By Ebenezer Mabinuola

Every week, someone around the world gets married. Same week, someone around the world gets a divorce or become separated.
It has become imperative for both male and female to prepare well for marriage.

However, this write-up will focus on mental preparation for ladies. I will attempt to do for the men in another write up.

1. Prepare for rough times- During the wedding ceremony, it's all glam and Glitz. There's so much happiness and laughter in the air.

However, life in marriage isn't always rosy.
There will be rough times. Sometimes very rough you may want to run away.

Times when the husband's income experiences a setback, time of sickness, times of disagreement and conflict can be termed rough seasons.
What helps the woman stay strong is how much mental strength she has developed.

2. Prepare for child bearing- Child bearing can be very stressful. From the time of conception up until child birth, you will experience all sorts of body changes. Some women, not preparing for these sudden changes could break down mentally and begin to behave irrationally.

3. Prepare for child nursing and home grooming- Ladies must be prepared for life of taking care of themselves after child bearing and taking care of kids.
Hormonal changes, post-partum depression and aging are real life experiences.

For the kids, prepare for cleaning them up when they poo or pee, prepare for cleaning up vomits, prepare to stay up to monitor them when sick, be ready to cope with them scattering the house amongst many other things.
If you are not mentally prepared for this as a lady, you will be thrown into a state of imbalance and it would show through stress and aging.
No matter the help you get, you must be able to attend to the basic needs of the kids and yourself as well.

4. Prepare for work and discipline- To stay strong as lady with kids, it takes a lot of work and discipline.

You must make effort to strike a balance between the home and your work(career or business) if you have one.

You must develop the discipline to raise kids to be serious with what matters per time without being emotional about it. Train them do their home work as at when due, assist at home, wake up early etc

5. Prepare for resource management- As a lady, if you don't prepare to manage resources and deploy home economics to the home, you will have a lot of challenges.

This is because at many times, there would be cases of insufficiency within the home and this may not necessarily be due to funds.

It could be the timing of the need, more people visiting the home than expected etc...which calls for a need for quick improvisation.

Sighs.....