"Go put yourself back to bed." he tells me kindly but firmly. I don't want to listen to him, but I don't really have much choice. I had just had a titanium rod re-implanted in my skull two days before and I was still fighting the effects of the anesthesia. The room was spinning in a most unpleasant way. I either needed to go lay down or fall down. But laying down meant leaving my youngest child, who was currently up in bed coughing and recovering from an asthma attack, in my husband's hands. The situation left me feeling very out of control, not a feeling I am comfortable with.
We were a couple for ten years before becoming parents. During that time period, we functioned very well as partners. It really was a give and take partnership. That pattern started to change naturally and subtly after the birth of our oldest child. My husband is a very deep sleeper. Only the pager going off, wakens him once he has fallen asleep. If anything besides the pager does wake him, it takes awhile for him to become coherent and functional. Because of this, and the fact that I was breast feeding and off on maternity leave, it just became easier from the start for me to get up with our son if he woke in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, my oldest was never a good sleeper. That meant that for the first couple of years, I was working full time and up a lot through the night with him. I resented my husband's full nights of sleep but felt it was my duty as a mother to get up with our son. That's what mom's do. Right?
As I have discussed in previous posts, my youngest son has had a way of changing everything in our lives. He ups the anti so to speak. Our oldest had just started sleeping better, more consistently through the night, when we had our youngest. He is a better sleeper than his older brother but has more serious health issues. I shifted gears from fighting off "dragons" in the middle of the night with the help of the brave and powerful stuffed Pooh bear and Ernie, to delivering medicine and breathing treatments throughout the night in four hour cycles. When my husband did attempt to help, did I encourage it? No. In retrospect, not at all. They were my babies. I was taking care of them. If he didn't know what to do without being told, he should just go back to bed and let me do it. I may not have verbally voiced it in this way but that was the message that I was sending. My resentment, frustration, and exhaustion were cementing a very unhealthy pattern. Did we talk about it? No. Did I attempt to change the pattern or ask for help? No. Because that's what mom's do. They take care of their children without complaining or asking for help. Right?
Wrong. Recently, my husband and I have discovered that we missed our old patterns of partnership that had existed before we had the boys. There weren't too many relationships that were stronger than ours back then. I would bet serious money on it. We came to realize that we missed working together as a team, whether it be on simple matters or on more serious issues. It has taken some serious soul searching on both our parts to identify where we went off track. We have had to make our relationship a priority, not just something that will be sitting on the back burner until the boys are older. Sometimes that means, I can't be the "Super Mom" image I thought I was supposed to be. Maybe I won't get all the special treats and goodies baked. Maybe I won't be the Mom who volunteers to help out for every activity, in addition to working full time. Maybe my son will go to his brother's soccer game in mismatched clothes because he dressed himself and I didn't feel like making him change. But won't my boys be better off with a happy Mom, who has a strong, healthy relationship with their happy Dad, rather than an angry, resentful Mom and half-invested Dad.
Learning to put the care of our boys in the hands of others, especially if they are sick, is difficult for me. That is something I am working on. It shouldn't be all that hard. My husband is an AMAZING father. He is totally devoted to our boys. If they grow up to be half the man that their father is, they will be wonderful, successful men. Developing the ability to step back and let him take the driver seat with their care will not only help his relationship with them, it will benefit ours as well. It is an exercise in trust.
The majority of marriages of parents of children with special needs end in divorce. With this in mind, how many of you are in similar situations? How many of you are resentful of your husbands involvement (or lack of involvement) with your children's daily care? How many of you, partly through your own choices, have orchestrated the lives you are unhappily living in? It's very difficult, and somewhat painful, to take a step back and identify that you are in part responsible for the situations that make you unhappy. But what can be gained by identifying these patterns today, and making the changes necessary to improve and strengthen your parental and spousal relationships? I pray that you read this not as a voyeur but as someone who is willing to openly examine the patterns and choices in his or her own life and determine what can be done to make changes for the better in your own life. We can testify that on the other side of this extremely uncomfortable life examination comes a closer relationship that is better able to weather the rough patches in life. Parenting and relationships are never easy, but it's the journey that makes them worthwhile.
* I should add the disclaimer that my husband named this particular piece. He is an officer in the fire service, hence the title "Sharing Command", as in multiple individuals sharing command of a fire/accident incident. - Didn't want anyone thinking I think I'm in "command". HAHA
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