Dear Oona, If in a conversation with your significant other about the future—

Believe them if they say they don’t want to take care of a baby. If in a conversation about the future, you respond by saying that you have no intention of changing your life, wait to meet your child before you laugh at other parents while promising to be nothing like them. Saying, it’s not good for the kid or the parent to act that way. Before your child is born, you might say things like, It’s the baby who will have to learn to integrate into my life not the other way around. Next thing you know you are walking down the street, your baby in a stroller crying, her father trying to talk to you about his day and you stop him to say, She doesn’t like it when we talk—and you walk ten blocks in silence. Wait, you could find yourself alone in a hospital bed in the middle of the night, the father away on business because you insisted nothing change once the baby is born—and you, at the hospital in the middle of the night, unslept, on painkillers—but holy shit the pain—unable to stand, your baby one day old, left in a bassinet across the room by nurses saying she is inconsolable in the nursery, you cannot stand, she cries out, you stand, you sway you sing you feed, no matter your fresh stitches, she stops crying when you hold her, holy shit the pain, you do not let her go until morning, you wait it happens in a moment.