I got married and had children young. Some may argue too young, but it is what it is. All of my friends are in their 40s and 50s. I have a sprinkling of friends in their late 30s. Most of my peers have babies, toddlers and very young children. I love to see their pictures and their musings on social media. I also see posts about how hard it is. Lack of sleep, the baby weight, how sometimes it generally sucks. The other day I was in the grocery store. I noticed this young couple with a toddler and a baby. They decided that grocery shopping would be a fun family outing for some reason. The toddler decided that he wanted to be in the dairy section, not the frozen section. The baby fussed as babies do. The mom was in athleisure wear and her hair in a messy ponytail.
She was annoyed at the dad who was there but not exactly taking charge of the situation. By the time they got to the checkout line, they were both irritated with each other and they definitely were not having a good time. I said a prayer for them on my way home. Having young children can take a major toll on a marriage. It is so incredibly difficult. I have so been there.
I often talk about how we don't tell the truth about the reality of motherhood and how difficult it is. I joke that I LOVE my kids but I hate being a mom. I'm not a fan of the WORK part of it. I stayed home with my children until my oldest was 4. We had very little help, we did not live around family for the first 3 years. My oldest was born on a Monday, we were discharged from the hospital on Wednesday and my husband went back to work on Thursday. I was 20 years old. My youngest was born at home on a Saturday and my husband went back to work on Monday.
When women become mothers, everything changes for us. Our bodies are stretched and unrecognizable to ourselves. By default, we are the primary care givers for our children. Whether we like it or not, our biology has designed it to be this way. We give up friends (or sometimes they give us up), careers, hobbies and often, romance. Not because we want to but because giving care to young children requires nearly 100 percent of your time and energy.
But the world for men doesn't seem to be affected very much. They carry on with their life like business as usual, or so it seems. There is a sense of unfairness about the whole thing. When you are a stay at home mother of young children - that is your job. Keeping the house and tending to the children. Your husband's job is getting up and going to work everyday and bringing home the bacon. Seems fair, right?
I remember waking up with my youngest at 4 am to breastfeed her for what felt like the 6th time that night, looking over at the clock and thinking about how tired I was and how my 2 year old would be up in less than 3 hours and how busy the day would be. I gazed over at my husband who was sleeping peacefully. He would get up and go to work. He'd drink coffee with his co-workers, he'd sit at his desk and do his work for 8 hours. Then, he would come home to dinner cooked by me and get to relax.
I hated him in that moment. My husband, the father of my children. I resented him. It wasn't just that though. He didn't help enough. I always had to nag him to help me clean up, the house could be a wreck, the children would be fussing and still he seemed unbothered by it all. Couldn't he see that I was struggling? He'd rile up the kids right before bed which used to make me so angry, he'd stop for food with co-workers after work when I needed a break and some relief. He'd try to touch me and I'd shy away because I was touched out.
He would come home from work and complain about how tired he was. How tired HE was. Ha! Was he up half the night, EVERY night with the baby? Was he planning outings with a 2 year old? Did he have to take a shit everyday with a baby on his lap while reading a book to the toddler? No. How dare he complain to ME?!?!?! It became this weird contest of who worked harder, who was more tired, who was the more attentive parent. When really, it was just that being a parent of young children is HARD. For everyone. We were making it harder by not working together.
Because MY life had changed so drastically and because I bore most of the responsibility for the children and the house, I had left my husband behind. So here I was at 22 with this baby and toddler and I could feel my marriage coming apart at the seams. I had a wake-up call and I decided that I was tired of bitching. I was tired of being angry and trying to change him. I decided that if he wasn't going to change, I was going to change MYSELF.
I stopped bitching at him. If he didn't want to help me, then that was on him. Not on me. I decided I was not going to be angry anymore. I spent more time and energy bitching at him than it took to me to just do the thing I was nagging him to do. I was in the kitchen one evening, cooking dinner. The baby was on my back, my oldest was playing with blocks in the living room and my husband was playing a video game. I asked him to take out the trash. "Okay," he said.
Then, he never got up and did it. Typical. So, I just took out the trash myself. I didn't berate him about him. I wasn't angry about it. I bundled the trash up and took it out. He looked up at me as I was leaving the house, "What are you doing? I told you I would take out the trash."
"Well, you never got around to it, so I have time now. No big deal," I said.
