The Origin of Human Stress

( This post was written about 7 or 8 months ago...) It's 7am , my room is dark and cozy. I'm wrapped up in my nest of pillows I create each night to support my ever growing belly when "WHAM! " the door flies open, a doctor appears and she turns on the fluorescent lights directly over my head! I immediately went from warmth and happiness to bright lights, noise, and annoyance! It definitely got my blood going and gave me something to grumble about the rest of the morning. This "rude awakening" gave me great empathy for the poor baby growing in my belly. It's happy and content. It's got prime reality. It's warm, dark, quiet...perfect. But in three months my little peanut will be evicted without warning and forced to face the cold, bright, noisy world! No wonder babies cry when they are born...its not just about taking their first breath, they are ticked off! What a way to enter the world, mad and stressed. This,I'm afraid, is only the beginning. Being a human is stressful. From the moment of birth you are trying to live up to others expectations . We all know that the first thing the doctors give a newborn baby is a score. It's not in the world but one tiny minute and it is already being judged! You see there just isn't any way we can escape the pressure to be great, its forced upon us. I wonder if over achievers and underachievers are formed right there, in that moment, depending on their APGAR score.Hmmm...something to think about. If being born is difficult just wait, it just gets progressively harder. Now the newborn is expected to learn ...everything! They have to learn to hold their heads up, recognize people, smile, eat, control their body spasms, and figure out what day and night are all about. It's no wonder babies cry so much , its an overwhelming amount of responsibility for such a tiny person. It's not fair if you ask me. Human beings are at the top of the food chain, a superior species. You would think that we could get a break and be born knowing how to do something right off the bat. Giraffes fall from their mother and can walk almost immediately. I don't think we look too superior! Why does it take us SO long to learn things? I think secretly all the other animals God has created are probably laughing at us for being such slow learners! Of course we can laugh right back, because , although it may feel like it at times, we don't live in zoos, we don't have to kill our dinner every night, and we have those cool opposable thumbs! So there wild kingdom! I think I know the reason why we don't remember too much until after we are 2 years old. The reminder of how hard it was in the beginning would throw us into a tailspin and make us completely incapacitated.No one would want to go on! God knew what he was doing-he gave us natural anesthesia. Sometimes I wish it didn't wear off when I was a toddler. I could use it now and then. But I do have a substitute and its name is chocolate! Okay, so the baby survived tummy time with its face pressed into the Boppy . Now its on to bigger things. Sitting , grabbing, rolling over, pulling up ( are we raising people or circus animals with all of these tricks?),feeding its self ,walking, falling, walking again, talking, learning to not pee on themselves, the list goes on and on and on. It is such a good thing that children are mental sponges and relatively good multitaskers. They have to keep all that new info they learn filed away in their little mental file cabinets. Granted,the cabinets are pretty empty so its easy to recall the info. (My "file cabinet", on the other hand, is a mess. I'm a clutter bug and have so much in there that I can't find what I'm looking for half the time! Things are never "stored" where they should be ...much like my house.Sometimes it amazes me that I walk and chew gum at the same time!) If you made a list of all the things that you are expected to know or do in your life it would be quite long, I'm sure. It's enough to make you shudder. Do you think I could have my baby born in the dark, immediately wrapped in a Snuggi, with teeny tiny earphones placed on its head? I just want the first minutes of life to be comfortable before it gets thrown to the lions. Humans have so much stress that we don't realize. ( Can you imagine? I have so much stress that I DO realize!) But, we have to remember that God won't give us more than we can handle, we are strong. And when it feels like we are about to crumble we can remember one very important thing God has done for us....He gave us chocolate.