It’s almost been one year since Hubby and I became parents, and I feel about ready to throw us a party. We have, after all, survived. But joking aside, this column and cautionary tale is about the toll that being new parents can take on a relationship. It’s about learning to see from the other’s perspective, and recognizing, too, that the postpartum period isn’t all about the moms. It’s an adjustment period for you both.
Let’s just back up a little bit. Before Munchkin came along things were pretty close to perfect. Sure, we had the odd squabble, but all in all we were golden. It was blue skies and sunshine in the forecast of our lives, especially with the coming arrival of our little girl. She was planned. She was wanted. She was loved.
She was a game-changer.
I remember our early fights. Stupid things, but mostly over what I perceived to be a lack of help.
I felt that I had done the majority of the work in carrying our child for nine months, birthing her, feeding her, waking at all hours to respond to her every need.
As a mother your body is stretched beyond recognition. You’re still sore six weeks postpartum, and you think your stitches have probably dissolved by now, but to be honest, you’re too scared to look.
And then there’s the emotional toll. Your life as you know it is gone. You’re a mom now. And even though you love your new role, there’s a little part of you that speaks up in the dark of the night, and it wonders if you will ever feel like yourself again.
You’re exhausted all the time. You tell yourself that you’ll sleep when Baby sleeps, but when she does you can’t stop thinking about the laundry that needs doing, and the dishes piling up in the sink, and what are you going to have for supper? Those thoughts stave off the sleep you desperately need, and you rouse your tired body to clean house when all you need is a break.
Why couldn’t he pick up the broom? Do the dishes? Make some dinner? Why didn’t he offer to wash the cloth diapers, even once?
Why didn’t he ‘get it’?
With the exhaustion of caring for a newborn there came storm clouds on the horizon of our relationship.
We were short with one another. We weren’t listening. We weren’t appreciating each other.
I felt so alone, and feared, with some trepidation, that perhaps I’d made a terrible mistake in the choice of my life partner. The once rock-hard foundation of our marriage was turning to loose gravel on a downslope, and we were losing ground with every step we took.
It didn’t help that Babe was a terrible sleeper. Even our moms were at a loss when she screamed for hours every night. Full belly, burped, clean. Isn’t that all there is to it? So we thought, but no. Our sweet girl was not, unfortunately, a sleeper.
I remember a particularly tense time. It was during a sleep regression, and I was averaging about two hours of sleep per night, achieved in 10 minute intervals.
While I struggled to keep Baby fed and happy, have a clean house, and eat three meals a day, my husband was, in his time away from the office, cleaning up his shop, cutting down trees in the yard, and helping the neighbour with his cows.
These were, in my mind, all inconsequential. They didn’t help keep Baby alive, and they didn’t bear on the emergency of my mental state. I resented him. I hated that he could just go back to being himself without having to parent at all. With, seemingly, no guilt or ill-feeling about his lack of involvement.
I wrote a long letter, placed it on the table, and left the house with Babe in tow. I was going for a long walk. I needed it to clear my mind, and to brace myself for the battle that was sure to follow. I was gone for hours.
Yes, we fought. No one really won.
With the clarity that time and distance sometimes brings, I realize now that I hadn’t considered his emotional wellbeing.
That while Baby and I were showered with gifts and praise and love, he was left on the sidelines. That while I spent countless hours every day feeding her, holding her, caring for her, that he may have felt a little left out.
I hadn’t considered that perhaps he was feeling equivocally lost, or that he didn’t know how to help, or that he too felt drained and dysphoric in his new role.
I didn’t make the connection that, with every tree he cut down, he was trying to restore the landscape of his life. That by putting order to his shop, he was trying to make some sense of the life he now led. His adjustment to parenthood looked different than mine, but he was adjusting, in his way. He was grappling with the drastic life changes that a newborn baby brings, as I was.
And I had mistakenly thought that it was all about me.
Now, having regained our footing on that slippery gravel slope, I am here to sound the alarm bells in hopes that you, new mamas and papas, take pause to swallow your words of anger and respond to one another, instead, with kindness and with love. Try to be open-minded in your sleep-deprived minds, and give each other the benefit of the doubt. Being a parent is hard.
Yes, it’s probably true that, at the time, he just didn’t ‘get it.’ But, to be fair, neither did I.
So here’s to us, having now returned to our blissful beginnings, where sunshine and rainbows are the norm. And cheers to the next year. May we be more prepared now to brave whatever storms come our way.
Bronwyn Moser is a teacher and former journalist, and lives in North Pine.
