Day 23

I woke at 1:30 a.m. to re-swaddle lil’ man. My back cracked in series of pops as I stood up from bed. He put up quite the fuss but I was able to calm him and lay him back down to sleep. It seems he was down until mom woke him for the early a.m. feeding. I think he is about as tired as I feel now. Mom readied for the day, as I lay in bed unable to move. She clearly is having a hard time understanding the depth of my exhaustion and growing depression – this is much harder than I originally thought.

Tuesday’s have had a pre-set plan to visit Grandma C. She called early in the morning and said that she was not feeling well enough to visit today. That led to a general conversation of things and an outlet for my frustrations was opened, some frustration relieved. Without a planned trip for the day, I opted to visit an old walking / jogging trail that was nearby where we used to live. I loaded up the car with the necessary equipment, nearly filling my car to capacity. We headed off to the trail, without incident. We paid a visit to the trailhead office, where I used to work and have a few friends. The girls there doted on lil’ man and we kept our visit short. A nice springtime walk of about a mile, ended with seeing some other people I knew from my trail days; they were all happy to see me and impressed with our son. One person, whom I did not know, edged his way into the conversation and said “you know that glow you have, that strange happiness inside you…you just have to look at your son to know where it is coming from because your son has it too”! – damned new-age voodoo people. I did appreciate the compliment, although it was strange, and a little uncomfortable to hear from this person I did not know. We loaded up the car and headed home. Lil’ man’s schedule was in disarray; we had missed nearly every scheduled feeding but he was contented. I lay him down when we returned but he struggled to communicate something to me – hungry! I could have sworn that he said the word. I said, “hungry?” and she seemed to nod his head in approval. I fed him a quick bottle. Satisfied, he went right to sleep. He woke and slept in a confused state for a few hours until I finally wrapped him proper and lay him down at 5:00 p.m. Mom came home around 7:00 p.m. and she immediately went to check on him and feed him. Our dinner that night ended with conversation on how things were going for me. She was concerned that I was unhappy and that this was not working out the way we had planned – another outlet for my frustrations. I explained my position and told her about my troubles but that things were not terrible enough to stop what we are currently doing – today was actually a good day wife! As she spoke, I then realized the toll that has she has been paying for this routine – she is tired too and simply misses her child during the day. It warmed my heart and the world showed me what I needed to see this day. My ‘complaints’ from the past few days were simply that I was physically exhausted from the manual labor of moving sod. Yes, there are concerns about how things will play-out after the end of our planned stay-at-home dad experiment and I am suffering from a bit of depression, resigning to my new role in life, but there was something I had not considered, something more important than my own struggles; mom was depressed too. She did not even notice my missing, scraggly, beard that I had shaved off early in the day, which was something she complained about each and every day. We talked together in a way that married couples should and we both began to relax. We both found some relief (this day) in each other – as I suspect it should be. The night ended more happily than many before it, with mom leading the charge off to bed. I followed shortly after and we both fell quickly asleep. It was 10:30 p.m.