How The Husband Very Nearly Ruined Mother’s Day

I’m an easy going person. You don’t get much more low maintenance than me. Take my birthday, for example. All I ask is that my mother calls me The Husband gets me a card. No one else even has to remember it. And I even remind The Husband when it is coming up!

Valentine’s Day? Whatever. A card would be nice, but if he forgets (which has been known to happen), I don’t really mind. Hey, he brings me flowers for no reason all the time, so who am I to complain if he doesn’t bring them that specific day?

And yes, I’d be pretty upset if he forgot Christmas, but only because that would mean he’d had some sort of major head injury.

So for my very first Mother’s Day, I had fairly low expectations. It’s not like I thought I’d have the day off – I’m still a major food source after all. But still, even I have my limits.

See, the night before Mother’s Day, Jack had a rough go of it. Of course, I’m talking about “rough” for Jack; basically, he woke up just when we were about to go to bed and required holding and rocking for about ninety minutes. And because Jack prefers me in the night, The Husband was frustrated in his attempt to give me a break and get Jack back to sleep, and I had to stay up a bit later than I would have liked.

Then, the next morning, Jack woke up earlier than usual, around 5:30 or so. Given that it was Mother’s Day, I asked The Husband if he would go get the baby and bring him to me to nurse in bed. Somewhat grudgingly, he did so. And wooo-eee, but did that baby stink. So I nursed him, and then said, “Do you think you could change his diaper?”

The Husband groaned and said, “I’m really really tired. Couldn’t you do it?”

So I did. And with only the teensiest bit of martyrdom, because, honestly, The Husband looked much more exhausted than I felt. I actually felt like I’d had a reasonable amount of sleep. And naturally, there was a little stinky Mother’s Day gift in the diaper for me. So I had to deposit the baby back in bed with The Husband and then deposit the gift into the toilet and clean up the diaper. (Remember, we use cloth.) Chore done, I returned to bed for what I thought would be an hour or so more of comfy family dozing.

Yeah, no. Jack was UP. He was awake. He was kicking. He was poking me really hard in the eye. And, as far as I could tell, The Husband was oblivious, sleeping away on his side of the bed. Finally, I gave up, got out of bed, and started to get dressed.

See, this is where my line is. I didn’t mind that I got less sleep than The Husband did the night before my very first Mother’s Day*. I didn’t mind having to get up and start my day an hour earlier than I had expected. I didn’t mind – much – having to change a poopy diaper first thing in the morning.

But I did mind The Husband’s sleeping in while I got up to take care of the baby on my very first Mother’s Day ever.

Any other day, I would have happily let him stay in bed, because he was clearly exhausted. But on Mother’s Day? So there I stood next to the bed, looking down at my comfy family, and feeling the prickly little feeling of self-pity and resentment. Should I ask him to get up? Should I let him sleep? I didn’t really want to ask him to get up, because, somehow, that ruined it. I wanted him to offer. And even though I knew he was tired, I really didn’t want to let him sleep in.

But apparently, The Husband’s guardian angel was on duty, because he had a prickly little feeling of his own. Opening one eye, he asked me, “Do you want me to get up with you?”

“Yes,” I said. And he did. And he fed the baby while I steamed some plums for later. Then he surprised me with a card that he put on the flowers he had brought home the day before. And then he acted in the exact same way as he does on every other Saturday and Sunday, and made me breakfast to order.

He makes it so easy to be low maintenance.

*The Husband claims that he was awake the whole time I was in Jack’s room. Since I was actually dozing, I must have gotten more sleep than he did after all. But I did not know this at the time.