Pregnancy- The pull to act maternal

Sometimes the blog inspiration fairy leaves you totally empty and you stare at the blogger screen for ten minutes and nothing comes to mind. As a result of this, you get this post.....

I realized something on the cruise that we just took..... as soon as you are pregnant, you feel like you should have maternal feelings towards all children. It's almost like if you get annoyed by a child then you aren't going to be a good mother. After all, shouldn't just being pregnant be enough to make every child you run into a pure joy to be around? There is this feeling like if I am not amused with every child I come across now then I am not "mom material".

An example perhaps....... One of our stops on the cruise required us to take tender boats from the ship to the shore. These get backed up in the morning and so they had us all wait in the theater as our number groups were called to go ashore. I wasn't feeling too well that morning (for those of you who are wondering, I had no motion sickness problems on the boat at all, but I did eat something in Mexico that made me sick the last few days... not too sick though :) and we end up sitting in the row in front of a family with two small boys. The boys spend most of their waiting time leaning up close to my ear and yelling while one of them saw fit to elbow me pretty hard in the back of the head. I know that a good pregnant lady would have the patience of an angel in this circumstance and would turn around and smile at the little dears and ask them their names and ages. But me as the sick pregnant lady just wanted to get on the boat and away from them. I didn't yell at them or shoot them a dirty look.... I just ignored them and waited it out (as I also did with the annoyingly loud 50-something New York woman on my left... see, it's not just kids :P ).

Anyhoo, I was hit by an overwhelming feeling that because I wasn't excited about being hit in the back of my head and yelled at in my ear that I wasn't going to make a good mother. Then I realized something.... those weren't MY kids. Additionally, those weren't kids I cared the least about and they were being truly annoying. I put up with alot more from my niece without getting annoyed because I love her. Also, I usually do find kids I don't know cute as well if I am feeling ok :) Anyways, the point being... it is different when you love the child. Even when they are being truly annoying and everyone at the store or wherever is tired of them, they are yours and you love them. Anyways... just something I wanted to get out :)