For Those Who Parent Without A Partnerby mommytotwo | More from this Blogger 15 Sep 2006 07:29 AM I am writing a special blog for all parents who do this gig without the help of a spouse or a significant other, or who often have a spouse who travels. My hat is off to you all. What brought this on? Simple. My husband went away on business this week and I realized just how incredibly hard this parenting job is without him there to help me. Don't get me wrong he has been away from our family before, one time for one month while we were in the process of moving to South Carolina. However, I had the support of close family and friends, this time, I didn't have that. It seems to me that everything went wrong this week that possibly could. Not major things, but things that I would have handled differently had my husband been home. Let's start with Sunday night. We had a storm, it was late and I was just getting to bed. I had literally just laid my head down on my pillow when I heard a large boom and we lost power. I get up, shaking at the stillness in my home, not enjoying prowling around my house in the dark at all. I find some candles and venture outside, figuring our entire neighborhood must have lost power. How odd was it that my house seemed to be the only house on the block without power? I go back inside my house and I begin to cry. I was panicked. What do I do? I have no idea if it is our circuit breaker and nothing was getting me downstairs into our garage with a candle. Too creepy. I call my husband, because he is 2000 miles away, so he should be able to help. He doesn't answer his cell phone. I can't remember the name of our electric company, even though I pay that darn bill myself every month. My husband calls me back and encourages me call the electric company. I call them after looking in the phone book for their name and of course, they send someone out to fix it. It wasn't our circuit breaker after all, but something was hit by lightening and it knocked out our power. They fixed it after close to two hours. Crisis averted, but still enough to have me wondering how women do this without someone there for support. The next night, my boys are back from a visit with the grandparents. My youngest son doesn't always sleep well after a visit away. He wakes often wanting to make sure Mommy is close by. This particular night, he wakes up with a small sleep episode; he is shaking and crying uncontrollably. I comfort him, rocking him in his rocking chair, when he yells my name and proceeds to spew vomit all over me. I was dripping in throw-up. Of course, I had to laugh at the entire thing, because my son was perfectly fine once he vomited all over me. Now, normally my husband I would tag-team this type of a situation. I would hand him the puking child and clean up while he rocked our son. This time around I had to figure out how to clean myself up and comfort our son and get his floor cleaned up, all without my husband's assistance. Again, my hat went off to those single parents. Let's head to Tuesday when the new stove we purchased was to be delivered and our old one removed. The deliveryman came up to unhook my old stove only to tell me that he couldn't because it was hardwired to our home. I had no idea what this meant, but I was told that they couldn't uninstall a hardwired appliance and that we would need an electrician to come out and put in an outlet or hardwire the new stove to the same spot. Great. Okay, so this is something I would typically handle even if my husband were home, but he would be home for me to bounce ideas off on what should be done. I found an electrician who actually came out that afternoon and put in an outlet. The problem? He had to un-hardwire our old stove and couldn't just plug that old stove into the new outlet because it wasn't hooked up that way. No big deal you say? Well, the new stove was not going to be redelivered to our home until Thursday, and it was Tuesday. So, I have not had a working stove from Tuesday until late Thursday morning. Of course, had my husband been home I would have just sent him for take out, but he wasn't around and I didn't feel like dragging my boys out for take out, so we microwaved everything. Let me add that these incidents on top of the fact that I can't seem to find the time this week to get my daily workouts in, I just simply can't imagine this alone. My husband always fed the boys breakfast in the morning while I worked out, so I could get my work out in. So, I write this blog for all of you parents out there who do this alone. My issues this week were minor, but they showed me just how hard it has to be to not have that other person there. I have enjoyed my bonding time with my boys, but man, it hasn't always been easy to not have that extra help. I honestly don't know how parents do this without help. After this week, I must say that I admire you all for the job you do; you truly do the work of two parents in the body of one. Amazing! Relevantparenting tags User Comments  Michele Cheplic |
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