This past Saturday, H and I were partaking in one of our favorite evening activities - drinking wine while making fun of the Williams Sonoma catalogue. Did you know they sell chicken coops now? While imagining rooftops in Park Slope surrounded in the green cloud of rotting stench associated with raising poultry, we chuckled warmly together, and I had the realization H and I hadn't had a really big argument in a while. OK, that sounds weird. Yes, we still bicker about someone's inability to actually put the garbage in the cage under the deck, allowing raccoons to have a catered rave in our driveway, and someone els'e incessant need to vacuum "right now or all this dog hair will drive me insane", but otherwise, it has been pretty smooth sailing as of late.
Had we had some kind of interpersonal growth spurt? We were more highly evolved emotionally? Should we write some kind of self-help book for couples? What was our magic formula?
Our kids got older.
Let me be the one to tell you what no one ever bothered to tell H and me. YOUR VERY YOUNG CHILDREN ARE TRYING TO KILL YOU AND RUIN YOUR MARRIAGE BY DEPRIVING YOU OF THE BASIC MEANS OF SURVIVAL.
Don't believe me? Take food, for example. The obvious is that babies are literally taking nutrients from their mother's body. Due to my complete inability to remember to take a calcium supplement with any regularity, my skeleton probably looks like it's made of swiss cheese. But let's not neglect poor fathers in this equation. They also suffer from the side effect of having little kids which is never having time to prepare any decent food or actually sit down to consume a meal. While parenting small children you are either half-starved, with no memory of the last time you had sustenance, or over-full from just having stuffed handful after handful of Goldfish in your mouth in a low-blood-sugar frenzy.
And what about sleep? After food and water, sleep is one of the basic necessities for proper human function. Sleep becomes to parents of young children what sex was when you first got together. You fantasize about it all the time, and when you get it, it's never enough. Studies show lack of sleep increases the risk of heart disease, stroke and high blood pressure. Experts say driving while exhausted is as dangerous as driving drunk (so is driving with a van full of screaming children). Sleep deprivation increases the chance of weight gain and decreases memory skills. Even if you survive this gauntlet that is raising little ones, waddling around in your too-tight jeans looking for your car keys, a heart attack waiting to happen, will your marriage survive? It's not that there is anything inherently wrong with your choice of partner, but is the scarcity of these resources that has you at each other's throats.
At dinner time, one of you gets to shove strained peas into the baby's maw, while one of you gets to eat. Or you wait until the baby has eaten to have your dinner and then one of you still has to have one on the kid and one eye on their plate. Family parties take this scenario to a whole new level. In addition to getting to chase your toddler around for an hour to ensure he or she doesn't break any of Aunt Millie's Hummel figurines, once the party food is served, one of you has to stay on duty while the other gets to chow down. Never have I wanted to take H's life with my own two hands, than early in our parenting years, when he would fix himself a plate in these situations and start tucking in. Those few times I was usually trapped in the other room nursing a baby, since a baby's need to eat right now is directly proportional to how hot the mother's food is, but that is a very thin defense and we still engaged in more than one heated whisper fight in a coat-filled bedroom. Babies turn us into cavemen, beating our chests and (quietly) fighting over food in public.
When it came to sleep during our baby days, I wished I had a time clock for H and I to punch in and out so he would have hard evidence of how many hours I had spent awake, nursing, compared to those he spent asleep. Exhaustion turned me into a miserly, minute-counting sleep Scrooge. Back before our body clocks had permanently changed to those of dairy farmers, we took turns sleeping in on Saturday and Sunday. I let H go first on Saturday, not out of any generosity of spirit, but so I could keep track of how late he slept and make sure I got my fair share on Sunday. If H dared ask to take a nap, I laughed the laugh of the righteous in his face, telling him if anyone in this house was napping, it was going to be me. Yeah, I was a good time back then. We were both losers in everybody's favorite game "Who's More Exhausted?"
I guess, to be kinder and more accurate, no one tells you, while your kids are little, there is nothing wrong with your marriage, and neither one of you has permanently turned into a bitch/asshole. Your kids have just done this to you temporarily with their relentless needing and you will return to your normal, loving selves around the time your youngest is potty-trained (I forgot to mention, playing hot potato with a shitty baby is also another fun power struggle).
Think about early parenting like being a contestant on the game show Survivor. The contestants are terrible to each other when they are starving and exhausted on the island, but they all love each other on the reunion special once it's all over. At least your kids will eventually become less annoying. You can't say that for Jeff Probst.
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