Great Expectations....

I have completed 6 years of marriage and am still to understand my husband in many ways.We think poles apart on certain subjects.. I am sure he thinks the same way too.I am going to use this space to vent some feelings which I can't share with anyone I know.Let me warn those reading this post that this is going to be a loooonnnng rant. My husband is quite a rough and tough guy. Going forward I am going to refer to him as the Macho Man i.e. MM. I am a mushy and romantic kind of a person...The things he would love to do with me are - running a marathon, doing a heavy workout in a gym, trekking, rapelling, etc, etc....i.e. all sorts of adventure stuff.The things I would like to do with him are - holding hands and going for long walks, watching the sunrise and sunset, watching the moon and counting starts on a clear night, sipping a hot cup of tea on a rainy evening and watch the rains.I am sure you are wondering what brought us together. Okay we have different personalities, different interests that does not mean we do not love each other.... I have learnt to understand him and deal with him most of the time... However, I longed to get that "special attention" during my pregnancy and delivery and wished he could atleast pretend to be all mushy and romantic at that time. However, he behaved far from it and yes i am very much disappointed about it for a life time..I know my husband would make a terrific father once our child is about 3 or 4 years of age. But he definitely didn't do very well in handling the first few weeks.I wanted this to be "our pregnancy" and "our delivery". But it turned out to be "my pregnancy" and "my delivery".Starting from rubbing my back to visiting the gyne.... I had to literally beg him to rub my back when my backache was getting from bad to worse. He did it sometimes after a lot of coaxing.. But many a times I had to do it on my own... I wanted him to accompany me for the regular check-ups so that both of us got involved in this whole thing right from the start.He did accompany me a few times. But it was as though he was doing me a big favor by coming along with me after which I stopped asking him to come along and did the visits on my own.My requests for attending pre-natal classes together was just rubbished off.How I longed him to come home in the evening and atleast check on me as to how I was doing and if I wanted anything... The longings just remained so..Disclosing the news was such a big issue... He wanted to disclose the news even to the family only after 3 months. I did not have a very bad first trimester but I used to feel terrible in the evenings after getting back from work... All alone at home and with nothing to eat just made it worse.. I would feel so down and so desparately wanted to talk to someone abt it...I used to call him, but he used to invariably be busy in meetings and used to not pick my calls.Finally I could take it no longer and told my mom abt it... Breaking the news to my mom was such a hard thing.... I could not rejoice telling this to my mom coz I knew all hell would break loose when my husband got to know abt it. And sure it did.. He was very upset when he got to know that I had shared the news with my parents. We did not speak to each other for about 2 weeks, slept separately and there I lay on the bed all alone crying all night.

I would have not told them had he lent me a little support at that time... Trying and coming home a little early, getting some spicy thing for me to bite or at the least answering my calls when I was really down.

After this episode I refrained from even sharing the news with my dearest brother till I completed the first trimester.... My brother does not speak out his mind but I am sure he would have felt bad that I delayed sharing the news for so long... I would probably too if my brother did not share his joyous moments with me...My husband's relation with his sister and father is very different from what I share with my parents and brother.. They have a very practical, matter of fact kind of relationship...Whereas my brother and I trust each other a lot, share our joys, our sorrows, ask each other for advice....I could have easily shared the news with my parents and brother and asked them to keep mum about it... But I am not of the type who can do things behind my husband's back... I have not lied to him so far... If I start hiding things from him or lying to him even on petty matters I would be spoiling the meaning of our relationship....So I walk upto him and tell him what I have done and then face the consequences..... Sometimes I really wonder if I should be taking so much pain for being so open.. I appreciate my husband also being open to me... He does not lie to me too and is open about what he does... The only difference is if I am upset about something that he has done, he knows how to talk me into accepting that he is right... I am not the kind of person who can argue endlessly so I just give in and accept it even though I feel otherwise at the back of my mind.I slowly learnt to deal my pregnancy on my own most of the times...rubbing my aching back, visits to the gyne, et all.. He did however make it a point to come for the scans...I guess he loved watching our little baby inside my womb..I still wanted him to participate in my delivery.... I wanted to have a normal delivery and had asked the doc to let him into the LnD room. I wanted to deliver holding his hand...A lot of my male friends had been a part of their wives delivery and the look on their faces when they described it was priceless... So I wanted MM also to be there with me and experience it with me.However I had to go thru an emergency C and he had to wait outside the OT.During my stay at the hospital he used to visit me for sometime, hold the baby for a while, talk to me casually and leave.. Never once did he come near me, hold my hand and check on how I was doing or what I was going thru. It felt like a distant relative visiting and not like the husband and father visiting wife and son.The worst was when I got home... I was confined to one of our bedrooms most of the time..He used to stay quite away from me and the baby... My baby used to cry most of the times... My mom used to keep up all night along with me. My father used to wake up at 2 am and 3 am and offer to hold the baby and pacify him... But my husband used to shut himself in his room and go off to sleep...I do understand that he needed to work the next day so it was essential for him to get some rest.. Atleast he could have offered to help during weekend nights... Not a single night did he do that.

