We can sometimes get caught up in the quagmire of everyday life that you forget to enjoy your spouse. Today’s exercise is to reconnect with your spouse by purposefully neglecting an activity you would normally do so you can spend time with your spouse doing something he would love to do.
You are going to laugh but I gave up sleep or more precisely, my sleep routine and sleep. Since I take the night shift my nights usually go like this, come home, relieve DH, prep bottles of milk, clean pump parts, pack parts, make and pack lunch, start dinner, breastfeed, eat dinner, bg starts her nap, go through some personal email, bg wakes up, play with her, get her ready for sleep, lay out clothing for tomorrow, pack bags, make dinner for dh, get baby to sleep (and/or bathe her). After she’s asleep, I spend some time with DH as he eats his dinner, we sometimes watch a tv show and then I get ready for bed (shower, decompress & sleep).
I gave up the shower, decompress part and spent extra time with my husband.
We took that time to watch a movie, a whole movie. Usually, I watch 30 minutes and then pass out or tend to our baby. This time, I watched the whole movie without getting up once.
It was nice and I think my husband really enjoyed it because he tried to put on another movie right afterwards. It was nice to just sit there and hold hands and watch a movie and not stop ever 15 minutes to either tend to the baby, tend to ourselves or talk about the baby. I made an effort to not talk about our baby during the movie. I think I slipped twice.
I think I learned that my husband doesn’t need much, he just needs me and me alone sometimes. I forget how much of me has been taken from him and reshifted to our baby. He hasn’t complained and I don’t think it’s a bad thing but I should try to make a more concerted effort to spend a bit more uninterrupted time with him.
How did I feel about this exercise? If you asked me this when I first started the dare, I’d probably say that I could feel resentment to losing some much needed sleep but I don’t feel that way. Yes, I was super tired but I’m not planning to do this everyday and in all honesty, I don’t blink at losing sleep for my baby. It is tough as I know my time is limited and there is so much to do but I need to prioritize my husband too a bit.
I am still following my New Year’s resolution of focusing on me but this is for me. A happy kid is a happy mom and a happy husband is a happy wife so I will try to give my husband some uninterrupted me time at least once a week.
