Babysitting side effects...

Over the past week my sister left her 4 month old baby girl in our care. OUR means myself, my mom, and my youngest siblings. The main babysitting responsibility was my mother because I had work and my siblings had school. BUT this weekend I took care of my baby niece one whole day. Just me and very little help from anyone else. The experience was tiring, revealing, and shocking. My niece starting a running nose and small cough the night before. So during the day at one point she got a fever that scared me to the core. I did not know what to do. She is so small and could not communicate like adults. When I get sick I hate it, and know the crappiness that comes with it. But as an infant I just imagine how much worse it is. Because as an infant I cannot speak to how I feel. I can only cry to signal my distress. I just about started crying from not knowing what to do. Luckily in ten minutes things calm down and she was calmer. I think babies can be like horses and can sense how you feel. Maybe my niece took pity on me and not freaked out so much. Since I was doing all the freaking out for the both of us. Anyway afterwards I sat on the bed with her and I was the only one in the house. I started to think maybe this is how it is for single parents. Suddenly I felt lonely and thought wow I wonder if it was like this for my mom. You see I was raised by a single mother and a stepfather whom was hardly ever there. He did show up once in awhile to show me what NOT to do in my life. As I was sitting on the bed being alone with my baby I realized the amount of work goes into having a child. I was there when my sister gave birth to my niece and saw all the strength she put into pushing. It was an amazing to see life coming into the world. I wonder if men ever feel that same feeling of women bringing life into the world and know just how much a baby impacts our life. Men have never been a good role model in my life. Men have always brought destruction, hurt, betrayal, and pain. So you see my opinion of men in general is not that great but over time I have come to terms that not all men are evil. But I cannot help but bring up how men could just easily impregnate women but never experience the impact it really makes on the woman's life. It is easy for a man to change his mind and move on. Yet for women, especially women from my family, there is a strong tie to their children. At the end of the day I decided that having children would wait, and if it ever happened it would be limited to two.