Foundations, deux

After our son was born, my doting boyfriend turned into something else. It’s hard to describe now, 2 year later, what I mean, but I will try.

I explained to him before that this is not my first rodeo and what to expect. New moms are exhausted, hormones are crazy, our bodies are healing, we have this tiny human that is demanding all out time and attention. I am going to be tired, touched out and needing alone time.

I tried to explain that being a new mom meant you are worried they are not eating enough. They will not stop nursing. They won’t go to sleep. They won’t wake up and ease your engorgement. They cry incessantly. They sleep so soundly you wake them in middle of the night to make sure they are still alive. They puke and shit and piss on everything, including you, and you don’t know the last time you had a shower. And for many mother’s our brains just ooze hormones that tell us this is pure fucking magic.

It doesn’t do this for men unless they are really involved. Douche Bag thought he wanted to be really involved but this crying, sleeping, bundle that only wanted it’s mother was not his idea of fun. Every day of paternity leave he was out doing something with his friends or brothers. Then suddenly he returns to work and when he comes home and life goes back to humdrum normalcy (as normal as it gets with a newborn), he feels neglected. All of my time is eaten up by this tiny being. He became one of those weird men that were jealous of the baby.

He decided to take it up on himself to share an article about men feeling left out after the baby is born. The advise that said *I* should be going out of my way to make sure he feels included. I should be showering him with affection. I should be making sure to take time out of my day for alone time.

I was dealing with a baby who had reflux, though 2 am was the time to get up to coo, I jumped all sorts of hoops to get him to sleep, and was just a needy, fussy, unhappy baby. I was under slept, may a bit of baby blues going on and over whelmed. I told him that it was bullshit that I am recovering from child birth with a new baby and you can’t slow down enough to make sure there is food in the fridge but *I* need to add more to my plate to ease your insecurity issues? I told him he needed to figure it out because I was fucking busy.

His drinking picked up again. Slowly. We were busy leading lives and adjusting to a newborn and I honestly can’t tell you when I realized that it was a problem but it was evident by the time I returned to work.

There was not a single day care opening for infants and out of options, we asked his brother to watch him. It was only 3 days a week and it seemed very do able. His brother was very attached to Jr, I think it brought up memories of his own kids that he hadn’t seen in 6 years and the baby took to him easily, which I think fueled Douche Bags jealousy. His baby preferred his brother. On top of that, his drinking caused more fights with us, and his brother would attempt to intervene and calm him down, often coming to my defense. He began accusing us of having an affair. He started throwing around passive aggressive statement that I was having an affair with his brother, but usually only when drunk. I replied sarcastically in a text something to the effect of, sure I am cheating with our low life brother. It was very clearly sarcasm, even if it is difficult to detect in a text. He took that as my “admission.”

Mind you, his brother was a couch surfing alcoholic bum that I didn’t really trust with our baby but was out of option until a day care opened up. He was not someone I was attracted physically, intellectually, or emotionally. Looking back, it was certainly nice to have help with the baby suddenly after dealing with Douche Bags lack of patience. It was also nice to have someone to talk to when I had felt isolated and alone with a brooding man child who didn’t want to help but expected me to console his bruised ego. I had also told Douche Bag shortly before returning to work that I felt disconnected to him, that I wasn’t sure if I still loved him.  During the next few months, we threatened to break up, then made up, threatened to break up, and made up again several times. He was lying about his drinking, was out of money all the time, and had charges from bars I don’t even know how he had time to go to. We finally found another baby sitter and his brother wasn’t in the picture any more, but he was still getting drunk.

Then he drove drunk with my kids in the car.

I was done. Completely, utterly, fucking done. I couldn’t trust him to be with the kids. He was lying to my face. He was a pissy whiney fucking cunt when drunk, and it had been going on for months. I left with the kids to visit my mother and told him he needed to be out. I didn’t even pack our bags. I just got into the car and drove and by the time I calmed down, realized I was half way there on the 2 hour trip.

I came home and it was obvious that he made no effort to move out and had been on a weekend bender. He said he would go to counseling. He said he would go to AA. He said he could completely quit drinking. And he did do all of those things.

It wasn’t fucking perfect. Just because someone quits drinking doesn’t mean all the bad shit they did is suddenly better. But I told myself that I would be willing to give it a chance as long as he wasn’t drinking. Quitting drinking brought up other shit. He was clingier. He needed more reassurance. He had more anxiety about work that he wasn’t dealing with well. He got on antidepressants but quickly stopped them because of side effects. It often felt like I had to parent him.

But there were a lot of good times too. After he quit drinking, he finally developed a close bond with Jr. He started being more of a parental figure all around. My family finally gained some respect for him. After he hit 6 months sobriety, I finally gained some respect back for him. He wanted another baby but I was not ready. Our little one was just past a  year old and we were just starting to rebuild our relationship.

At his one year sobriety mark, I was finally comfortable with the idea of buying a house together and thinking that things were going to get better. We decided that we wanted to buy a house before having another baby but then we had a condom break. It was his birthday. We laughed it off as a birthday gift and that one broken condom ended up with a positive pregnancy test.

It was sooner than planned, but we moved forward with getting pre-approved for a loan and started looking at houses. There was a few loose ends I needed to tie up; my ex was still on my property deed so I had to get that fixed and we did a few things to boost our credit score. We had to buy a new car after a car accident… Before I knew it, it was fourth of July weekend.

We were headed home from camping and he asked me to send a note to his brother to let him know what time we would be home. I opened up his text messages and saw a girl’s name I didn’t recognize a few texts back on his phone.

Her name was Brittany. The texts went back to October. He had sent her pictures of our son while we were out on family outings. He discussed dates they were going to meet up. She had called it off because he still had a girlfriend. That was February. The same month we enrolled in the home owner ship classes.