I recently attended a parenting group session hosted by Naomi Stalden. You know, the one who writes those thought-provoking books based on her conversations with new mothers at weekly support groups that she has been running for the past twenty years.
My overall impression of Naomi was that she is really interested in hearing about mothers’ feelings. Even after all these years of running these groups, you could tell that this shit really and truly fascinates her. Pretty amazing considering she must have heard the same stuff over and over again. I mean, I’ve only been doing the mum thing for seventeen months and in that 1.5 hour long session alone I can’t count the number of times that I had to check that I didn’t audibly yawn at some of the topics of conversation.
A lot of these mothers had very young babies. Their first babies. And I’m not there right now. Not anymore. I don’t want to talk about feeding routines, or about how your mum disagrees with your attachment parenting philosophy, whether you should try BLW, or if you should go with your original plan to put your child in a nursery or cough up the extra money and hire a nanny like most of your friends. (The session was held in a very affluent part of London, I should have been prepared for this sort of dilemma that would make me feel completely alienated).
Then there was the woman who said that being a mother has changed her relationships with her friends that have children, made her closer, realising that she had been selfish and unaccommodating without recognising her friends’ needs as parents. My spirits sank with that comment and it set me off once more to thinking about being on the flip side of that coin. Naomi then asked to hear from anyone who might have been the first or only one of their friends to have children, which led to one of my only contributions to the conversation.
I had mixed feelings about my afternoon. My emotions ranged from boredom, alienation, and plain ol’ sadness all in the space of an hour and a half. I had gone to the group with the hopes of being put in touch with parents of breastfeeding, night-waking toddlers. (I think I will have better luck at the regular group, as this one was opened up to a wider audience that happened to be mainly mums with teeny babies). However, there were a couple of moments that really piqued my interest. Namely, a discussion about the emotional transition that takes place when having a second child, and some comments about the dynamics of a parenting partnership. I noted down the following comments concerning how some of the mothers’ felt about the father’s involvement in caring for their child:
‘When I go out and leave the baby with his dad, I always get the feeling that he feels he is just holding the fort until I get back. I delegate, and he does what I say, he doesn’t do things with/for our son off his own initiative.’
‘When packing to go away, it’s me that will remember certain things, like his favourite sippy cup, or a particular book he likes that week. I wouldn’t expect my husband to know these things.’
‘There is a big difference between support and permitting something to happen. I want my husband to support my wish to not sleep-train, meaning we take it in turns to go into the baby at night, rather than him sitting back and letting me get on with it.’
I can really identify with all of these comments. I have been there. But I had to smile as I listened, as it made me realise that we are not there anymore. In fact, we couldn’t be further from these situations right now. Maybe it’s because Arlo is at the latter end of the baby stage, and the shift in his emotional needs and the less he needs to be physically attached to me (feeding) has made more room for Sam to step in. I’m sure that comes into it to some degree. Whatever the reasons, it is a really good place to be.
Sam is totally involved with all things Arlo. He knows his routines and whatever particular quirk he has that week. He knows the tricks to get him to eat, how to deal with his tantrums, the things that are likely to set him off and the things that will calm him down. If he sees that Arlo is tired, he will pick him up and take him off to bed without any need for discussion with me. He goes into Arlo every other time during the night. He supports my way of parenting Arlo at night-time, not without occasional disagreement, but he still gets up and does it. These days Sam’s intuition can even take over mine, there have been a few occasions where Sam has been the first to know what to do.
He knows all of Arlo’s favourite toys, food, everything. I would happily let him pack Arlo’s overnight bag, and I frequently leave Arlo with Sam for a full day, confident that he will put 100% into parenting Arlo, in the same way that he does when I am present. I’ve been going out a lot recently, with absolutely no worries that I will be at all missed at home. I am really enjoying this recent sense of freedom and certainly making the most of it while I can. I am so pleased that we have seen through those thoughts being experienced by the mothers I met with last week, that we seem to have come through the other side.
In order to prevent this post from coming across as me bragging about how great my other half his and how perfectly we’ve adjusted to becoming a family, I would like to state that our relationship is most definitely not without its arguments. We have had some very fierce night-time rows, there has been resentment on my part over quality of sleep and the weight of responsibility I once felt as a breastfeeding mother. Things have been broken, doors have been slammed, tears have been shed. Instead of taking our frustrations out on Arlo during the middle of the night, guess who we take it out on?
One aspect of the chronic exhaustion that comes with a child who wakes frequently in the night is an increased need to try really, really hard to keep your cool with your partner and work through it as a team. And when that doesn’t happen, you can always work it out with long-winded text message conversations in the light of day when your head is clear and things don’t seem as bad as they were at 4am.
Sam is completely wonderful at looking after Arlo. But this doesn’t make him a martyr, or mean that he has super-special parenting powers. The feminist in me would like to clarify that I think this is just the way it should be. The fact that he can care for Arlo extremely well is hardly groundbreaking. Sam’s word on the matter (he reads a draft of any post about him before I publish, as per our agreement) is that he would feel patronised if I thought he couldn’t care for Arlo as competently as me, especially if my reason was to do with gender.
The special bit is not that Sam is a great carer, but that he is a brilliant dad, and he has developed a very close relationship with his son. That’s the bit that makes me proud.
