Hurts Men Too

Saturday night BooBoo decided he was not going to sleep in his crib. Every time J put him down he woke up and began to yell. By attempt number three J was exhausted and frustrated and warned me that he was going to let BooBoo yell it out for a while, to see if he would put himself to sleep. I agreed to let him do it.

It did not work. I did not expect it would work. I've noticed over the past week that BooBoo is starting to understand that he is a separate little person, with a separate little will that does not have to mesh with his parents. I'm proud to see this. Seeing him turn his head and watch me walk away when I drop him off at daycare instead of gazing at the ceiling made me feel pretty good.

So what I see as a normal (albeit annoying) developmental milestone has left J reeling. And anxious.

“What is wrong with him” he asked, exasperated after wrapping the child up in a blanket and handing him to me to hold. While BooBoo stared at me, with eyes wide and full of immense concentration, I threw out a few suggestions – headache, ear infection, tummy trouble, just-plain-lonely.

“Should we take him to a doctor?”

Seventeen weeks into this journey and already I hate, hate, hate when J asks any variation of this question, beginning with the trigger phrase “should we”. What appears to be a perfectly innocuous inquiry from his point of view makes me want to beat down every single male and female who taught J, through words or stupid example, that he is incapable of trusting his instincts and intuition as a father. Not a parent. A father.

“I don't have an instinct for this” J says whenever BooBoo has cried a little too long because he is hungry, or needs a diaper changed or just-needs-to-cry-over-his-incompentent-staff-damnit.

My response – “Yes, you do. Spend more time with him.”

J dislikes that I do not step in or otherwise interfere when he cares for BooBoo. As long as he does not appear to be in danger or downright hysterical, I usually leave J to figure out what BooBoo needs with minimal interference from me. I suspect that he thinks, although he is smart enough to never admit it, that I'm abdicating responsibility.

Which I am. I'm abdicating sole responsibility of BooBoo to his biological father in order to avoid a dynamic in which I become the single decider and doer in all issues connected with the care and feeding of baby. I don't want that level of responsibility.

Still, there remains this idea that men like J are not competent enough to care for their own children. Members of J's own family are still express surprise at how comfortable I about J taking BooBoo to visit his grandparents, hang with the guys at Quaker Steak and Lube and watch J and his friends brew beer – without me along to supervise.