Speak up

Last night my husband and I got into a moderate argument about our differing opinions about what it means to “help”, specifically relating to my previous nights mental break down. Let me replay how that went down for y’all. Him and I are both in bed with our nearly one year old daughter, she’s in the middle we’re on either side. He’s laying facing away from us and I’m sitting on the bed attempting to wrestle our daughter into submission while she’s screaming and clawing and doing things off the Exorcist. I screech “help” a couple times to which he responds “just ignore her”. I finally toss Arie onto the bed and scream “JUST LAY DOWN! COULD YOU PLEASE HELP ME?!” To which he responds, “help you what? Scream at a baby?” And then I storm out of the room crying much too hard. You see what happened here was, I asked for help and his idea of being helpful was telling me to just ignore her and she’d go to bed. Which in theory would’ve been very helpful if that seemed like a viable option for me at the time. I was in the middle of a crisis so the advice to just ignore her was not helpful and seemed almost condescending coupled with his ending statement. In his eyes I denied his help because I didn’t take his advice (which worked for him fine after I left the room btw), but again I was in the middle of a crisis and when I said “help me” what I meant was “please intervene because I can’t handle this right now”. So each of us left the situation very frustrated with the other. Him because he thought I disregarded his help and me because I didn’t feel as if he was being helpful. Let me paint a picture here: say we were swimming and I begin to drown and I’m panicking and yell for help and your response as you’re swimming next to me is to say “just float on your back” as opposed to just pulling me to more shallow water. The advice to just float on my back would be very helpful, but not in the midst of actively drowning. As I’m actively drowning what would be most helpful is to intervene and educate later. I spent a long time yesterday evening being upset and crying because I felt like he wasn’t hearing what I was saying. I thought that my cries for help were falling on deaf ears and I was hurt and frustrated and I think he was too. I wasn’t ever trying to imply that he isn’t helpful or doesn’t help, what I was trying to get across was that I needed help differently and I really thought that he didn’t get it. But last night was great. Every time our daughter woke up, he got up with us to calm her down. I was able to get up and pump 3 times uninterrupted, I was able to feed my son and change his diaper without my daughter getting up, I woke up with my alarm at 545 without crying because I was so exhausted, I was able to get up and work out, I had a cup of coffee waiting for me on the headboard and a full bottle for my daughter next to it, my 5 year old son has breakfast ready and waiting for him on the counter upstairs. I thought he hadn’t heard me, but he must have. I am blessed with a partner that loves me and his children and that genuinely wants to help. This goes to show you that you need to be vocal about what you actually need. Be vocal and specific to as many people as you can because no one knows what you need unless you tell them and they might think that they’re being helpful already but their variation of help just isn’t helpful. Be vocal. Be specific. Be patient. Everyone is learning.