NOTE: Please note that this blog post was written in February 2020. Ben has since then spoken to multiple counselors, and he’s now found a good fit. He’s recovering slowly from a deep depressive episode. Since Alaya has been born, there has been a lot of ups and downs in his mood, and there’s also been a lot of ups and downs in how I view my marriage. The following blog is about a time when we were both feeling down, but I wanted to share it because marriage is hard. However, we’ve not given up on each other. I hope when you read this you won’t think badly of me for my honest expression of my angry feelings or of Ben for not getting out of bed that morning.
February 12, 2020
One day Ben said to me, “I just keep oscillating between hope and despair,” and it stuck with me. It would be one of the echoing phrases of the weeks and months to come.
Ben and I have a deal. He will get Alaya wiped down and changed in the morning. Being so little (6 months), and at the moment, not very mobile, she doesn’t get very dirty. So, it’s recommended to give her a bath once or twice a week. We do it once mostly because we only have time on the weekends now that we’re both working again, and it wouldn’t make sense to do it on Saturday and Sunday.
Suddenly, the coronavirus has captured the world’s attention and given us an extended “vacation.” This means we fell out of the routine a bit, and I, for instance, would get up with Alaya some mornings, and Ben would on other mornings. However, I started to realize that when Ben gets up with Alaya in the morning, it gives me about 30 – 45 minutes of time where I can sleep, without an infant’s every movement waking me up. Those 30 – 45 minutes of sleep felt sometimes more rejuvenating than hours next to Alaya. I began to value it as a necessity. After all, it was the only time that I was neither working, taking care of Alaya, or doing household chores. I needed a half hour to one-hour break once a day, and that rest helped me start the day better, which had a positive impact on my physical and mental well-being.
However, the blurring of the responsibility lines went off track this morning.
Sometimes, though fortunately not very often, Alaya wakes up at 5:00am in the morning. I deeply dislike those mornings as I’m really not a morning person. But what can I do? If she’s awake, I have to get up, and I do. Occasionally she wakes up at 6:00am, which is better though still not desirable. Fortunately, she mostly gets up around 7am or later. This is probably because she’s realized both of her parents are night owls, and she’s a gentle baby. For the first 6 months of Alaya’s life, I have gotten up with her at all manner of the night. So, when she sleeps “through the night” (waking only to nurse 3-4 times) until 7:00am or later, I am extremely grateful. If she sleeps until 8:00am, I am overjoyed. Ecstatic. If she sleeps until 8:30am, well I’m not sure I have words to describe that kind of marvelous wonder.
So, this morning when Alaya awakened at 7:55am, I was very happy. I was even happier when Ben promptly put on his house clothes and got out of bed. He went to the bathroom as he normally does in the morning, and then he came back in the room, I presumed, for Alaya. As he walked toward the bed, he began taking his lounge pants back off, and I ask, “Are you going back to bed?”
He says, “Yeah,” and continues to disrobe.
At this, I thought, well, it’s his job to get her ready in the morning, so if he wants to try and sleep while she fusses about, then that’s his choice. I know I can’t sleep while she does that, so I’m going to sleep in the guest bedroom. But the problem with that is Alaya has eczema. Once she’s awake in the morning, she will start to scratch her face because we’ve not put anything on it all night. So, I say to Ben, “Can you get her gloves, please?”
Ben goes and gets the gloves for her, and then he puts it on the bed next to her. It strikes me that he doesn’t put them on. He expects me to do it. In the same way he’s going back to sleep, expecting me to get up with her. So, I put on the gloves because while I don’t feel it should only be my responsibility to care for our daughter, I’m not going to leave her to scratch up her face to prove some point. I then get out of bed. Upon getting out of bed, I realize I’m not that tired and decide instead to pump. I pump breastmilk every morning in order to build up my stash for work, or any potential reason I may be away from Alaya or unable to breastfeed her. Especially with the coronavirus situation, I had in my head that I needed to have 2 weeks’ worth of breastmilk stashed in case I somehow ended up needing to be quarantined.
However, while I had washed my breast pump parts the day before, I had forgotten to sterilize them. So, I go about the process of sterilizing the pump parts (just boiling them in water for a few minutes). As I do this I hear Alaya making noise, and I know that Ben is not going to get up with her. She’s also been in the same diaper for a while, so I think to myself, I’m just going to change her diaper. Ben can still do the wipe down and clothes change. I wasn’t going to let my daughter sit in a wet diaper just to prove a point.
