A friend of mine recently wrote that she’s getting pretty close to being ready to take the plunge and try for a baby. She said she was scared to death that she would do something to screw her kid up.

I, being the helpful friend that I am, told her not to worry because we all screw our kids up. What I didn’t tell her was the profound effect having kids has on the parents.

Kids will break your heart like you never imagined. They’ll make you angrier than you have ever been in your life. They’ll make you think you need to take a trip to the funny farm. They will embarrass you so badly you’ll want to be struck dead on the spot. They’ll gross you out so badly you’ll run to the bathroom, gagging.

But kids will make your heart soar to heights you didn’t know existed. They’ll make you laugh harder than you have ever laughed in your life and they will make you sing with pure joy. And they’ll make you dance- even if that dancing is because you had to take a 5:51 dance break because they’re driving you nuts.

Kids will spend all your money, eat all your food, steal all your favorite toys and demand more. And they’ll give you flowers from grubby little hands and they’ll draw you pictures that are more beautiful than the Mona Lisa. Even if you’re not sure what, exactly, it was that they drew.

They’ll give themselves a haircut right before you take your Christmas pictures and pick out the most garish outfit you have ever seen to wear to preschool. And you’ll think they look adorable anyway.

Prepare to never sleep again. They’ll wake up 42 times a night as babies and crawl into your bed, sick when they’re preschoolers and then pee in your bed. They’ll wake you in the middle of the night when they’re in grade school and tell you they puked on the floor. They’ll keep you up past your bedtime in middle school, working on a school project they’ve known about for three weeks but is due tomorrow. Then they’ll come in after their curfew when they’re teenagers and you’ll be pacing the floor, picturing fiery car accidents when really, they just lost track of time. And you’ll buy them a watch and they’ll lose that watch. And then, when you think you’ll finally get some sleep, you’ll send them off to college and you’ll lay in bed late at night, hoping they’re not at some frat party. And then they will become parents and they’ll call you at 3 AM worrying about their own babies. Oh, no, you’ll never sleep again.

Little kids will make you feel like the smartest person on earth and that will scare you to death because you don’t realize how little you DO know until you have kids. And then you’ll try to share your wisdom with your teenagers and they’ll tell you that you know nothing. And that will scare you to death because you know what will happen, but you have to give them the gift of letting them make their own mistakes.

Yep, having a kid is going to change you like you never imagined. But it’s a good kind of change. Except the not-sleeping part, that is.