8 comments
This is an interesting post. The relationship you have with your spouse changes so dramatically when children are added to the mix. With our first child, I felt my husband and my bond get closer – we were a great and solid team. With the addition of our second child there was a lot of resentment on my part and the bickering and strain that comes with extra responsibilities, juggling of more, and the further lack of sleep (sleep!! It is so hard to get things done without it.) We have turned a corner and through conversation and having a just keep trying attitude (as well as more sleep!) we are doing much better as a couple. I find it interesting that this topic, of relationship strain with your spouse, is almost taboo. No one was talking about it in my mom groups.
Thank you for sharing this. I am happy your husband and you have such a great thing going. Oh, and I love the pictures – Arlo is cute! 🙂
So true, no one talks about it at baby group (apart from this one-off thing I went to, it was like mother’s therapy!). But it’s such a big transition, and something that all parents MUST be experiencing to some degree, yet we keep it to ourselves mostly.
I love this post! But I have to say I still feel that we’re still in the other category that those mothers were describing about their partner. I still totally feel like I’m the one in charge and control, and have to think of everything, and then relay those details to Rob. It is getting better, and sometimes he does stuff using his own initiative (like changing his nappy in the morning…) but that’s about it. I feel I’m constantly saying careful when he’s playing rough with him, as most of the time Theo loves it, but sometimes I can tell he’s not in the mood to be thrown about and Rob can’t seem to read that. And don’t get me started about packing the bag for going out, Rob would happily walk out the door with just theo and the pram and probably no coat, no nappy’s, no water, no snacks, nothing. I’m constantly getting asked how to do this and that, and just feel like screaming ‘how do you think I manage by myself all day!?’ (I definitely have said that quite a few times)
This doesn’t mean that they don’t have their own bond, they do and you can clearly see that Theo loves his daddy, but don’t just want Rob to be the one who gets to come in and have fun and play with him and then leave all the rest to me. Even now that Theo is eating meals I’m still the one that has to help him and watch over him whilst Rob happily gets on with eating his own meal. I’ve raised these issues a few times with him, but he just gets offended instead of listening to what I’m trying to say, perhaps it’s the way I’m saying it…
Gosh i’m sorry I’ve totally ranted on about myself on your comments, but this isn’t something I’ve ever talked about with other people, or couldn’t write on my blog, as he would get offended…I’m just hoping that at some point, something will click and Rob will be confident enough to think for himself in terms of parenting Theo, and not just because I tell him what to. Sam is an inspiration to me, and I might just accidentally leave this post up and hope he reads it haha! sorry again for the rant….and breathe!
Rant away!
Sam had two weeks off just before Christmas (as he had lots of annual leave left to take), we were just at home doing normal things, normal routine, etc, and I think this massively helped our shift in parenting dynamics.
If I was the one at work and not with Arlo every second of the day, I think I would have trouble knowing when to step in, whether I was getting in the way of the routine. I can really see how it would be difficult. I think it might have been like that for Sam for a while (probably not helped by the fact that I am a bit of a control freak and like to do things my own way!).
and I totally get the meal time thing. I spent at least seven months eating one handed, holding Arlo whilst he fed, and then you still don’t get to eat your meals in peace once they are eating solids!
This is so similar to what happened with us. At the start I was the one in charge, all Iyla ever wanted was my boob so Dad2BabyInsomniac felt a bit helpless and to be honest there wasn’t really anything he could do. I didn’t ask for help in the night because he had to get up and go to work so he slept downstairs for a good few months. Then when Iyla was a bit older he started to enjoy having more of a parenting role and now he easily does half and does a fab job of it. It is very equal and I am so pleased that he is so good at it. I think we are lucky, it is how it should be but unfortunately I don’t think all men get so involved which is just such a shame because they are really missing out x
Meant to comment on this when you posted it but forgot, oops.. well timed entry though – I had realised the other day how much things had changed with me & mine (parenting, relationship etc). I was stood in the shower on Saturday morning, and I can suddenly hear Isabel crying downstairs. This time last year I’d have jumped out of the shower and gone to see what’s wrong, but this time I didn’t even bat an eyelid. Karl had it. He’s Dad, he can sort things too.
Time brings understanding … his understanding of Isabel, and her wants and needs. My understanding of his capabilties. His understanding that he really can do it and doesn’t have to rely on/wait for me.
We still argue about things, parenting things, silly little things that really don’t matter in the long run. We swear at each other and call each other names in the middle of the night when Isabel wakes and we disagree on what’s wrong or because he thinks I’m being a big meany when I tell Izzy to stop being silly and go back to bloody sleep (oh, she sleeps well now 98% of the time – but that means that the 2% of the time when she doesn’t it’s even harder to bear!)
It’s a learning adventure, isn’t it? And I’m so excited that we get to do this all over again come June. 🙂
I love the way you’ve described it, it’s definitely a time thing.
Great news on the sleeping, by the way. Did you end up encouraging her in any way or did it happen completely in her own time? I ask because we are at a stage where I feel a bit of gentle encouragement not to have milk at night might actually work with little objection from Arlo, but things are good at the moment (meaning he is only up once or twice) and it’s far easier (and quicker!) to get him back to sleep by sticking a boob in his mouth.
She just randomly started sleeping longer stretches (and quite quickly too) at around 18 months. 3hrs one night (that was a long sleep for her!), 5hrs the next few nights, sleeping through after about a week. We’re still cosleeping, but even that I think is going to come to end within the next 6-12 months.. twice recently she’s asked to go in the “‘ellow bedroom” (her room).
FWIW if you still want to find other mums with night-waking, boobing toddlers, naturalmamas.co.uk/forum is awesome 🙂 Made a few “real life” friends through there too.