Tag Team Parenting: Your Turn. No, it's Your Turn.

By Karen Bannister
The Momoir Project: Writing Classes for Moms
www.themomoirproject.com

As light streams through the cracks in my bedroom blinds, I hear the sound of my husband’s feet touching the floor, the slow rustle of his body unraveling from the sheets. It is 7am and I am slowly coming to, wrestling the drug of sleep from my head as I acknowledge the four walls around me, the comfort and warmth of the light grey comforter on top of me and the softness beneath my head.

I hear my son’s cry, muffled by the walls of his room. I note the movement of my husband towards the door and the pieces fall in place - the welcome touch of familiarity, the comfort of our weekend routine. I mumble, “I’ll get him.” But my husband shakes his head and tells me to go back to sleep. I roll over, indulging in another lazy morning, resurfacing two hours later only to pad down the stairs and find my son, fully dressed, fully cleaned, fully fed.

This morning is no anomaly; in general, it is my husband who rises with our son, who feeds him breakfast and gets him ready for the day. It is also my husband who bathes him at night, feeds him his bottle and kisses his nose in slumber. We fell into this routine during my battle with Postpartum Depression - when I found it difficult to rise from bed and when my irrational fear of drowning and my anxiety over sleep kept me from being involved in bedtime. Now, we simply carry on with this pattern and I fill in the gap of the rest of the day. While I acknowledge, in my confident moments, our arrangement as a pretty good division of labour, I am also often plagued by a sense of guilt over everything that my husband does for our son.
Even as I write this I feel a pang of shame - as a mother I feel the burden of super woman, that horrid archetype of maternal success who exists to place unrealistic expectations on my shoulders. When I confess my guilt and shame to my husband, he always seems puzzled. He does not see this as I do. To him, he is just taking care of his son. And so our division of labour continues, and only in my eyes does it occassionally fall short of perfection.

This afternoon, my husband and I visited with his family. Outside on the deck of my in-law’s home, I watched my son play. I guarded the unsafe drop to the grass with my body. And when I felt tired and wished to sit and enjoy a glass of wine with my sister-in-law, a rare opportunity to catch up, I motioned to my husband. Twirling my finger around in the air, I mouthed “change-up.” My husband grinned, jumped from his chair and tagged my hand with a slap. Tag team, like marriage should be, like parenthood has to be.
While I still wonder if my own contribution falls short of 50/50, I know that my husband and I make a pretty good team. Where I fall down, he rises up and I only hope I do the same for him. Well, I guess I must because we are doing this parenting thing and pretty successfully. At least, I think my son thinks so.