Nicolelb03 posted on the forum about how your views can do a complete flip once you've become a parent. I sure do know how that is.

When I was first working in the child care field I remember two incidents that still come back to haunt me. The first incident was when I was working with a group of babies and a mom brought in breastmilk to be thawed and given to her son. I was just a teen, so not too educated about feeding choices, and this was the '80s so there weren't a lot of moms who continued to nurse after returning to work (this mom was the only one in a center with about 20 babies). I didn't have any problem at all with the breastmilk until one day when I was getting the bag out of the warmer and the milk overflowed and got all over my hands. You would have thought a snake was crawling on me the way I carried on.

Little did I know that years later I'd be the mom waking up in pools of breastmilk from sleeping on my stomach... or that I'd be spraying it all over the tile every time I got in the shower... or that yes, I would indeed contemplate putting it in my coffee when I ran out of creamer.

The other incident came when I was babysitting a baby girl whose mom sometimes let her come into bed with her. I think I actually questioned her about why she did that. It seemed so foreign to me. The only time I would have been allowed in my parents' bed would have been if a wicked storm was bearing down on the house. Probably not even then. I vividly remember thinking to myself, "I will never let my child sleep with me, my kid will be independent and know how to sleep on his or her own, dabnabbit."

So I'm sure I don't need to explain just how many nights my son spent snuggled up to me so that I could please, please, please just get some sleep, right?

Read how other's views have changed or share your own stories...