Relationship After Baby

So, you like really love your husband right after you get married… like REALLY love him. The honeymoon phase is incredible, and then, BAM … cue the screaming child at 3am that has only slept a total of 13 minutes. What do you want to do? Kick your husband in the d*#k, that is what. Why? Because he got you here in the first place; you carried the baby for ten (NOT nine) months. Whatever everyone has been telling you is a lie. You are pregnant for 10 months, T-E-N, and then if you’re breastfeeding, your husband’s useless nipples start to look like little targets that you want to shoot fire at.

Let me just sum this up real quick. THEY. DO. NOT. GET. IT.

A woman’s body and brain completely rewire after being pregnant, giving birth, or becoming a mother in any way that got you there. Do not get me wrong, there are some guys that are really in tune with what their wives need after becoming a mom. Hats off to them.

My husband was INCREDIBLE for the first two weeks after I gave birth. Then, I’m pretty sure aliens abducted him and gave me a new one. I had to completely rewire whatever human was given back to me.

Husband, if you’re reading this (which I doubt you are), I’m sorry but, WTF?!

The hormones that surge through your body with no rhyme or reason are indescribable. I saw an old man wearing mismatched high-socks, and I lost it. Literal hysterics because I thought he needed help finding socks. At this point, I stopped for a second and thought, wow, maybe it’s not my husband, maybe it’s me? Nah… It’s never me.

JK. It’s me a lot of the time, and I don’t give him enough credit because I do know that he means well, but he just doesn’t understand what I’m feeling or that I’m truly on my last thread of sanity. He is used to me wanting to do everything on my own, and I didn’t realize that I had to literally say word-for-word what I needed.

Sleep deprivation could be grounds for institutional rehabilitation. The lack of sleep that new moms can actually run on is truly astonishing. I now understand the reasoning behind insomnia the last three months of pregnancy. Your body is preparing you for what is to come. I literally found myself Googling if I could die from sleep deprivation. News flash - I’m still alive. And there were probably weeks where I slept a total of 15 hours in 7 days. How I’m alive, is beyond me.

So, here’s where my self-care rant will begin. Take the help. Ask for the help. BEG FOR THE HELP. Because running on fumes is not good for yourself, for your baby, and definitely not for your relationship. Because trust me, the first person you’re going to be taking it out on is your partner. Do they deserve it? Maybe. But the last thing you want is to fall asleep on the couch holding your child and waking up to screams because you’ve dropped him. Thankfully, this never happened to me. But I came close.

Talk to your partner. Figure it out. Come up with a plan that will allow you to not lose your freaking mind. IT TAKES A VILLAGE. This saying used to drive me nuts. I would think to myself, what kind of person needs a village? Someone who had quadruplets? No, someone with one child could use a village, too. Because it is life-changing. And it is okay to ask for help. Do it sooner rather than later because you will begin to resent your partner, quickly.

There are still days where I have to talk myself out of kicking him off the bed when I hear Anthony wake up at 2 am. We are, by no means, perfect. But talking about it and giving ourselves a date night once a week has helped tremendously.

There were months that I didn’t think we would make it because I couldn’t stand that he didn’t get what I was going through. There are still days where I question how long this relationship can really work. It’s usually the days that I’m cursing his name for not sticking to our very simple plan: every Tuesday and Thursday morning, my husband is supposed to wake up with Anthony. There have only been a handful of weeks where this plan has actually worked out. And the weeks where it does, I feel happier, and less alone, like I’m actually on a team and not just the ringleader of a one-man circus. But the weeks that he “misses” a day, I turn into the Hulk. It’s not cute. We fight, and I hold a lot of resentment towards him. This resentment usually carries over into date night. We spend what is supposed to be our happy night, where we remember why we got married in the first place, into a night of pointless arguing about things that wouldn’t normally cause an argument.

“Look, I didn’t get up, what do you want me to say, I’m sorry, I was tired and couldn’t fall asleep until really late.” He doesn’t realize that my mind and body, which are both OVERLY exhausted, are already jumping for joy Monday and Wednesday night as I get into my comfy bed, realizing that tomorrow is either Tuesday or Thursday. He doesn’t realize that if he ends up “not hearing him” and it turns into me just waiting in bed, feeling my own blood boil, keeping myself from literally stabbing him with the remote control, he has already ruined my day. I have now woken up in a heat of rage because I was counting on him to get up, I was counting on that extra hour of sleep that my body is just dying for, and he let me down. My husband however, will not see it this way. He will just wake up as if nothing happened and go on with his day. People feel loved DIFFERENTLY. When he doesn’t stick to a plan, that makes me feel like my needs and my requests don’t matter. For him, he feels like I’m nagging him. For him, coming home earlier than he used to, to help make dinner and watch Anthony with me for a few hours before it’s time for bed, makes up for not waking up with him in the morning. That is his way of showing love. Is it nice of him? Of course. Do I love that Anthony gets to see his dad more than most children get to see their dad? Of course. But am I still annoyed AF that I didn’t get my extra hour of sleep? OF COURSE. This isn’t something that we were both able to sit down and realize until recently. That we both are two different people, with two completely different views on things. I am the communicator. I do not like to leave things unsaid. I cannot sit at date night and pretend like my entire week was peachy, when I have a laundry list of things that he did that week that pissed me off and that I haven’t been able to speak about. He, however, is the “let’s just table this and revisit it in a month when we are both arguing and throw all the months’ worth of shit into this argument” person. He can sit through an entire dinner and pretend like everything is great. This is good and bad. But we are working on it. It will always be work. Relationships are work. There are two different people involved, with two different personalities and needs. We have been together for over 12 years now, and we are still learning things about one another.

Moral of the story: communication is key. You may have been with your significant other for YEARS and thought that they would know how to read you by now, but you’re wrong. Men need a map, an outline, a list. Anything that tells them EXACTLY what to do. They won’t ask for it, but just give it to them. Because they will not read your mind. I thought that my husband would know what would push me over the edge after 10 years of dating and 2 years of being married… nope. We may as well have been strangers. But talking about it helps. And don’t be alarmed if they need a refresher course after 3-4 weeks… just take a breath and say it again.

Nothing good comes from holding onto anger. I absolutely hate leaving the house when either of us are angry. In lieu of what happened this weekend with Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and all those other passengers, I really felt the need to start letting things go. I cannot even imagine what his wife is going through, or any of the spouses that lost not only their significant other, but their children, too. Life is too short. You never know how many birthdays you will be able to celebrate, or how many anniversaries. No fight is worth risking the chance of it being the last time that you are able to tell someone how much you appreciate them for all that they do or for how much they’ve changed your life.