Has your marriage suffered since baby?
Maya is now 7 months old. My life has been filled with happiness having her in it. However, my husband and I have been having a really hard time dealing with one another. We argue so much and that is just something that we never really had a problem with before Maya. It's gotten so bad that we'ver talked about seperating. My heart is breaking because he is my best friend but we just can't seem to get it together.
I always feel burned out and I feel like he could help more. However, he now is working 2 jobs to pay off our medical bills. So, I try to give him a break, but it's gotten to the point where we just fight about every little thing all of the time.
I don't know what to do and I'm feeling so sad. I'm trying so hard to keep a happy face for Maya, but it gets so hard at times
Re: Has your marriage suffered since baby?
Dh and I fight all of the time now. When our son was a baby, we never fought, but now since our son is getting "harder" to deal with, we fight all the time. It sucks really bad! I feel that my husband can pitch in a little more with our son. I feel like sometimes I do everything! We both work full time, so I feel like we both need to do an equal share, but it never happens!
Will you let someone watch your daughter for a night while you and your husband go out to dinner. Sometimes being alone - just the two of you - sometimes can make it a little bit better.
After Cash came home we began fighting too, our lives drastically changed. We had gotten used to Cash being in the hospital and the routine we settled in. Once Cash came home, I no longer slept in our room. I was on Cash's floor with the other two boys. The walls in our home shook.
We began fighting or I should say nit picking everything. It was both our faults, we just like the two of you were hurting. Our dreams went out the window so fast. He resented that I stayed home, he now had all the pressure to provide for the five of us. I resented that he got to get out of the house and have adukt interaction.
It has taken some time, Cash is 11 months, but things are getting better. I have become comfortable in my roll and I think he in his. I still resent that he doesn't have much to do with his cares, but know that he will when he becomes more comfortable. My heart broke in the beginning because I had this beautiful baby that needed me and that I loved so much, but I needed him too.
This may sound corny, but I did a lot of soul searching. I read a lot of other blogs of women in our situations and had to realize I wasn't alone. I feel in love with a blog of a woman who loved her husband and her children, yet I realized that her small efforts to make her home, family and life amazing never went unnoticed. I wanted my life to be like that, through her blog and lots of tears shed my eyes opened. Things are getting better, slowly but surely, they are still hard, but we try to get that alone time too. We go on our back patio each night just to talk everyday after work and sometimes our talks are silent, but its a little effort.
I wish you luck and hope you too can find your outlet. Just please know that you are not alone.
The only thing that has suffered in our marriage is one-on-one time. Being that Drake needs 24 hour care, we have to sleep in shifts so we don't even get the cuddle time we used to at night. The fights we get in are usually pretty petty and we realize that it's because we miss each other and we're frustrated.
Your situation is the reverse of mine - DH works from home so he stays with Drake all day and I work a sales job for men that don't believe that women in the industry know what they're talking about (until I prove that they're wrong and I'm right - that's fun!) Sometimes I feel like I'm being left out of the cool stuff even though I know that taking care of Drake all day is also stressful. Do you think your DH feels the same way and doesn't know how to express it to you?
Good luck and please don't give up!
I coud have written this post myself. Our first year or so was downright miserable at times. Words like separation and phrases like "If it weren't for DS I'd be out of here" weren't uncommon. (DS wasn't diagnosed until about 18 months.)
A few weeks after D-Day (Dx day) we had the most open, honest and frank talk about our family and even spoke of the fact parents of SNC have a higher divorce rate than others. We made a plan then and there that we didn't want this to happen to our family and we need to pull together to make it work. This has been many concessions on both our parts - the hardes for me has been obsessing about the state of our home (cluttered but not dirty.) and DH has given up so much of his before DS free time activities. There are times when I feel like i'm doing more than the lion's share of XYZ but if I really think about it, so is DH. So DS can be best supported, DH commutes approx 120 miles each day to/from work. I sometimes lose sight of how taxing and stressful that can be.
I think most of our fighting (post-Dx) was based in fear of what the future would hold for DS. Even saying the words "mental retardation, gross developmental delays, may not beable to live independantly..." were excrutiating and painful. And face it, we were also grieving a loss of what our dreams for DS were. The more we talked about what was really bothering us (not the dishes in the sink, lack of clean socks, vacuuming that needed to be done, lack of intimacy, etc.) the better things got. I made a big effort to also hold DHs hand whenever we were near eachother, it sounds simple but it helped me feel connected to the man i love. Also, I started buying more pre-prepared foods that could be heated up to save time.
Looking back (and it's not that far back - DS is 28 months) I think I would have greatly benefited from therapy and meds. Hindsight...
I hope things get better for you - hang in there - life gets easier as you adjust to your new normal. I guess the best advice we received from the geneticist was to remember we were a happy family before Dx and we will be a happy family again. (Congratulations to anyone who is still reading - didn't know I had so much to say.)