and came up with $160,140.00 for a middle income family.

Talk about sticker shock! That doesn’t even touch college tuition.

But $160,140 isn’t so bad if you break it down. It translates into $8,896 a year, $741.38 a month, or $171.08 a week. That’s a mere $24.24 a day! Just over a dollar an hour.

Still, you might think the best financial advice says don’t have children If you want to be “rich.” It is just the opposite. What do you get for your $160,140?

• Naming rights—First, middle, and last!
• Glimpses of God everyday.
• Giggles and outright, deep belly, flat out infectious laughter more times than one would ever believe.
• More love than your heart can hold.
• Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs.
• Endless wonder and pleasure over the simple things: rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies.
• A hand to hold.
• A partner for blowing bubbles, flying kites, building sand castles, and skipping down the sidewalk in the pouring rain.
• Someone to laugh yourself silly with no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day.
• For $160,140, you can live through your childhood again; You get to finger-paint, carve pumpkins, play hide-and-seek, catch lightning bugs, and believe in Santa Claus for a while again.
• You have an excuse to keep reading the Adventures of Piglet and Pooh, watching Saturday morning cartoons, going to Disney Land, and wishing on stars.
• You get to frame rainbows, hearts, and flowers under refrigerator magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, hand prints set in clay for Mother’s Day, and cards with backward letters for Father’s Day.

For $160,140, there is no greater bang for your buck.

• You get to be a hero just for retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof, taking the training wheels off the bike, kissing a hurt, filling a wading pool, and coaching a baseball team that never wins but always gets treated to ice cream regardless.
• You get a front row seat to history to witness the first step, first word, first bra, first date, and first time behind the wheel.
• You get to be immortal.
• You get another branch added to your family tree—and if you’re lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called grandchildren.
• You get an education in psychology, nursing, criminal justice, communications, and human sexuality that no college can match.
• In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there with God.
• You have all the power to heal a boo-boo, scare away the monsters under the bed, patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever, and love them without limits, so one day they will, like you, love without counting the cost.

ENJOY YOUR KIDS AND GRANDKIDS !

I can sum up the entire 3-hour class in one word: WOW! 88|

I really want to breastfeed, and I knew it would be a lot of work. But after actually learning about it, and realizing just how often a newborn needs to eat—and how long each feeding takes? Wow, just wow.

I think I am actually feeling MORE overwhelmed now, rather than less overwhelmed as I’d hoped. I think Tom was really surprised, too, at just how much work and energy would be involved (which is a good thing!).

The one thing I wasn’t expecting? If breastfeeding is going well, you should do it for at least 3-4 weeks before introducing a bottle or a pacifier. That sort of ruins my plans for having mom or Aunt Marge help with the middle of the night feedings. :no:

I am sure it will all be second nature in a few days—and be worth it overall (once the exhaustion is over)—but in the meantime it’s going to be hard work.