When he wanted to wrestle and rile up my 2 year old before bed, I didn't snap at him. I read her 3 books and laid down with her after. "Why'd she take so long to get to bed?" he asked. "She was just a little excited to play with you, it's all good."
When he offered to take the kids for a few hours on a Sunday morning while I slept, I didn't bitch when I got out of bed and saw that the baby was still in pajamas and there were Cheerios all over the floor. "Thanks for letting me sleep," I said.
Then, something happened. Once I stopped being an actual bitch and emasculating my husband every day, he stepped the hell up. When I asked him to take out the trash for me, he just did it. He stopped rough housing with the kids before bed and did when he got home while I cooked dinner. He took the kids more often. He would even offer to hang with them while I went shopping or had a coffee and read magazines. He stopped going out with co-workers after work. I was happier and more rested. When he touched me, I welcomed it. He became the husband and father I had always imagined he would be. We became a team and life was so much easier after that.
That's when I realized that when I became a mother, I left my husband behind. I was so wrapped up in how difficult it was and how much MY life changed that I did not acknowledge how much his life has changed. I became a stranger to him. My focus was entirely on the children and I know he resented that. He missed me, the girl he had fallen in love with. He was working so hard to support our family and the stress of being the sole bread winner was hard for him. When he tried to help with the children, I would correct him and it really made him feel like a bad father. I didn't realize that he riled up the children before bed because he only got to be with them 2 hours a day and it was a special time for him. He missed them, he felt that is was unfair that I had a bond with them that he didn't have. He wasn't trying to make my life harder. He wanted to help me but didn't know HOW.
I decided that I would be a wife first. That doesn't mean that I feel like my husband is more important than my children but it does mean that I make him a priority in my life. Because I do this, he reciprocates. He is an amazing father. As the children have gotten older, it is easier. That is one of the reasons why we only have 2 children. We struggled so much in those early years that we decided that our marriage could not survive any more children.
We pull no punches about this with our children. They know that our marriage comes first. We are insanely involved, we rarely leave them to go out, we are GOOD parents but out marriage is a priority. Sometimes they will come to me about something that their father did that they disagree with-a punishment that is too punitive, an event they want to go to, ect. I am the more laid back parent and he is more strict and so sometimes we can have some differences. "I'll talk to him but if he says "no", the answer is "no"." They protest, "But, MOM!" I remind them, "You will leave me but he will still be here with me when you go off to live your own life. I must be on good terms with him." Usually, I can come up with a comprise that works with all parties. I'm the mediator of the household.
When we see couples with young kids, we laugh and look and each other and think, "How did we even survive it?" It was insanely difficult. Having older kids is hard and stressful but I'll take teenagers over toddlers any day of the week.
Last week, I was in the car with my 14 year old, driving her to school. We were chatting as usual. "I have to tell you something that happened last night that was very disturbing," she said.
My interest was piqued. "What is it?"
"Well," she continued, "I was in your bathroom looking for something and I saw a bottle in your bottom drawer and I thought it was fancy face wash. Well, I picked it up and I saw it was butterscotch flavored heating lotion. I threw it and screamed."
"Sounds like maybe you shouldn't be digging around in my bathroom," I said.
"MOM. That is so gross. Why do you have that?!?!" she said accusatory.
I laughed, "I mean, I feel like you are old enough to know why."
She make a puke sound, "You need to get rid of it. You are a mother."
"I am a WIFE," I reminded her. "Why did you have to tell about it? Why didn't you just shut the drawer and pretend like you never saw it."
"I wanted you to know and to feel bad about it," she said, joking.
"Feel bad about living my best life? Not a chance," I laughed.
"I literally hate you," she said.
"You LOVE me," I said.
We listened to music for a moment and I looked at her and said, "You know there are much worse things in life. I kind of think you are lucky that your parents still like each other."
She nodded, "I am." She knows.
If you have young kids, and you are tired, and you feel like life is unfair, and your marriage is circling the toilet - take a step back, re-evaluate and know that this is normal. Transitioning into parenthood is extremely difficult and takes YEARS. Heck, my kids are almost raised and many times I feel like I am still transitioning. It is easier to get through it with a partner than it is an enemy. It's not too late to try again. Hold on to hope that is gets easier. Maybe not today or tomorrow but take a deep breath and tell yourself that "this too shall pass." Because it will.
