****Warning, this post isn’t very nice, so stop reading if negativity bothers you****
This week is daddy’s week with Dom and then his mom will take him for two weeks on some kind of vacation. Then every other week until school starts, he’s back with us. Joy. This is the schedule my husb worked out in court and he’s happy. While my husb was fighting this out, I was trying to have a baby with no luck. Imagine the frustration on my part.
Ever since my husb and I were married, he’s been focused on getting visitations. His other baby-mama, let’s call her “The Bitch,” decided to play custody games while we were dating. “You’ll never see him again” was her favorite thing to say to my husb. Pretty damn cruel, you triflin’ Bitch. She’s the one that cheated and put the doubt of paternity in my husb’s head. So of course once that was settled, he’s was gonna want his child. Duh. If the experience was easier from the start, I think the whole situation would’ve been better. I sat on the sidelines not too sure what was gonna happen.
When he got some custody, it was after years of just me and him. Imagine the shock to our relationship. I had a health scare with PID right before our wedding and was told it could affect my fertility. So our course we decided let’s try to make a baby right after all the antibiotics did their job. That was oct. 2005. Month after month of periods and then trying to bond with a 3 year old that only wanted his mommy all the time. Talk about stress. I cried. I screamed. My husb and I fought over everything. I would tell Dom something and my husb would come in and say the opposite. So any authority I had was useless. I hated that. He wanted to me be more affectionate and call The Bitch every once in a while to have pow wows about Dom. That ain’t happening.
Dom would come over every week with a cold. Bronchial coughing, sniffles, sneezes, the works. Now being a nurse, germs are extremely yucky. I had to sanitize everything and I would never want to give him hugs because he was always sick and cough all over the place. Now I know kids get sick playing at preschool, but the fact that I didn’t know what he was exposed to made it worse. (At least with MeMe, she’ll be with us 99.9% of the time so if she’s sick, I’ll mostly know where it came from).
Anyway, my husb and I grew apart as I noticed we were striving for different things. I was trying to get pregnant and he was all about working with his lawyer. I didn’t get much attention. After a year of no pregnancies, I went to a fertility seminar and did some testing. My mom was given a business card of a fertility center by a patient that had success and she suggested I check them out. It was cost us out of pocket $ to do, but I was gung-ho about doing it. My husb wasn’t as thrilled. He was happy with his son and felt that I should be just as content being a stepmom. It was an ongoing battle because I was upset that he was only thinking about getting what he wanted. Our goals were completely different.
I started having waves of anxiety whenever it was a visitation weekend. One day, I was crying and my mom helped me find a counselor. I saw one about 5 times, she tried to get me to see that a child didn’t give me anxiety, it was my husb’s behavior when the child was there. She gave me pointers on how to bond with Dom, which didn’t really work. She went on vacation and I never went back. I guess me and husb should’ve saw her together. Anyway, we made it to the fertility center after my husb dragged his feet and finally focused on having our own baby. My husb was afraid that there would be a divide between the love for my kids and his son, like what happened between his father and half-brother. Biology is no joke.
My observations of Dom:
Dom has a mellow temperment. He doesn’t run around and isn’t unruly breaking stuff.
He’s quiet, shy, and it can be like pulling teeth to have a conversation with him. We finally told him about the baby and he smiled. How do you feel about having another baby to play with? “I don’t know.” Are you happy? “I guess.”
He lacks imagination sometimes and I bet it is because of all the TV and video games. Husb bought him a Vtech, Vsmile and now the Wii. He prefers to spend his time in front of a screen.
He doesn’t play with his toys unless you tell him to. That’s weird to me. I always say let’s give them to less fortunate kids through Goodwill or send them to Ghana.
He doesn’t play outside on a beautiful sunny day unless you force him.
He just started playing with the kid across the street after months of prompting.
He misses things right in front of him, I have a feeling he’ll need glasses like my husb did as a kid.
If you don’t tell him what to do, he’s aimless. He’ll sit in the dark talking to himself. My husb hates to see him bored and is constantly trying to stimulate him (even if it means putting him in front of a screen). I don’t do that. I think he’s old enough to know how to entertain himself or say “can I go to the park” or “go ride my bike” or “do you want to play a game.” His mom has so many kids in her house that I bet he’s bullied by his brothers and they tell him what to do.
And guess what, he’s sick this week. Bronchial coughing, sneezing, sniffles, just like the olden days. Yuck. So unfortunately, I don’t get too close because I don’t want to get sick while pregnant. Hopefully after this week, it’ll be gone unless he keeps getting germs from The Bitch’s house.
I’m definitely learning from the mistakes made raising Dom.
