Your baby's smile makes it all worthwhile, and 4 other lies about motherhood

No, I am not treasuring every moment

I always said I'd never get married and absolutely would never have children. Lots of people say that as kids, of course, but I graduated college having never gone on a single date, and as 30 approached, I detected no ticking of any biological clock. Yet here I am married and with 4-month-old twins, one of whom is presently wailing for no discernable reason.

Any new parent gets lots of unsolicited advice, but I suspect having both twins and a known history of inexperience with babies got me an extra dose. And while much of what people have told me has been helpful — sometimes clichés are clichés for a reason — plenty more has proven patently untrue. So for other expectant parents, let me offer a counterpoint to what you're likely hearing. If these expectation-setters don't pan out for you either, know you're not alone.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.