From a very young age we are sold the dream that having a child is your ‘happily ever after’. But the reality of becoming parents puts a strain on any relationship.
Don’t get me wrong, in the first few weeks you both have a lovely dose of oxytocin, creating the ‘honeymoon’ stage. You both wake for feeds and you’ll both offer to do nappies and cuddles. This excitement is reminiscent of first days of school, new jobs and new relationships. But with paternity leave finishing, all perfect things must have a dose of reality. Like in any new relationship the time has come for one of you to inevitably break wind.
However the visitors you get will be so much worse than accidental gas, these visitors will be hormones and sleep deprivation (and men, don’t feel left out, as helpful Mr testosterone is back on the rise). These new emotions will allow the overwhelming feeling of responsibility to sink in. “Oh my god, another human is completely reliant on me, and the only thing he can do for himself is breath”. Now these hormones have sent you into mother overdrive, you won’t eat, sleep, use a toilet or wash, unless there is time. You will also fluctuate between happy tears and sad tears, questioning your ability to be a responsible adult (I mean I still don’t understand tax codes).
On the other side your partner is back in work, this means they know what it’s like to eat in peace, have a quiet moment, maybe go to the gym and on occasion take a paid work poo (well this is how I imagine his life). He has informed me there are some problems working with a newborn, sone examples being almost falling asleep in meetings, struggling with problem solving and being photobombed by a baby and partner in pyjamas on teams. Unfortunately, employers are only accepting of this for so long.
This forces you to agree a ‘sensible’ plan of your new roles and how you can give your partner adequate rest (workdays only). Like the contract for a new job you will layout your new roles and responsibilities. This is to affirm your new roles as breadwinner and primary carer, but as you are in the agreeable and inexperienced stage, you will not get this right. This first plan will start the deterioration in communication, but not to worry this will not be an overnight event, but rather a slow quiet seething envy.
You will watch them sleep whilst you finish a feed and try to settle baby to sleep (for the 3rd time), you will wave as they leave for work, you will kiss them on the cheek as they disappear to the gym, you will watch them eat breakfast and you will smile whilst a settled baby sits on their lap. If you read this romantically, go back picturing your role played with the passion of Johnny (shining) or Hannibal lecter.
Now previously you would have addressed your envy as a reasonable adult. But you are sleep deprived, hormonal and overwhelmed, so it’s actually time to behave as a sassy, sarcastic child. I mean my partner always understands my angry hidden messages (sarcastic tone). So when I’m struggling to settle him overnight I’ll kick you, then I’ll fidget if you roll over to sleep again, I’ll hand you the baby every time you finish work, I’ll ask you “is that breakfast? It is important you look after yourself, the baby can wait,” and I’ll leave him crying next to you whilst I make a bottle. What could go wrong here? (Now I’m at a point I can look at some of this behaviour as childish and envious.) It led to the next stage…..
A Point scoring system. Both of you are exhausted and now passively aggressively make decisions with statements like, “well i did the last feed and nappy”, “I made dinner” and “I did the last cup of tea”. Your partner will tell friends how hard the night feed is (they will be referring to, either the midnight feed or being woken by the feeds), your brain will be screaming “yeah, imagine getting up for ALL those feeds”. But you will just smile as you are in public or…“accidentally” sell them out by declaring they sleep downstairs or you sit downstairs for the feeds. Primary carers will always be able to score more points, but it’s not a pretty win.
You are starting to recognise you are exhausted, you are lonely, you are envious and you don’t think you partner understands how you feel. This calls for one thing- night out with friends. You will justify leaving the baby by saying “I need a break” but, another thought will be “You’ll see how hard it is to look after a baby all day”. This sealed the fate of the inevitable “explosion argument”. This argument will start over something very petty, but will allow all the feelings of worry and envy to spill out, in a glory of verbal diahorrea. Unfortunately in our case, my partner had spent the entire day in the company of others and neglected to communicate this until my return. This made me angry, some may say unreasonably angry, but it boiled down to the simple facts, he hadn’t struggled, he hadn’t felt overwhelmed, he hadn’t been alone and he hasn’t needed me. This argument was not about who was right, but rather the need you both have to offload how overwhelming the responsibility of parenting is.
This didn’t end up one sided, I did have to listen to my partner, as he needed help too. His overwhelming responsibility was the financial burden of a family, the lack of rest after work and letting his son and me down by being tired.
Mine was giving up my job, feeling a change in identity, the constant responsibility of another human and your needs always coming last.
A lesson I already knew prior to a child was when communicating with a man – use clear, short sentences of exactly what you need. Despite this I expected my exhausted, stressed partner to be better at reading my mind since I had his child.
So lesson learnt –
1. make sure to make time to talk about how your feeling
2. ask for help
3. use direct requests of what you need from your partner.
This post was hard to write, as it’s honest and about a personal relationship. This means not everyday is social media perfect. We got through this because friends shared how overwhelming it was, no one said “I never felt like that”, “my partner never behaved like that” or “you are behaving unreasonably”. The fact is we all struggle.
Just because I’ve learnt the above, does not mean these feelings won’t rear an ugly head from time to time, but that’s because parenting isn’t a happy ending but rather the beginning of a tale.
Honestly surviving parenting 