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Welcome to familywisdom.com, a website dedicated to informing and inspiring couples and families. Each week you will find a new article, story or essay about parenting, marriage or life. Suggestions for articles and questions to Ellen Terich are welcome. You can contact her at e.terich1@verizon.net |
NEW PARENT WOES 2003-08-01 After a few months of morning sickness followed by five months of "glowing" you experience some mild contractions and start looking for the bag you packed to take to the hospital. The day has finally arrived. You call the doctor who tells you there's no rush and so you walk into the nursery you have carefully prepared, sit down in the perfect rocking chair - a present from your in-laws - and spend a few minutes daydreaming about motherhood. You imagine being in the delivery room, hearing the first perfect cries of the world's most perfect infant, your husband at your side, tears in his eyes, thanking you and telling you how much he loves you. You visualize putting the perfect little going home outfit on the perfect baby and securely strapping him/her into the perfect car seat - a gift from your parents. You fantasize yourself at home, basking in a sort of magical maternal warmth, your husband basking with you, ready to bring you whatever you need (he's taking his vacation time to stay home and help) as you spend the next week or two recovering from childbirth. You're sure your perfect baby will sleep for four to six hours at a time, rarely cry and be easily soothed. You will change diapers effortlessly and your supportive husband will share that task with you. Poopy diapers won't scare him off - he's a liberated man! Together you will look adoringly at your baby and then adoringly at each other, secure in the knowledge that this child will only bring more happiness and joy to your already perfect marriage. The contractions get stronger and you call your husband at work. He comes home and whisks you away to the hospital and your fantasy begins to become a reality. You do indeed give birth to the perfect infant and your husband is loving and attentive. Everything is perfect. That is, until you've been home a few days. You know what all your friends warned you about at your baby shower but still you are surprised by the emotionality, the painful stitches, the fatigue, the difficulty figuring out the whole breast feeding thing and your complete lack of a maternal instinct that can tell a hungry cry from a wet diaper cry. Your body is still recovering from nine long months of pregnancy and twelve hours of labor and childbirth. You still look fat. The perfect baby cries endlessly, and sometimes you do, too, as tsunamis of emotion and insecurity wash over you. And your husband is distant. Literally. You look around for him one afternoon and he's nowhere to be found. You hear the car pull up 40 minutes later and he's coming home from the hardware store with a pile of lumber for a project he's decided to tackle. Remember how you always wanted him to build shelves in the garage? Well now that he has a couple of weeks off he's going to do it. He was sure you would be pleased. He's sorry he forgot to tell you he was leaving, but he was just so excited about the project. You don't tell him how disappointed you are that he doesn't understand what you need from him right now. He's supposed to be helping you and sharing this time with you and the baby, not starting some dumb project that he should have started months ago. (Why didn't he listen to you then?) But you don't tell him because it sounds petty and selfish and you know he means well even if he doesn't always listen. And, to be fair, you haven't explicitly said you wanted him to be with you. You just expected him to know that. There are other times you get frustrated, like when he stays late at work or spends time clipping hedges outside when all you want is for him to be in the house helping you with the baby. When you express your frustration, he gets defensive. He says you're being irrational and he doesn't know why you don't appreciate him. Suddenly, the fantasy starts to unravel. Your life is not the same, your marriage is not the same, your husband is not the same. You alternate between suffering silently with hurt feelings or expressing your dissatisfaction. Sometimes you blow up. This isn't how it's supposed to be. What happened? What happened is simply this: new father and new mother are both feeling overwhelmed with new responsibilities and deprived of support and attention, and each is responding differently. A women feels overwhelmed by the amount of physical and emotional work required of her as a new mother. She is still healing from childbirth, her body trying to recover from nine long months of pregnancy, her emotional stability attacked by fluctuating hormone levels, as she tries to learn the skills of mothering for the first time. The one person she thinks she can turn to for support, understanding and rescuing (he is the knight in shining armor, after all) is her husband. He probably won't admit it and may not even recognize, but he is also feeling overwhelmed and deprived. He is a father now and he's not sure of all that fatherhood entails. He does know it means a new mouth to feed. He wonders if he needs a better job. He knows the relationship with his wife is different too. He no longer has her full attention. There is less hugging and kissing, less eye contact, fewer loving conversations, fewer conversations period. He'd really like his wife back but since she usually took the lead with their relationship, he's at a loss. He doesn't know how to fix her; he doesn't know how to get the old marriage back; he knows less about babies than she does. So, he gets busy doing what he does know how to do: things like woodwork, yard work, his career, a room addition, finding a new house, etc. These are the contributions he can make. They take away his feelings of inadequacy and his fears about fatherhood, and they distract him from those nagging feelings associated with the loss of his wife's attention and affection. As a result, the new mother feels even more deprived. She wants her husband to be with her and the baby, not off building something. Unfortunately, she expects him to know this and often isn't direct in telling him what she wants. And then, feeling deprived, overwhelmed, and hormonally unhinged she resorts to the very things that drive him away. She complains, nags, pouts, or yells. Her feelings may be justified, but the expectation that her husband read her mind isn't. Likewise, his silent retreat to the garage, the office or the home improvement store doesn't help. The simple solution to all of this is to talk about it - daily. Not the dreaded "we need to discuss our relationship" kind of talk, but a simple five or ten uninterrupted minutes a day when each partner can give the other a little attention and encouragement and ask for the things he or she needs and wants. She can say she appreciates everything he's doing for the family, the finances and the house and yet she would like him to slow down on the projects enough to do the dishes each night, or take care of the baby while she gets a nap on Saturday or come home a little earlier a few nights a week. He could tell her he thinks she's a terrific mother and yet he misses time with just her. He might offer to hire someone they trust to babysit so that they can get out of the house and enjoy some time alone. The important thing is to check in with each other daily, no matter how frantic things get, so that little hurts and disappointments don't grow and feelings of deprivation don't turn into huge resentments. The experience of being a parent teaches both men and women that there is no such thing as a perfect baby, a perfect mother or a perfect father. There is also no such thing as a perfect marriage - only an ongoing commitment to love, understand, and be patient with each other. |