He generally gets home pretty late... Say about 9 or 9.30 pm... Ever since he has got his laptop, he is generally on it immediately after getting home... At times he does get home early these days but only to either switch on his laptop or switch on the TV.. And if I complain that he is not spending enough time, he tags me as a nagging wife and tells me that I am not happy even if he is home early.. He does not understand that getting home early and sitting on the laptop is not what I am asking for...I am also a thorough professional with 9 years of industry experience. I do understand the issue of late night conf. calls, getting home work at times and all the things you need to do to stay in the rat race... Yet I try and achieve a work-life balance..One has to draw a line somewhere and not let work and life merge with each other... When I explain this to him he replies that I am not serious about my career and am not trying hard to grow up the ladder. Its not that I am not serious about my career. I take only so much work so that I can have some personal time.. I don't like to be busy all the time... I like to spend time with friends and family.
I can write pages on this topic so let me keep this for a separate post. Let me continue with what I looked forward during my delivery days.
So here while I was up all days and night and managing a newborn my husband went around with life as usual... My life had comepletly changed whereas he continued to live pretty much the same life what he had before the little one arrived... Working long hours at office, getting back home and logging back to work, watching TV, etc, etc... I mean he did not have to sacrifice anything coz the baby had come while I had to time even my basic necessities such as visits to the loo, my bath, mealtimes,etc as per the baby's schedule...
I totally agree that a mother has a much larger role to play in the birth of the baby... And I am not cribbing about having to play the role of the mother... I was glad to change my schedule to suit the baby... I was glad to miss a bath or postpone a visit to the loo...What I only wanted was some recognition and appreciation for the things I was doing and some moral support from my husband.... MM would tell me that I was taking this whole thing too far and did not know how to handle it... That I was too fussy around the new-born and did not have to pay so much attention to PC... What did he mean... Did he at all realize the things I was having to do...Forget the appreciation part, he was blaming that I did not know to manage a new born...
Did he expect me to leave a newborn to bawl while I went about doing things that I pleased.. No he wouldn't do that either..He was tired of the non-stop crying especially during the nights. And he would insist that I nurse him to keep him quiet.... He never once gave a thought as to how the never ending nursing sessions affected me and if I needed a break and if he could help me in any way. He even did not consider helping me out by taking us out for a small drive so that the baby could sleep and I could get some rest..His excuse all the time was that he had a very hectic day at work and after getting home in all that traffic he did not have any energy left...
When I mentioned to him that he did not participate enough his answer was that women make it to their parents place for delivery and spent the first three months there... Husbands generally don't get involved during those days.. I didn't quite expect that !!! Here I had denied my mothers request to go to my hometown for the delivery since I wanted to be with my husband and had dreamt of delivering holding his hand.
And if I still insisted that he try and pacify the baby all he would do was to give some honey to a few days old infant... The baby would stop crying for a while when given honey but I felt it was certainly not a wise idea to use honey to quiet a new-born... So in the end I gave up the idea of asking him to help me out....
My baby had a problem with weight gain initially and would feed endlessly... One day I was so tired that I broke down and started crying... My husband hates it when I cry... He is of the opinion that women have an easy way out by crying in difficulties whereas men cannot do that...
So whenever I cry instead of trying and pacifying me he kind of reacts to it very harshly and shouts at me to stop crying... I am not a person who cries at the drop of a hat... I cried that day coz I was so worn out... Far from getting any sympathy all that I got to hear from MM was that I did not behave maturedly...He kept blaming me till I asked him to walk out of my sight...
And to top it all he would always take an example of his aunt handling her infants...
I have no complaints with the way his aunt brought up her kids... But she had been in a village all throughout and did things the best way she knew.. I am a city bred girl and have a different perception of things.... I cannot be compared to her and be asked to do the same things she did...
I was compared right from the usage of nappies, sterilizations, sanitising the nappies in dettol and hot water, etc.... MM would tell me that I was crazy to sterilize the pump and bottles whenever I had to express some milk..That I did not have to buy cotton nappies from a baby store and instead should use old rags as nappies... That I did not have to sanitise the nappies by rinsing them in hot water and dettol before a wash and should directly load the used nappies into the washing machine... That I did not have to clean the babies poopy bottom with a wet cotton ball and should just wipe it off in the nappy.
