A Letter to my Husband from the Fourth Trimester
I watch you sleep all night long. 12:30 am. 2:30 am. I am awake feeding the baby and you are sleeping soundly, right beside us like nothing is happening. I start to hate you at 4 am, when my nervous system is no longer able to drift off between feeds because I've forced myself awake too many times and now I have nothing to do but lay there next to a baby who is finally sleeping and you, who were never not sleeping. You did not wake up when I asked for help putting the baby back down and instead rolled over away from me and pulled the covers around you tighter. You will say tomorrow that you do not even remember. It's not your fault. You just sleep more deeply than I do.
In the morning I lay in bed awake again, listening to the sounds of you making breakfast with our daughter. She is laughing and affectionate. My heart aches for her. Yesterday, I let you take the baby in the morning while I made breakfast with her, got her dressed for school. You came in every couple minutes to say things like "I know it's a little different that you're spending time with Mama today, but different is good too!" As if it is your job to never let her forget how absent I've been these few months, taking care of baby, pinned down and breastfeeding, watching the two of you live our life without me. I hate you for this also.
I hate you when my friends remind me you are a good man. Some men leave, they say, at least he is still here.
I know that they are right, that you are a good man. But not for those reasons. Not simply for existing.
I think you are a good man because you try to understand the systems that have led us here, to this point. I think you are a good man because you try so hard to unravel the conditioning that posions you into believing that these inequities are normal and ok. I think you are a good man because you see the unfairness of it all and try, try, try to make it right even though it means pushing against the weight of the world. But for all your trying, we are still here in this place where things feel profoundly unequal and sometimes I feel like I hate you.
But there are other moments too. Moments when we are in flow together, finding our rhythm. Moments where it feels like we are a real family, the kind I always dreamed of being a part of.
There are moments when we are so tuned into each other that you know exactly when I've reached the point of being completely touched out and you swoop in and take the baby without having to be asked. And there are moments when I can tell you are exactly 10 seconds from losing it with our toddler and I get to rush in and save the day.
There are rare moments, when both kids are asleep and we remember to kiss each other or hold hands and it feels so novel it's like falling in love all over again.
There are moments when I watch you holding our daughters, reading to them, or just looking at them with so much love, and my heart feels so full and I know that I have never loved anyone as much as I love you.
This is the part in the essay where the writer always says that despite all the ways that things are messy and imperfect, they wouldn't change a thing. I'm not going to say that. There is a lot that I would change if it were up to me. I would make you a lighter sleeper and I would make support a million times easier to come by so that we wouldn't have to choose between prioritizing ourselves or each other. But one thing I wouldn't change is that we're in this together. The thing I wouldn't change is doing this with you.
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