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Your entire life changes when you have a baby, not just your priorities. The way you think and feel, how you see the world and through what paradigm you see it; all these things change when you become a parent.

You may think your habits of sleeping in on the weekends will change, and that you will have more laundry to do, more expenses to pay, more groceries to buy, more chores to complete, but when it comes right down to it, all of these things and so much more changes.

You realize unconditional love for the very first time in your life. You come to terms with true maturity and responsibility for the life you have created in your passion. Your entire outlook of what life means to you changes from one of an individual to one of a nurturer, protector and provider. You are frightened and excited at the same time. You make habits of routines you once thought contrite and silly. Your language changes, your thoughts for the first time center around something besides your own dreams and needs.

The life you have created becomes the center of your universe. You learn to push yourself to work longer hours because there is no choice. You sleep with one eye open and both ears tuned to the turning of that baby in its crib and the noise it makes. You examine this little 'you' every moment with your eyes and then reexamine with your mind as you process it repeatedly. You work harder than you have ever worked in your entire life. You love more than you ever thought you were capable of loving. You worry more than you ever thought possible.

Everything about you changes. Not just your life style and personal habits, but your very ability to be a human and what you believe that entails changes. Everything becomes personal, from the war in Iraq to the Ghetto school zones. You remember childhood memories you thought were long forgotten. You reason with yourself as to what kind of parent you will be and how you will raise and teach your child how to be compassionate. You wonder that you are now the teacher only to realize you are also a student who is learning about this little person you have given life to through the miracle of the gift you were given to bring life into this world with.

You find you will cry at a commercial, become enraged at the thought of your child dying in a senseless war and ready to kill to keep them safe protecting them from harm. When your child's sky is falling, you will do anything to fix it. You will discover things within yourself you never knew existed.

You will stay up all night long keeping an eye on a fever and when your baby pukes all over you and the fresh sheets you just changed, you'll stroke their head and back and whisper 'It's okay baby, everything is going to be okay.' You will find the strength to move mountains and be reduced to the weakness of a broken dam in a spring run off. You will realize that you are apart of something so special that you won't believe you deserve it. You will understand what it means to have a heart broken into so many pieces that never come back together the first time your child waves goodbye to go to school.

You will experience all of this and so much more and still this does not even come close to explaining everything that changes when you become a parent.

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