What My Hubby did..

So we left the hospital, me in a wheel chair and my husband carrying our new baby in the carrycot. I know, not the scene you expect when leaving hospital with your newborn. Anyone who has read my blog knows the birth did not go to plan and left me very weak, hence the wheelchair.

Much fun was had trying to get the carrycot strapped in correctly, many expletives later we were all loaded safely into the car. My husband turned to me and said 'I feel like we are stealing a baby!' We both looked at the tiny little man in the back of our car, the whole thing felt completely surreal.

This was a theme that continued when we got home. As we tried to get to grips with this new parenting lark, things descended into some kind of nightmarish farce.

I had read a book which advocated feeding on demand and was determined this was the right path to take. However, this was definitely a bad idea for us, I was incredibly weak and our baby fed every hour and a half, all day and all night. I was like a walking zombie after the first few days.

Because of the (as yet undiagnosed) PTSD my body was constantly on high alert and I was unable to sleep. Even when my husband took the baby for a walk, I would be shaking with exhaustion and still I could not sleep.

And instead of sleeping what did I do? Did I rest? Did I watch television? Did I knit? No, I compulsively shopped online (that was the PTSD again). I bought every little thing in the world that might save us from this horrendous situation we found ourselves in. I felt like - If I can't runaway maybe I can shop us out of this mess of constant feeding, overwhelming exhaustion and general WTF have we doneness.

A few weeks into the randomness hubby gently explained that we could start using bottles for some of the night feeds. He cleverly said it would help him bond with the little man and so with some trepidation, I agreed. No one mentioned what a pain in the arse that was going to be, sterilising, cooling, warming...we had just added yet another layer of crap to do, arghhh!

A few days later my husband opened the door to another delivery (he was already concerned I was shopping too much after we received a christmas card from the John Lewis delivery guy!) and now in front of him was a fridge, he looked at me with confusion. 'But we already have a fridge darling' he said through gritted teeth.. I calmly and rationally explained that we could use this fridge in our bedroom, to keep the milk in, so we wouldn't have to keep going downstairs to get milk, as I was worried one of us might trip and fall down the stairs.

Now up until this point hubby had been worried, he had shown concern, he had been incredibly patient accepting delivery after delivery of shite while wondering what the hell had happened to his wife, who seemed to have taken leave of her senses.

He explained to me that putting a great big, noisy fridge in our room would not help me to sleep. Now he was no longer patient, he was running his fingers through his hair, he was saying he couldn't understand my actions, he was appalled at the appearance of a fridge (in my defence it was a small fridge).

Things got dark between us, there were tears, snot and strong words were spoken. I just couldn't see a way back from this, I felt like we were falling apart, then he said 'hon, I think you might be very unwell, I have been reading up on your symptoms and I think maybe we should go to the doctors.' Then he held me in his arms, while I continued to sob big, snotty, sobs into his jumper, realising he was probably right, thanking my lucky stars that he was my hubby.

After the first diagnosis he downloaded a book called Surviving Postnatal Depression and read it cover to cover, after the PTSD diagnosis we researched together online. He told me that in some of those stories the couples didn't stay together, but that we would, because this would make us even stronger.

Through it all he supported me and his little boy every step of the way. He learned about what was happening to me and why, he came home early from work whenever he could, he supported so many of my choices throughout my illness and recovery, he took me to my first counselling session, my baby massage classes and he looked after our little one, so I could rest.

I still thank my lucky stars everyday that he's my hubby!

P.S. My husband just read this and asked me to add that the fridge is now a beer fridge in the garage - so all's well that ends well.