I remember when we were out of our minds with exhaustion and I was desperately trying to get Lauca off to sleep and all of a sudden, just outside the bedroom door, I hear him… having a reeeeeeeeeeeeally loud telephone conversation. He’s pacing about back and forth in front of the bedroom door laughing and talking, talking and laughing, and I’m thinking – what the fuck is wrong with you?
Finally Lauca stops trying to fall asleep and lets out an angry cry and I feel free to yell so I open the bedroom door –
- Are you fucking crazy?
– Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot.
This, this I don’t understand. How do you forget we have a baby? How does it escape your mind for one second that we have a baby who won’t sleep and who is not letting us sleep? How do you forget that I am trapped in this bedroom, staring at four walls, going out of mind, trying to get the baby who won’t sleep to sleep? Every cell of my body is aware that we now have a baby. Every part of me is switched on to ‘baby mode’.
You, you are the father of the baby. Why is this experience so different for you?
Because it can be.
See We, as women raised in a patriarchical culture (the world,) don’t respond in the ways that make it their problem. Granted WE SHOULDN’T HAVE TOO but we do. Cause life isn’t fair.
So the minute he’s outside the door being a thoughtless ass you stop trying to put the baby to sleep, go out, take the phone, give him the baby, tell his phone friend he can’t talk right now he has some fathering to do, hang up the phone and leave. He forgot? He gets the consquences, and some daddy-baby bonding time.
If the daddy doesn’t step up then get a divorce with full custody but visiting that equals joint time. Then you as a mom gets a break and he has to do his half of the parenting.
Don’t give him joint if he’s even a little ass though, he will use it against you. (I’m saying this “you” in the generalized, all people reading sense:)
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