You know since I was a kid I always wanted to be married. I thought I’d find the right wife. I’d have some great kids, and life would be great. I now look back and think what the hell was I smoking. Don’t get me wrong, I have a great wife, a nice wife a wonderful wife. She does the laundry, cleans the dishes, with help from the dishwasher, and cleans the house to her best ability. But add a baby to the mix and it’s like every day I get up to a hammer being hit on my head.
It’s not totally my wife’s fault in all this. I mean David, our son, when he is sick, can be a handful. And where some people can escape, like grandparents, I am stuck dealing with him on a day to day basis. Or should I say I try and run as fast as possible away. Now don’t get me wrong I love David. I feel bad when he gets sick and I am powerless to do anything because I have a full time job and since my wife stays at home can take him to the doctor and find out what meds he needs. She gives him the meds and we hope he wakes up less cranky.
See my wife made me this promise. She said if we had kids she would take care of him. It would be great. I’d go out make a living and she would stay home and raise him. I was like fine. So she got pregnant and that’s pretty much when my life ended. I ended up doing a lot of the work around the house that she couldn’t do to being pregs. I got tired of this quickly so you could tell what I wanted most in the world, David to be born. And then he was. And I thought. Great here is our child the child that we wanted so much and now what? Because he was a great baby, he was very quiet. I have heard horror stories of a baby having colic and crying every minute of the day. So I thought David was the miracle baby. He only cried to be changed, to be fed or to be held. And this went on for a few months until the week before Christmas when the whole house came down with nasty colds and David started hitting records, 101 degrees 102, 103, then fever broke, then again 101 then fever broke again. And he was miserable, crying all the time. He would not let you put him to sleep. He had all this pent up energy. I mean if I was David I would need to sleep. But somehow my wife would get him to sleep and he’d be up again an hour later with enormous energy that if I needed would take 10 hours!
Finally after 3 days of this my wife came to me and said,” I can’t do this much more he is wearing me out.” I said, Well I will watch him. You sleep.” So she fell asleep and I took David into his playpen area and proceeded to play with David and then lie down and fall asleep too.” He was safe there was nowhere for him to go since the playpen was closed in and my step daughter was up at the computer in case David needed anything. And in all fairness David was fine. He only cried when he wanted me to move so he could reach a toy. See I felt my role was to provide a body. If David saw his father was around, even if sleeping, he did care and he was just tired. My wife on the other hand got very upset with me. She said he was crying you didn’t notice your step daughter had to wake me up. Now for the record I had not been totally asleep. I mean David has lots of toys and it can be a bit confining in this area where you have to contort into a pretzel to lie down in there. And my wife has no sense of time. She said I only slept 10 minutes and I had to be woken up to this. And I went but hon that was an hour ago. Here is how I saw it. She went to sleep at 10:01 and woke up at 11:11 however my wife will swear she went to sleep at 11:01 see my dilemma?
So anyway David is sick, we are giving him baby Tylenol, we are giving him the antibiotics the Dr prescribed, and we are giving him a nebulizer treatment. First of all my son does not like Tylenol. I don’t care if it was made with love like the commercial. Your baby doesn’t like it you are soon going to be wearing it! Then don’t get me started on the nebulizer, it’s like an air mask with steam coming out of it. So we hold him down, which suddenly makes me understand what an orderly is thinking when he is holding down a patient. Which is, “Will someone please knock this guy out?” First off my muscles hurt from holding him and second the screaming is not that great for my ears. Then again this is preferable then going next door and helping 90 year old Ms. Wilson Pee. And have her try and come on to you.
So anyway, we give him the treatment he calms down my wife finished yelling at me and you know what I step away from the situation and realize, my wife is miserable. She is sick along with everybody else and she can’t get a full night’s sleep like the rest of the FAM. She basically says I am useless because I take meds and am tired at night and can’t stay up with him and finally she is just stresses out and needs a break.
So she goes down stairs and takes David and I am left here thinking was I wrong for wanting to have a baby? Or was I wrong that my wife said she would be able to take care of him by herself and it turns out she was wrong. Well, I finally come to the conclusion that all things have a way of working themselves out. My wife’s aunt lives downstairs and the two make a great tag team and they are able to get David chilled out and squared away.
If you get married here is some advice, A, do not have a kid right away. First you can’t have a honeymoon if you want to fly somewhere because your wife will be afraid it could cause a miscarriage B, it just takes away from your learning to get used to each other. And C, it’s a lot of stress. Just get used to each other first take 2 years even 3 years and then have a kid.
Because as that hallmark commercial says, “A child changes everything.”
