The other morning my hubby got to witness what happens to me when I hear our daughter cry. He watched how quickly and immediately I woke up at the sound of her cries and it amazed him because I am the woman that can sleep through the blaring of my alarm. I can’t count the number of times my hubby has turned off my phone because the alarm is doing nothing to wake me. But the second I hear our daughter, I am up and out of bed. Th is of course is not how my hubby wakes up to the cries from our daughter, he has a more relaxed pace about it. He will check the monitor to see if she is trying to resettle and if she is, lay back down, waiting for her next cry to check again. And only when he is sure that she is really awake will he get up, use the bathroom, go start warming her bottle, and then get her from her crib. I have to be honest, this routine drove me crazy and still does on occasion.
It makes me crazy for a couple of reasons but the main one being that my hubby doesn’t have the sense of urgency to get our daughter like I do. He doesn’t have a voice screaming at him that the baby needs his attention immediately; that there is no time to stop and pee; let alone start pre warming the bottle because your baby needs you NOW! My hubby has not been blessed with this reaction within his brain, like I have as Allie’s momma.
This is just one of the many ways becoming parents has looked different between my hubby and myself. Early in this journey I would compare all the ways becoming a parent had impacted my life in irreversible ways and not my hubby’s. He didn’t have stretch marks or carpale tunnel. He didn’t feel like he is an alien within his own body and like a walking utter. He didn’t have to worry about whether what he was eating was supporting breast milk production. He wasn’t having to deal with an infant while having a period. Nope, his life is just perfect and he even got to leave the house every day and interact with other humans that weren’t newborns. How unbelievably unfair it all felt to me and I would sit on these feelings and just marinate in them. By the time my hubby would come home I would be annoyed, irritated, touched out, and all of it would
be his fault because his life was perfect. Which of course was the farthest thing from the truth. In becoming a dad my husband saw his family as our direct unit of three. Felt this new weight on his shoulders at having to provide for someone who couldn’t provide for themselves. He had uncharted waters to navigate with me, going through postpartum and never knowing what version of his wife he was coming home to. Learning a whole new form of communication because our lives were no longer driven by us but by our newborn baby who had needs that were non-negotiable. Then we honored the call for me to stay home and raise our baby, though doing so put us in a financial deficit, and that weighs on him in a way that I’ll never be able to understand because I don’t feel the same pressure he does in being the provider for our family. He also didn’t get the benefits that I did with having Allie grow within me and the changes that happen on a hormonal, chemical level that help moms do what they do.
How we became parents looked so different and it wasn’t fair for me to minimize what he was going through in his journey of becoming a parent. It also wasn’t helpful to our marriage or being partners in parenting. It is hard to be supportive, loving, and caring when you feel like an injustice has been done wrongfully against you. I love my husband and he is an amazing father to our baby girl, husband to me, and even better friend to me. And though my changes were more apparent in becoming a mom, comparing our journeys didn’t produce any good fruits. I need my hubby’s support, encouragement, connection, and love to survey this rocky journey in being a momma. The same way my hubby needs my support, encouragement, connection, and love. So though it can be so easy and even more tempting to compare how much harder it has been for you in becoming a momma, it won’t produce fruit that will make the journey you are both going through any easier. And as hard as it might be and will probably feel like one more thing on your dang checklist, ask your hubby how he is handling the transition to becoming a parent. Hearing my hubby’s struggles and what he was going through, really helped me to fight the temptation to compare our journeys. A journey we were on together but looked drastically different. Being different doesn’t mean that one has it harder or better than the other, it just is different.
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This hit me square in the face… oh boy did I need this reality check… I think you’re right it’s so easy to focus on our own journey and we can forget that we wouldn’t be where we are without our husbands 😅 Thank you Morgan. I need to go apologize to my Hubby ♥️
You are so right it is different for our partners. Learning from each other is so important, and finding that middle ground helps us grow. That is why God put you together with your hubby.