That his aunt never did this and that and still brought up her kids...
I was so tired of explaining to him, arguing with him on these topics that finally I gave up talking to him on that... I would tell him that I am not asking you to do anything so please leave me to do things the way I please.
Another thing that he would keep telling me was that I should express some milk at times so that I could take a break from nursing... I knew this fact that I could get a break if I could express some milk... But my baby was feeding every 1/2 hour so there was no milk left for expressing... I could successfully express only if there was a 2 hour gap in between feeds.
I had tried manual as well as machine expressing but could only manage a few drops.
My mother slept in the same room that I slept with the baby for the first 2 months...
She was up all night when I needed her... One day she had a bad back... So I asked her to sleep in another bedroom and asked MM to sleep with me and the baby...I just casually complained to MM that the feeding sessions were never ending and that I was getting too tired... We got into an argument from there...He again started blaming me that I was not handling things well...
He started comparing feeding with Project Management... That I had to time it and plan a strategy for it... That I had to express milk and take a break when required... That his aunt did that and she had never cried for bringing up a newborn.
I was sooooo pissed off that I started yelling at him... All this was not working... I had tried expressing milk but could not... I had tried to time the feeding sessions but could not.. There was no strategy I could plan for feeding.. I had to do it whenever the baby demanded...
We were lashing out at each other so loudly well past midnight that my parents came running to calm us... I was bawling...My mom regretted having asked my husband to sleep with me and the baby...
We did not speak to each other for 4 days after that... He did not even look at me or the baby for those 4 days... My parents were feeling so miserable that they would coax me to patch up with him... They would hold the baby out for him when he got home but he would just ignore and get into his room... My parents felt so bad that he was not even looking at the baby...
But I didn't care... I could not bring myself to coax him to calm down... There was no reason I needed to do that... If he didn't care so didn't I....
Things settled down in between us after that... But I have learnt a lot on how I need to deal with my husband... If he does not want a caring wife so be it... If he wants a tough woman I can be that too... But he cannot expect me to be tough and yet do things that I earlier did for him....
For all these years I did his laundry, folded his clothes, maintained his cupboards, waited for him for dinner, if he was very late and I had finished my dinner I would wait to heat the food and serve him, never slept before he came, even if he was tied up in some project deadlines and returned home at 2 am I would stay awake to speak a few words to him...
For the last 3 months, I haven't asked him to do a thing for me....I have also stopped the things that I was doing for him... His laundry gets piled for days together... His washed clothes are strewn all over the bed.. His cupboard is a mess...But I just don't feel like moving a finger to help him out... I no more run out to the living room to greet him when he is home... I don't make an effort to chat with him atleast for a few minutes in a day.... I no more call to find out when he is coming home. I no more complain when he gets home and immediately logs on...
I don't grumble when he takes a 2 hour afternoon nap on weekends inspite of sleeping a whole night and while I have hardly caught any sleep... I am used to him being away for 3 hours on weekend evenings for his workout. This reminds me of another incident...
A friend of his had called to check if she could visit us to meet the baby... She is a very good natured lady and I like her family of husband and 2 kids... MM was not in a position to answer his cell when she called so he asked me to speak to her... I gladly invited her and asked her to come home... MM was very upset that I invited her over without checking with him... He was upset that he would have to miss his weekend heavy work out session... He said that he was not going to miss that and stay back at home.. So I had 2 options, either to call her back and let her know that we had other plans or entertain them on my own...I tried to reason with him that when a baby has arrived friends do visit and weekend evenings are generally the most suited times.. This i thot was crazy... HIS friend called HIM on HIS cell which HE asked ME to answer... I was at home for days together without any social life... And the thought of someone nice coming home seemed so good that in my euphoria I just asked her to come over without checking with MM... I chose the option of entertaining them on my own though I knew it was going to be a little akward... And sure enough the friend did ask for MM as soon as she came home... I made some kinda excuse that since there was sometime before she came MM wanted to go for a jog... I had a great time that day... MM did manage to get home a few minutes before they left...
On another ocassion I asked MM to take me out on a weekend evening for which he replied "Let me See".... I immediately understood his answer was "NO".... So I just left it at that...
And as expected he went away for his usual workout .

