Desperate Housewife

   Wife upset – Advice needed please!

   No sex Drive

   Rant!  Rant!  Rant!!

   What’s her problem?

   Not sure I like my Wife anymore!

I was browsing through my favourite parenting website the other day and all of the above made my heart stop and then resume its normal pace with frightening alacrity!  The big bastard!  I thought.  He’s been on here.  Giving out!  About me!  5 times!!

What’s his problem? 

See, over the past 6 months, all of the above have and still do refer to me!  Needless to say, they weren’t desperate cries for help to the nation from my long suffering and very tolerant husband. But they could have been and he would have been perfectly within his right. (But don’t tell him I said that!)

There are a few things (mainly one, big huge thing really) that becomes clear when you enter motherhood.  You develop multiple personalities. Handy for when you’re stuck at home day in day out with no-one else to talk to except your baby, but otherwise they just land you in the soup.

Big time.

We’ll take them one by one.  Wifey upset.  Happens all the time.  Double that when Junior enters the picture.  I like to blame the hormones.

Picture it.  It’s the second month in a row, and you’re still getting up at 5am with your older child, having spent every night of the same two months up and down like a yo-yo feeding the baby as well.  (Have to add here – when you breastfeed, there are some things that just come with the job)  But you would like your other half to maybe, just maybe, especially when the baby is still sleeping and most likely will stay that way for another hour, get up in the morning with your oldest, once or twice without prompt. 

But it hasn’t happened. At all. And Mister Husband comes in from work, has the audacity to put his car keys in the fruit bowl instead of just on the table where he normally puts them, and you turn into a rabid mess. 

You just let rip and tear him to shreds over the misplacement of his keys when instead what you’re really upset about is the fact that you’re knackered and would like some help in the mornings.  He’s supposed to know this though.  Well, I don’t expect much from Mister Husband.  He did, after all, go to college for several years.  Mind reading surely came up on the curriculum at some stage!

No sex drive.  Ahem!  Red faced here.  This was one big eye-opener for me when kids came along.  You’re always tired anyway, and when they go to bed at 8pm, your day is kind of over too.  You have the demands that breastfeeding brings which basically translates into Mother Nature ensuring there will be no other pregnancy until this baby is weaned.  Thus leaving you with a scant or no sex drive.  This is, without a doubt, the hardest, most miserable and lonely side of parenting for him.  It’s difficult for us wimmin too, because you feel guilty.   Guilty for the feeling of utter dread that washes over you when you hear his footsteps on the stairs.   Guilty for the resentment that is borne from his getting a full eight hours and you being lucky if you manage three before you have to get up to tend to the baby.

But not guilty enough to do much about it.  I admit this openly.  I am selfish in this regard.  The only time I get any kind of space to myself, both mentally and physically, is in bed.  Alone.  I guard it fiercely. 

Rant!  Rant!  Rant!   Well, now the world is his oyster on this one.  He could have complained about there being no dinner on the table some evenings.  But he wouldn’t dare!  (The toasted sandwiches and drop scones might disappear)

He could have decided to moan about the fact that there are two (sometimes three) separate laundry baskets in the house and the kids washing and mine comes before his own.  But he wouldn’t dare!  (He might have to do his own laundry!)

He could have gotten pernickety over my ignorance about the workings of a car and how I call him whenever I have a flat tyre/battery/need diesel.  Just today for example, I called him from outside his office and got him to watch out the window and talk me through parallel parking!

But he wouldn’t!  (For fear of having to drive me everywhere) 

He could have complained bitterly about my many and fluctuating mood swings and how I can turn on a dime.  But he wouldn’t dare! (He just wouldn’t!)

And the what’s her problem?? problem?  He could get the kids over this one!  We’re lucky (or mad) enough to be building our own home and he is doing all the work in relation to it!  Just as well really as I still don’t know if there are four or five bedrooms!  It involves long hours at the office followed by more hours on site.  (Then in the pub)  Sorry – that one sneaked in there! 

I am lucky enough to be a stay at home mammy thanks to him.  I am lucky enough to have my own car. Thanks to him.  I have a nice house and will get an even nicer one.  Thanks to him.

So I should stop handing him the baby as soon as he walks in the door in the evenings so I can put on/take out a wash, change the beds, sweep the floor, get kids clothes ready for bath and bedtime and the following morning, put clothes to be aired in the hot press, take out the bin, put away the breakfast dishes, Hoover and get out of my pyjamas. 

I should, under no circumstances, start babbling on about the trivial but amusing to me, conversation I had with the girl in Penney’s until he’s had his chance to relax.

So, looking back on it all, I realise I have nothing to complain about at all.  It doesn’t stop me though. 

And the Not Sure I Like my Wife Anymore?  See all of the above!!

Yes, parenthood can be an incredibly petty and resentful time.  You’ll probably find you argue a lot more and over the slightest things.  BC (Before Childer) you were never one to hold a grudge, but suddenly you can tick off all the early mornings you, and you alone, got up to deal with the kids, all the pub hours he put in while you were sat at home under the baby.  Alone.   

You will notice everything he does and doesn’t do. 

My mother in law had these words of advice for me once; Pick your battles.  Trouble is, with me I want to win them all!! 

Circa 2009