When I went back in the room to pick Alaya up, I realized that her clothes were wet, really wet. I, of course, wasn’t going to leave my daughter in wet clothing just to prove a point. So, I did the wipe down, changed her diaper, and dressed her in new clothes.
At this time, Alaya was going through her fifth developmental leap. And for reasons I don’t understand, this leap came with the her hating to be changed, both her clothes and diaper. So, I was ready to put up with a crying or screaming fest, but there was nothing to be done about it. As I went through the process, my mind brooded, and I think Alaya could sense my irritation and concern because she didn’t fuss much at all throughout the process. It was like she knew Mommy was already handling so much, she didn’t want to add any additional burden.
I had so many questions going through my mind:
How could Ben go back to sleep under these conditions? Did he not realize that Alaya could not take care of herself? Did he not realize she needed someone to put the lotion on her eczema, someone to change her diaper, someone to wipe her down, and so on?
Is this because he’s really tired? Is this the depression? Am I just making excuses for him? Is it that Ben’s going through paternal postnatal depression, or that he’s always only had to take care of himself?
I used to think that there were two types of relationships. One where both parties loved each other fairly equally, and relationships where one party loved the other more. I always thought that I just loved Ben more than he loved me. I was okay with this because I knew that this marriage, this family was what I wanted. But was it that I loved Ben more or that I was more capable of love?
When I was 16-years-old and first started helping my brother take care of my niece, I remember I wasn’t very good at waking up in the middle of the night. In fact, I remember clearly one night having the brilliant idea of putting the baby monitor in my (the guest) bedroom so I could hear my niece Tiana wake up, without my brother and sister-in-law having to get up. However, even with the baby monitor on full blast in my room, I still didn’t hear her cry. I was awakened by an irritated brother and a tearful niece. Why had I moved the baby monitor?! That summer, I learned slowly, over the course of about two months how to take care of 1-year-old. I saw how completely dependent she was on others. I realized that any mistake I made could cause her harm. I learned responsibility from that experience that Ben had never had the chance to learn. Growing up the only son away from any cousins didn’t give Ben the chance to watch other people being taken care of, and he probably had little opportunity to make sacrifices for others.
I can remember clearly, for instance, the time I asked for a soda when I was 8-years-old, and the response was yes, I could share one with my 4-year-old cousin. I thought this extremely unfair at the time. I was, after all, twice my cousin’s age (practically an adult). Why did I have to split my soda with him, and equally? I could also think of the meals where I wanted more chicken, but I was admonished to consider the needs of others as well. Both Ben and I grew up with very little, but the difference was that I was encouraged to think of others before myself. I’m not saying I did this particularly well, and my brothers will, without being asked, attest to how much more I was given than them as the youngest and female of the family. However, Ben’s parents have always given the best of everything they had to Ben. Being considerate of them was always an option, not a requirement.
Ben’s parents are currently moving all the things they have in the apartment we rented for them in Kunshan over to our place before we head to Durham. Ben told me last night that he feels guilty about this because they are in their 60’s, so he should be helping them move things. I said to him, “That’s a good point. Let’s make it a priority to help them move things then. We can make time for this.” But we didn’t. I honestly can’t do much more with taking care of Alaya, the travel, the apartment, and trying to squeeze more work in. Also, as the person who spends the most and closest time to Alaya, I really try to limit my time outside during the epidemic. I also feel confident Ben’s parents wouldn’t let me. Now I know that Ben will use his job as an excuse, but it is an excuse from my perspective. I know that if he told his superiors that he needs to focus on getting his home together for the move to Duke, they would encourage him to take the time necessary to get into a mindset and physical setting where he can work without stressing. I know for a fact that the stress he feels from work is self-inflicted (or the depression?) because he now works from home. He has meetings at home. I know what the message is from his bosses. I know how much work he does and doesn’t get done. It is easy to talk about the guilt he feels about not helping (making himself look like a good son, a good person), while still leaving it all up to his parents to move the stuff.
