Today I was thinking of the saying "man up".
It should be changed to "mom up".
There's a woman on a support group site who has 2 kids with severe epilepsy and after child #2 started having seizures her husband couldn't take it anymore and left. I don't understand that thinking. It's hard on 2, so if he leaves and put it all on her that is okay, why? I mean I definitely understand how hard it is to watch kids have seizures and their health deteriorate but their mom loves them no less than the dad. Why is it okay for him to be "sensitive"?
Then I was watching A Baby Story and the 26 year old Dad had to lay down on the couch in the delivery room because he was getting dizzy and felt like he'd pass out. I know how that works to! I thought Bill would pass out when I had Isaiah and he ended up leaving the room before I even had him because he felt so helpless and felt like he'd get sick. Meanwhile I pushed out a 10 lb 7 oz baby.
One thing I do that my husband will have no part of is give a suppository. I just count myself lucky he'll change Naomi at all. He has some severe ideas, I don't know what happened in his household growing up, but until I had Naomi he just really felt like a man shouldn't change a little girls diaper. I told him that I should have been exempt from changing any of Isaiah's if that's the line of thinking we're following. It took a while, and I think he was afraid of hearing about it the rest of his life, but he does change diapers.
Oh, well. Men have their place, they're just often not as strong as mom's in some ways.
2 comments:
I've been lucky with Don. He came from a pretty disfunctional family with an alchoholic dad and a mom who died when he was thirteen. And then guess what his bastard of a father did? Abandoned his kids. Don was the oldest and absolutely the only one who was able to get away from his upbringing. He has such a deep integrity and has been more than willing to follow my lead in the things expected of a good husband and father. He never thought twice about changing diapers, giving baths, feeding babies, or any of the other jobs that come with having kids. I felt like he came to me as a very willing blank piece of stone. So almost everything he knows he learned from me. I guess I've been pretty darn lucky!
So, so true! Thank goodness Michael isn't squeamish about much, although he does try to wriggle out of diaper-changing duty when he can!
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