Fears

[tinytherese]

I have cousins with small children. One of them recently gave birth to her 3rd baby. From what I've been told (and not just by them and certain other members of the family,) being a mother scares me. 

I've heard people complain that you get little if any sleep because the baby keeps waking up and crying. Mom said that when my younger brother and I were babies, she couldn't have us just cry it out because we'd cry so hard that we'd throw up and then cry again because we were covered in vomit, then we'd vomit again, and the cycle would just repeat itself. One of my cousins couldn't sleep more than 15 minutes at a time. How do you survive that, especially since you'll be sleep deprived and need the energy to care for them the next day?

I have a hard time getting to sleep as it is and wake up throughout the night to go to the bathroom and struggle to get back to sleep without a baby adding complications to it. How do parents even function? Babies and toddlers have to be supervised constantly when they're awake so that they don't do anything to hurt themselves. Where do parents get the energy to that from? 

On top of that, I've had depression for almost 6 years and struggle to get out of bed regardless of whether I've gotten little or a lot of sleep. The illness also decreases your energy. How easy it would be for me to neglect kids no matter how old they are and then have them taken from me by CPS. I've also met people who've come down with depression and their spouses couldn't handle it so they divorced them (one of them said that that wasn't the only reason though.) 

I've been told not to borrow trouble and that these things may not even happen. We don't know the future. I've prayed for an end to catastrophic thinking and to be able to live in the present moment, but these thoughts still haven't left me.