But back to this morning. We’ve agreed that it’s his responsibility to get up with Alaya. I don’t mean in the middle of the night. Just the morning. Except for the first 2.5 weeks of Alaya’s life when Ben had his paternal leave, Ben has not had to get up with her in the middle of the night. I always get up. He just has to wipe her down when she gets up in the morning. It’s his responsibility, but he’ll complain of lack of sleep or simply just lay in bed hoping I’ll take care of it. And if I leave her with him, giving him no choice but to get up, he’ll become irritable because he doesn’t like being “forced” to do things. The irony is, every morning he doesn’t get up with her, he’s not leaving me any choices either. Sometimes I get up with her because I can live better with guilty Ben than “put upon” Ben. It’s easier to live with the Ben who feels bad for failing to get up in the morning, leaving the care of Alaya entirely to me, than the Ben who gets irritable because I am holding him to his responsibilities.
But I can’t keep doing this. I just can’t. When he doesn’t get up in the morning with Alaya, as we’ve discussed, as we’ve agreed, I feel so alone and so desperate and so afraid. And it makes me think, I want more children, but not with Ben. Not with this Ben. I can’t handle taking care of three children. I don’t deserve this. I deserve a partner. No matter what Ben remembers of our fertility journey, I didn’t force him into fatherhood. He knew exactly what was going on, and he was a willing participant in the process. Sometimes, he behaves as if I cut a whole in a condom or something, and I’m now requiring him to take care of a child he never wanted.
Other times I think, this is why I’ll never live with Ben’s parents or have them involved full-time in Alaya’s care. I will not have their “love” for her turn her into a selfish, inconsiderate human who only complains about not doing more for others. I will not allow them to so pamper her, to so block her from every suffering, that she begins to feel put upon when things get hard. Because I think that’s what it comes down to. Ben’s whole life, including our marriage, has always been a situation where he could choose to simply not get out of bed, not finish that PhD, quit his job, not have an income for over a year, and all of that because he’s had the unconditional support of his parents and me.
Who would Ben be if he didn’t have his parents to fall back on? Who would Ben be if he didn’t have me to rely on? Who would Ben be if he had to pay rent? Is there a way to find that out without getting divorced or separating? Is there a way for him to see and appreciate what he has without losing it all?
Is this depression? Is this a quarter-life crisis? Am I just using these terms to make excuses for all that’s wrong in my marriage? Do I love Ben more than he loves me, or am I more capable of love in general? I see now why so many marriages have troubles during that first year of a baby’s life. Will we survive this year? Sometimes I think so. Sometimes I don’t.
I oscillate between hope and despair.
May 31, 2020
So much has happened since Alaya has been born. Ben has been diagnosed with depression, so I at least have an answer to whether or not it’s just him. We’ve also both agreed that he hasn’t had much opportunity to care for other people. He admits that he even finds it annoying when I get sick because he then has to take care of me. He does it, but begrudgingly. In response, I told him that kindness is giving when you don’t want to; it’s showing up even when you want to stay in bed. At least, that’s how I define it. When you give someone something that you don’t want or need anyway, that’s not kindness. That’s just humane, and not giving it, inhumane. Again, this is just my sense of right and wrong. When he gets up with Alaya, changes her diaper, holds her, reads to her, and plays with her even though he would rather be crossing something else off his work to-do list, that for me is kindness. For me, that is love.
Since getting the professional help he needed, Ben’s been able to bond with Alaya. Now, I don’t have to make him promise to do things for her like I used to. For instance, instead of hoping I’ll deal with it when he hears her cry, he’ll get up and see what’s wrong. Sometimes I’ll say to Alaya, “Alright, let’s go change your diaper,” and I’ll still feel a jolt of surprise when Ben stops what he’s doing to come and help me. Having spent the first few months of Alaya’s life feeling like a single-mom with overbearing in-laws, it’s nice to start feeling like a normal family.
Ben still thinks he would have been okay never having children, and he’s also comfortable admitting that family isn’t his number one priority. He’s trying, though, and I am too. I’m still working on accepting my husband for who he is and not who I’d like him to be or who I thought he was.
**The featured image was taken on Ben’s first Father’s Day, and I have to say that I’m so proud of the father he’s become, and I’m overjoyed by the relationship he’s built with Alaya.
Final note: Mom life means less time for writing, but I will aim to put up one post a month between the 25th and 30th. Thanks for reading.
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