Quote Originally Posted by mj_romo View Post
First, I am the pregnant momma, and I fought my family like mad to keep my snakes when I was pregnant the first time. They're my snakes, and I've had them 14 and 10yrs, respectively. I have handled all of their husbandry. I have good cages for them; I take good care of them. I have also worked diligently with my daughter so that she respects the snakes and knows the rules about being around them. I resent the implication that I'm doing something wrong.
Seems to me that's not a fight you should have to refight. Who is pushing you to get rid of them, and why? As long as you can create a situation where the snakes and the children are safe from each other (and it sounds like you achieved that with your first child), I don't see why it's anyone else's business.

Second, I am asking for help and suggestions to avoid a very difficult decision - re-homing them. I've had Calvin (my female) half of my life: how would any of you react if you had to give up your BPs? How difficult would that decision be? How many other solutions would you try before you caved to the inevitable?
I'd try every possible solution. I'd be incredibly angry with anyone who would even suggest that I was creating a situation where the children and/or the animals wouldn't be safe.

This decision is something that has me in tears, and more so since reading through these posts. One person PM'd me with a practical solution I hadn't considered; most others have just bashed me.

I came to the forum looking for help.
Some of the responses have been a bit harsh, I agree, but on some level, they've all been trying to help in that they're looking out for the best interests of the snakes. Remember that forums get a lot of traffic from clueless newbies whose husbandry verges on the abusive and try to look at it from that perspective: they want your snakes to have the best life they can, and they didn't know anything about you to start with. Unfortunately, that resulted in some over the top responses, especially given that they didn't have all of the relevant information at the beginning. I think if the harsher posters had known that you'd been keeping your BPs for 10+ years, they might have been a bit less aggressive with the negative implications.

I'm curious to know what the solution the other person PM'd you with was.