These days my baby keeps me occupied most of the time.. And I cannot thank God enough that my parents are there with me to help me out... MM is usually his busy self on weekdays and weekends leading pretty much the same life he led before the arrival of PC...
I am a changed person who has learnt to deal better with MM.... Not affected in the least by his busy schedule... I am enjoying my slow paced life at home... Extended my leave for another 3 months... Not packing my leave with stuff to do... MM's advice was that I should try and use my maternity leave to do some part-time mgmt course... Gladly enough I am not taking any more of his advice unless I am fully convinced.. I am yet to recover my lost sleep and doing some studies at this time is the last thing on my mind... I have learnt not to react to MM and just let things which does not sound good to me to fall on deaf ears.

However I need to mention some good things abt MM tooo.. He is the one who cuts the baby's nails... I cannot muster the courage to do that.... But right from day one it was always MM who did the nail cutting.. When PC got to 3 months MM started spending time with him.. He teaches PC novel things and PC does pick it up.... MM could entertain PC in ways which I could not even think of... He taught PC to purse his lips and do a "Prrrrrrr" and PC has picked that up so well.. He practices it all the time... With a lot of saliva too :) Anyone who is near PC when he does his "Prrrrr" is in for a good saliva shower :))....
PC and MM bond really well... PC does recognise his father and loves to play with him...

For those who have read this far, I am not going to screw my relation with my husband in anyway.... I still love him and I know he does love me tooo.... And as I wrote before I know he is going to make a fantastic father for older babies... Getting them initiated into sports/adventure, boosting their self confidence, bringing them up in a way that they leave a mark in the world..
MM is a very good human being.... He has good values, terrific confidence, never lies, owns up his mistakes though he knows to justify his stand...

If you are wondering why I cribbed so much then that is coz I did not get the emotional support that I was yearning for and I wanted to vent out my feelings....MM failed miserably in handling the first few days post-delivery...But I need to accept that as his shortcoming and move forward...
I have evolved into a much stronger individual... Independant and Confident...Never to shed a tear.. MM always wanted me to be like that... I have gone thru a complete personality transformation..I no more yearn for those mushy romantic moments coz I know there is no point longing for it when I very well know I cannot expect it from him..
I don't run to open the door when he gets back from work to give a warm smile and place a kiss on his cheek and hug him... I did that for 6 years ....

I do have an intention to have another baby to complete our family... Sometimes I wonder that if its a girl will MM soften up ?? :) Maybe or maybe not... Either he could soften up or she could end up being as tough as him... My poor son-in-law :))...Anyways I am thinking too far...
But I have already resolved that if I get pregnant again I am going to deal with it all by myself...
Never once am I going to ask him for any help, any gyne visits or so....
I probably might even decide to go to my mother's place for the first 3 months or even if I stay back at my place I am not allowing him anywhere near the Labor and Delivery Room...

Looking back on this whole thing I had 2 choices.... 1. Keep whining about what went wrong and feel miserable for a lifetime... or 2. Accept the fact that I cannot change certain individualistic traits and learn to live with it or rather live around it...
I am glad I chose the second one... Otherwise I could have possibly ended up in a broken family and that was something that I don't want at all...
I was brought up in a very close knit family and I want to provide my children with the same environment...