I don't get here very often - can't with trying to work 15 hours plus my full-time baby and housekeeping gig. Before last week it had been more than a month since I lurked and certainly a few months since I posted.
I'm glad someone's asking questions because I am too stretched thin to come up with them on my own! So, from H2H:
what are those ever-mounting odds? What are the things you think S. believes are true about you that may not be the case? Or things you could do something about to help the state of things? Where are you in the 5LL's, filling up the love tank? What do you need to see or hear to be able to believe things are moving in the right direction? What are YOUR goals for you, and for baby sweetness?
The story we both stick to is that we're both miserable, starved for attention and affection, and "we just don't understand each other." Wow, what an understatement. The more I live with S., the more I realize that he and I speak such different languages as to not even be able to characterize them as, say, Mandarin vs. Spanish, but more like screeching eel vs. Pig Latin. We are not two people who speak different languaes, like people from Mars and Venus, but two different animals entirely. EVEN knowing this, even stretching to each other's phylum to try and learn the other's ways of the world, we continue to misunderstand each other so completely, so absolutely, that if it weren't so frustrating it could be comical (like, say, if you were stranded underneath a faucet dripping water on your cheek and there was a 5-second loop of Sam Kinison at top volume next to your ear, you might laugh, right? No? Well, that's about how funny it is).
We're beyond "doing" anything. We're just trying to get by. And for the most part, we're getting along as roommates who pass a baby back and forth between us. S. works until 8:30-9 and barely if at all sees the baby before she goes to bed. He gets up with her at 7 so I can sleep (because I don't sleep much during the night), and by the time I wake up to nurse her down for her morning nap, emerging around 10, he is getting ready for work and leaves at 11:30. So we see very little of each other during the week. Weekends he is so driven to get "stuff" done that he insists we make a little schedule for who is "responsible for" the baby, and we take turns keeping her while the other goes about business. We hardly ever do anything as a family.
Hearing S. loud and clear that he is "starved" for affection, and knowing from my own starved state how it feels, I've been trying to hug and kiss when I can, snuggle up in bed, and give a squeeze or hug when he is successful in getting the baby down to sleep. Today I removed his laptop and climbed into his lap, which he seemed to enjoy, and kissed his neck while I flirted gently with him. That turned into nothing as we argued about dinner and had a power struggle over the baby and how to get her down to sleep.
Good points: I can see S. working hard to "do" for the family, like going to the grocery store with the baby early mornings while i sleep, taking the baby in the mornings so I'm not exhausted from not sleeping all night, and attempting to make time for me to get things done for myself on weekends. I can see S. doing things for me (ever so occasionally), like making my coffee once to bring to me in bed (he doesn't drink coffee so a little bigger deal than it seems), or buying my favorite snack or whatever at the store when it wasn't on the grocery list.
What am I doing? I am making dinner every night, doing dishes constantly, making sure S. has enough breast milk at night to feed the baby a bottle so that he can have the bonding experience even though pumping is time consuming, getting his favorite whatever at the store when it's not on the list, occasionally making lunch for him to take to work, engaging him in conversation about his work-related interests (news, stocks) when he gets home from work, and watching movies with him even when I'm exhausted and want to go to bed.
LL: The movies are my QT with him (he loves that) and if I can manage to croak out WOA I do, even when I'm feeling like I do everything and get no appreciation for being a great mommy AND staying on top of the housework, not to mention all the reading I do about baby this and that (development, vaccines, etc.) and keeping the baby in clean clothes that fit.
So there's where we are. We have managed recently to have decent R talks (first since before the baby was born) and not gotten totally defensive. I credit my own detachment and next-to-hopelessness for the future of our R. It makes me able to talk with little emotion about what is happening. Sometimes, I get really emotional and dramatic (with myself), hating this life with him and wanting to leave. But I know I won't because of the baby at the moment, and I hang in there, wondering how it could possibly get better when we don't seem to be able to break out of the walled-in hell we're in.
BUT, we're both crazy about the baby and S. is a great dad. And the baby is happy and a joy to be with every minute of the day. And did I mention beautiful? She's a doll.
She's a doll.
