What did I just sign up for?????

(This original post was from Dec. 2012...I just never published it.  Enjoy)

When I had my son almost 2 years ago, I never realized how hard it would actually be to be a parent.  I know that sounds silly and immature and childish, but being a parent is probably the hardest thing that I have ever done in my life.  The responsibility to raise someone to have the right morals, right manners, to learn how to talk, write, read, walk, eat, socialize, and behave has been the supreme challenge for me.  I constantly hear criticism from loved ones, constantly hear that i'm not doing something right, and it's hard for me to brush it off because I get easily offended.  I take raising my son very seriously, and when you have children you have a constant peanut gallery and it's annoying and it hurts.  I try to take it in stride, but it weighs on me heavily all the time.
It was a hard and rough learning curve for me.  My husband (bless his heart) stayed home with me for 5 weeks after the baby was born(which is unnatural as most husbands only take a week off).  My mother also came to stay with us during that period, and it was good, because I felt like I got the most help during that time.  But after that, my mother left after a month, and the next week my husband left to go back to work, and it was just me and the baby, by ourselves.  And I don't know what the typical baby is like, but he was not the calm cooing baby that everyone is used to seeing.  He had piercing cries, he would wail for hours as I tried to calm him, and he was colicky for the first 8 weeks.  I was worn out.  I loved him, but don't think there weren't times that I literally wanted to throw him out of a window.  I couldn't believe what I was thinking at the time.  I used to think that mother's who killed their kids were deranged and not loving and just didn't care about their children.  But I realize that any mother could have done what some women had done.  All it takes is lack of sleep, a crying baby, and the wrong mindset (which is easy to have with lack of sleep).  I was so out of it I could barely think straight.
After week 8 when everything started to calm down and I started to sleep and get my sanity back, I realized how much I truly loved my son and how I would never want to do anything to hurt him.  But it was hard, extremely hard for me at first.
Now that I am about to be a parent for the second time, on the one hand I feel confident that the mistakes, (or learning lessons) that I had with my first child, I will self correct with the second.  Hopefully.  Maybe.  :)