Help-less Part II

I was back in school taking a full course load, so I didn't have the mountain of available time that I did in Pennsylvania. John wasn't working, so the understanding was that he would care for the baby while I was teaching or taking classes. The problem was, there was no quid pro quo in this relationship. He felt no obligation to care for me in the manner that I did for him when we were in PA. Though we were living solely on my income and my student loans, John would go out 4 nights per week, have drinks (here comes the Crown again), and buy drinks for others. This, he told me, was called networking. I was confused. From where I sat it looked much more like notworking.

Because his networking activities tended to keep him out until the wee hours of the morning, John would frequently be too tired to take care of Caleb. So, I would get up early on the days that I had class, feed and change Caleb, and then wake John up to take the reigns. More than once I came home to find that my son was sitting in the very same booster seat I had placed him in when I left. Caleb was watching Barney (the only dvd we owned that would restart itself) and John was knocked out on the couch. It infuriated me.

If that wasn't bad enough, John advised me that we needed to put Caleb in daycare part-time so he could "politic" during the day. I couldn't believe my ears. I had held our son down when it was most difficult - when he wasn't sleeping through the night, when he was frightfully underweight, when he suffered from severe GI problems. And now we were talking daycare... and we had no money.

I got some part-time work grading foreign language exams online to supplement our income, and found a daycare that I thought was suitable for Caleb. Yes, I acquiesced. I did it because I preferred to have my son cared for by people who were actually required to do the job. He'd be safer in daycare. Besides, I could watch him on the webcam throughout the day.

John and I continued this power struggle. There were things he refused to do, and there were things I expected him to do. He would NOT bathe Caleb (he just didn't like to, he said). He would NOT get up with Caleb in the morning (he would consider it if I were willing to wake him up when I heard Caleb screaming, but wasn't the point of him getting up with the baby that I would get to sleep in some mornings?). To me, he was useless, and I was helpless. It was time to go to counseling.