Women's bodies were engineered to carry babies, have babies, and make milk. Women who choose not to do that - cool! But most women do all of those things, and their bodies respond in kind. Without wanting to sound like a hippie, the whole messy business is (ahem) natural.

A grown woman doesn't look like a 16 year old. A grown woman who is pregnant or nursing or had a baby doesn't look, smell, or sound (pregnancy farts, anyone?) like a 16 year old. Nor does she have sex like a 16 year old. Or like a grown woman who has done none of those things.

Remember that wonderful post last week about being today's biscuit? [jezebel.com] Today doesn't get anymore today-ish (talk about making up words!) than when you've had a baby.

We must all be our own biscuits!

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But I'm so sorry that your mom told you that your whole life. No kid should have to live with that, and no grown-up should have to have it knocking around inside their head.

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@lalaland13: Thank you, dear. I'm sorry to hear you've had some of the same feelings. I always felt so awkward and immature because of my lack of experience with intimacy. He's very good to me. We used condoms (I don't mind you asking!) and we had no clue there had been a tear.

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Also, and this is no small matter: You don't know your post-pregnancy self. All you know is what you might be losing; you can't possibly know what you'll be gaining. So of course the potential loss looks scary, and the potential gain is hard to get a bead on.

So I would say: Yes! Spurn the Internet! Unless directed there by people who know and love you and/or your health care professional. Or, at the very least, read it all through skeptical glasses. And (at the risk of sounding too cliched for words) trust your own instincts.

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Odds are you will get pregnant within a year. If not, fertility treatments are seriously not the end of the world (I know, I did all of them). And pregnancy can be really hard but it also has great moments. I was lucky that after a rocky and scary first trimester, my pregnancy was complication-free - so my perspecitive is a little rosy - but in reality I think most women have relatively OK pregnancies. And then you get a baby!

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If he feels sexually deprived, he should tell you. If you feel sexually deprived, you should tell him. But I wouldn't worry too much about what everyone else is doing because they aren't living your life. They might not have the same time commitments or stressors or other things like that. I say do it when you want to, don't do it when you don't want and create a sexual relationship that balances what you both want. Don't worry about attaining some general average. I think a lot of people probably lie about their sexual habits anyway, or at least exaggerate them a bit.

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I remember once, when my first child was a few months old, wishing I could go back and visit my old life. Not live there again, just visit. Just be in a place where I didn't need to always be aware of the needs of someone else.

But the honest truth is that that passed, truly passed. This is my life now, and it has them in it, and thank God, for they are wonderful. I wish that going to the Kaiser Chiefs the other night didn't require the finding and paying of a babysitter, but I still went, and I still pogoed.

And now my kids like the Kaiser Chiefs.

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You're basically saying goodbye to who you were pre-baby.

It isn't and shouldn't be for everyone. It is a sacrifice of yourself for another person. Anyone should be as realistic about that as possible before they take on parenting.

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It never really gets easy, as much as it gets different. My sister put it best - the first few years are physically exhausting, and the rest are mentally exhausting.

There are some days when I just want to be left alone, but I think I'd feel that way regardless of the kids being around. Mine are 12 and 9 now, and they are interesting, smart, funny, sweet people. They are also periodically obnoxious, rude, smelly, annoying and loud.

Hell, we all have our days, right?

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This is great -- thank you. :)

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I love my daughter, I love looking after her and I don't mind that I have to get up at 5am to work before she wakes and then fit a couple of hours more work in around her sleep and in the evening because I can't afford a nanny and we live in a seemingly daycare free zone but I also occasionally need some time apart from her and during those times I still do pretty much what I did before I had her - eat nice food, drink, dance sometimes and talk too much.

Yes, it changes your life but it doesn't have to be this awful, scary earth shattering thing and I honestly think people can make too much of it.

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Sacrifice? Hell yes. Resignation to being a non-entity? HELL NO.

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I just need to know that my life will grow and change, but that it will be the same too. That I won't be giving up everything I've strived so far for just to replace it with something else.

There is something to be said for the way my grandparents parented. That's the kind of parent I want to be. Available, loving, wise, but totally into living my own life and not getting completely swallowed up by my kids. Helicopter parenting, do not want.

And that's what I worry will happen. I will feel so responsible and so consumed, that I'll even ignore my sex life.

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A million times YES. It looks like, from what the mothers here are saying, it's possible. Harder, maybe, but entirely possible.

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