10 Ways To Test If You're Ready To Be A Mom

If you Google “Am I ready to be a mom?”, here is what you’ll find: Lies, lies, and more lies. The truth is that there is absolutely nothing that can prepare you for being a parent. Part of the reason I was so stressed out during pregnancy was because I couldn’t get a handle on the unknown: Will my baby be a demon spawn with colic that never sleeps through the night? Will I have one of those mythological easy babies that only giggles when it’s upset?

You never know. Parenting is the luck of the draw. Oddly enough, there are a few parenting preparation quizzes that are supposed to tell you if you’re ready to care for human life. They have feely feely questions that have absolutely no bearing on your actual ability to parent, like:

What are your true feelings about having a child?
Do you have a loving and nurturing relationship with your partner?
Are you already taking a prenatal vitamin?
Do you have $1 million in savings?
Have you picked out a list of top 20 baby names?

If not, you’re a super big idiot. Just kidding, you’re a normal person who probably wants to be a parent but has no clue if you’ll be good at it. From one mom who’s been there, done that, there are only 10 straightforward questions you need to ask yourself before you commit to getting knocked up:

1. Are you 100% comfortable with the smell of diarrhea?