If you’re married, you probably already know how refreshingly mundane the fights can already be, sparking, if the timing and moods are just so, over everything from exactly how egregious it is on a scale of 1 to 10 to accidently buy the grody low-fat yogurt, to precisely how rude it is when you got interrupted while trying to explain what it is about the radio live version of Whitesnake’s “Is This Love” you heard on Jack FM that morning that sounds so stupid.
But, BOOM! You just threw a baby into the mix, and now you shall embark upon some of the most ridiculous kerfuffles you ever imagined, good old-fashioned vis-à-vis-es that will mystify and amaze, proof merely that you’re just two crazed, forced insomniacs deep in the crazy funhouse of parenting with no concept of reality, just like, yawn, everyone else who ever bred. (Well, except for people who can afford night nurses – those people are clinking daytime margaritas right now with well-moisturized, whimsical abandon.)
Embrace these fights! Fights are nothing to fear, for they are where all the real negotiating of relationships take place, ya dig? Although, when you find yourself whisper-hissing at your husband at 3 a.m. that you can’t believe he didn’t realize that patting the baby on the head would OBVIOUSLY KEEP HER AWAKE INSTEAD OF COMFORTING HER BACK TO SLEEP, you will perhaps wish a professional mediator would show up just to tell you both professionally to shut the fuck up.
Of course, the best fights are the ones where you realize you’re both sleep-deprived assholes and are not in fact in a darkly funny sitcom. The thing is, though, that’s all of them. Cue laugh track! To wit:
Incident 1: Your husband makes you a plate of dinner which he has lovingly prepared, sits it down on the coffee table in front of you while you are on the couch nursing the baby, the very baby he created with you.
Problem:
He puts the plate approximately two inches out of your reach.
Transgression:
Duh, not only did he not even notice that he set the plate down just beyond your grasp, but he has not intuitively deduced that you are starving and need rescue.
Boiling point:
He actually begins to eat from HIS OWN plate of steamingly hot and nutritious food without even once glancing over to you or noting peripherally that you cannot reach your plate of food, the food which you MUST consume every 1.5 hours to nurse his child.
Verdict:
He wears glasses. You should at least give him five full seconds to look around before exploding into a fit of hormonal hungry sobs. Also, consider wearing a feedbag.
Incident 2: One morning, your husband brings you the very baby he knocked you up with so that you can nurse her, then wordlessly slips away to take a liberatingly hot shower like he’s suddenly some kind of free-spirited bachelor in Vegas without a care in the world.
Problem:
Uh, there’s this thing called you having to pee, which you do have to do, and you have to do it so badly. How are you supposed to pee when you have a baby stuck to you for half an hour?
Transgression:
The forced holding of pee is not just rude, but in some states, a verifiable grounds for legal action. Plus, you had a baby, which has made you at least temporarily and possibly forever a very inefficient pee-er. This is basically like insulting a handicapped person.
Boiling point:
When he gets out of the shower he actually has the nerve to act not just fresh and clean, not just like someone who peed exactly when he felt the urge and not a second later, but also, mystifyingly blindsided by your protest, like you’re some kind of insane prison guard restricting his shower use, and not in the fun way!
Verdict:
There’ll be no prison games, but you’re definitely insane. But he should definitely ask you if need to pee. Because, you know, sometimes when you first wake up you don’t even totally know you have to pee. You need a minute! But then suddenly you really do have to pee right away. Pee courtesy for person with baby attached to them. It’s, like, in the Constitution.
You go to the park and realize you both forgot the baby’s diaper bag. This is the diaper bag, by the way, for the very same baby that your husband impregnated you with.
Problem:
That baby just pooped and now all you have on you that even resembles another diaper is a freakin’ mini liner. You know, so thin and absorbent you’ll forget you’re even wearing a liner?
Transgression:
You both forgot the fucking diaper bag, you idiots!
Boiling point:
He always says he’s going to get it! But this time you acted like you were going to so he just thought you were going to! But you thought HE was going to because he always does! Doesn’t he know you were just saying you would get it this one time to be nice but you obviously thought HE would get it?
Verdict:
Idiots.
You’re riding in the backseat with your baby, the baby that your husband implanted into you, trying to calm her fussiness.
Problem:
He keeps braking abruptly like an asshole, jerking you around as you’re trying to read Rainy Day Friends.
Transgression:
Whiplash while straining to read in an animated tone is no way to get blowjobs back into your life.
Boiling point:
Me: Gah, what’s with the braking?
Him: What? There’s a lot of traffic and this is your car, and I’m not used to driving it.
Me: But if you’re saying you know why it’s happening why can’t you make it stop? You don’t EVEN CARE ABOUT ME!
Him: Oh come on, I’m trying to brake softer!
Me: Obviously not trying hard enough seeing as how YOU’RE STILL DOING IT!
Verdict:
Batshit crazy much? And yet, let’s be fair! There’s nothing worse than whomever interrupts an attempt to calm a baby.
The baby your husband caused you to conceive is crying inconsolably and your husband takes baby to comfort her.
Problem:
She’s teething, and the only thing that works according to all informal polls is giving her an expensive gadget she’s normally not allowed to touch, or nursing.
Transgression:
Husband tries list of things to soothe her, all of which are NOT expensive gadgets she’s normally not allowed to touch OR nursing.
Boiling Point:
Me: UGH, just give her to me!
Him: I’ve got it under control, just stop it!
Me: Sure, if you define “under control” as crying even harder than before!
Him: Well of course she’s STILL crying after you stomped in here being all Miss Stompy!
Me: You’re Mr. STOMPY! I’m the one who showed you how NOT to stomp but you couldn’t stop stomping cause that’s all you do, just stompin’ around like a big stomping freak!
Verdict:
You’re BOTH CRAZY. And, you need a night nurse.
Tracy Moore is a writer living in Los Angeles. She can hear your stomping from a mile away.
Image by Steve Dressler.