2022-10-15 About how I discovered I’m not a robot after all

I’ve always had trouble resting. Since Młoda was born, for a long time I rested very rarely. Sometimes I maybe managed to “steal” a bit of time to lie down, read, watch something, or play something, but I couldn’t carve out time for anything longer, like meeting up with friends or going to the gym. I felt guilty about leaving the girls alone. After work I tried to help J. as much as I could. My free time was usually at night, though even then we often caught up on some household chores, or simply did something together. I kept time for myself to a minimum.

Gritting my teeth

Today I’m learning more and more that this approach has bad consequences for the whole family. When I don’t take care of myself and my own needs, I have less desire to spend time with others, or to deal with what I actually need to do. Because of the lack of rest, I sometimes felt as if I had two full-time jobs, professional duties from the morning, and family duties after work. At night, time for sleep and rest. I often blamed myself for not feeling like spending time with Młoda. “After all, I should feel joy around my child. Maybe something is wrong with me”? I knew I wanted to do something I liked, for example play on the console, but I denied myself that. I thought that now, as a father, I should draw joy from other things.

I felt guilty even when we went to visit one set of parents or the other, and they played with Młoda. Despite the visible joy they got from it, I accused myself that since she was my little daughter, I should be the one taking care of her, instead of involving others. I also felt guilty because I sensed that they played with her more willingly than I did.

From time to time a thought appeared in my head that it’s hard to meet other people’s needs when I don’t take care of my own, but I countered it with the position that as a parent I should first take care of the child’s needs, and only maybe later my own.

For a long time, my being rested followed a kind of sine wave. First I would start getting more and more tired, but I didn’t remove any tasks from my plate, so it slowly got worse and worse, until I finally hit a low point. Then, angry and rebellious, I would grant myself some free time (while also feeling that I was stealing it, because I wasn’t doing anything useful...), my condition would improve, and I would start burdening myself again to the limits of endurance.

That sine wave was in no way optimal, though, because at most it kept me from getting completely “used up,” but it didn’t actually let me rest as much as I needed.

Constantly leaving my needs unmet meant that it was hard for me to enjoy anything, including family life. That last fact really got me down and caused guilt, and thoughts that something was wrong with me.

Limits do exist after all

What came to my aid in this situation was a crisis. It snuck into my life together with J.’s second pregnancy.

It started with weaning Młoda off breastfeeding. Maybe it wasn’t necessary quite so soon, but the little one didn’t especially want to eat anything besides milk, and J. was afraid that if she had to go to the hospital before the birth, Młoda would take it very hard. So we decided to wean her earlier.

Dropping the daytime feedings went quite smoothly. First, all meals were replaced with “real” meals, with “real” food. No ifs or buts. There will be no milk. Only the feedings before naps remained, but we managed to eliminate those fairly quickly too.

The real challenge, however, turned out to be the night feedings. Młoda was used to the fact that whenever she woke up at night, I carried her to mom, mom fed her, and then the little one went back to her crib. So, to avoid giving her hope for milk, we decided that I would be the one putting Młoda back to sleep at night.

And that’s how my nightly trips to the little one’s room began, rocking and putting her to sleep every few hours, and sometimes keeping watch when she didn’t want to go to sleep. The result was that I slept less and less, depending on the night. Sometimes I managed to sleep 6 hours, other times only 4, or less. My body and mind began to rebel, but I fought against them too, setting unrealistic expectations for myself and saying that “other parents have it the same way, and somehow they manage.” J. offered to help and relieve me, but I didn’t want to let her, because I knew pregnancy was harder on her, her back and stomach hurt, and on top of that Młoda often liked to kick her sibling through her.

After a few weeks I finally stopped being able to cope. I was trying too hard and wanted too much. I started becoming irritable, nervous, I started exploding with anger. I was full of negative thoughts that I’d had enough, and I had no hope things would improve. I accused myself of being good for nothing. I was almost unable to function normally, because I was wound up all the time. My effectiveness at work dropped almost to zero. And only that moment of breakdown forced me to surrender.

The winds of change

The first change was ending home office. That was a HUGE relief for me. I liked seeing the girls more often during the day, but it came at too high a cost. Working from home meant less focus, and that in turn meant slower work and more stress, especially with more difficult tasks. Every time Młoda screamed, I wondered whether J. might need help, and that was very distracting, especially when I saw that my wife was getting upset. I knew that this was simply how we were dividing responsibilities, that at that moment I was working, but I blamed myself that maybe I should be devoting more time and attention to the family, that they needed me. In the end, separating those two worlds turned out to be necessary. Now I thank God with all my heart that I have the option of working from the office!

The second change was getting enough sleep. This turned out to be harder, because I was still there, and when at night I heard our daughter screaming, or heard J. starting to get irritated because yet again she couldn’t put her down in the crib, I would start getting stressed myself, and as a result, one way or another, I couldn’t sleep. Maybe I wouldn’t have reacted so nervously if I hadn’t been exhausted, but as it was, strong irritation appeared in me immediately. My wife, however, turned out to be a hero, and decided to support me by giving me a few chances to rest. For the first night she went with Młoda to her parents, where I joined them only the next day, and when we came back home, I spent the next one alone on the couch in my parents’ living room. Each time I felt strange, because I had got out of the habit of sleeping alone, but each of those nights helped me regain strength and calm my nerves. On top of that, gratitude and hope began to appear in me, that maybe I would also start taking care of my other needs.

Epilogue

Since then, I have slowly been learning to set and respect my own boundaries. I now work from the office every day, and we have also started sharing the nighttime putting Młoda to sleep. We have both also reserved some time for ourselves, so that we can spend time with our friends, and we are following through on those plans. J. makes sure I keep them, because she knows it’s important to me, and I often used to let them go.

I look to the future with optimism, because I feel that we got through this crisis well. I finally started respecting my own needs and learned the assertiveness I had been missing in my relationships with friends and loved ones, and J. can be proud of herself too. I received a lot of help from her, and she made an effort, even just spending a night alone with Młoda, that I think she had been a little afraid of. That one critical point forced us into quite a few steps that gave both of us strength and faith in ourselves.

There is one more reason why I’m grateful for that overload. I think that without it I would have kept putting myself into situations I wouldn’t be fully happy with, not so much through other people’s fault as through my own, because I was the one not taking myself seriously. I hope that thanks to what I learned from this adventure, I will draw more happiness from our marital and family bonds. That is probably the most important lesson for me: that if I take care of myself and respect my boundaries, it helps me be closer to others, especially those I love.