"Sometimes I feel like I'm just a babysitter..."

Tues. August 20, 1991

     I just started my period tonight. It's the second one since having Elizabeth. The first one was July 27. That means this one was 25 days. Shorter than they used to be. Last month it happened on a Sat. & I had bad cramps so Guy took care of Elizabeth while I slept most of the aft. But he won't be here to take care of Elizabeth if I have cramps tomorrow. And she just had her 4 mo. shots today. She slept off & on all aft & evening. I hope she sleeps all night. Her 2 mo. shots only gave her a knot on one leg. Hopefully she won't get any more than that this time. She's been taking Tylenol like last time but I don't know how much of this last dose went down. I told Guy she'd swallow it better if he only put in a couple of drops at a time but he ignored me. It looked like she pushed most of it back out. Sometimes it's like he doesn't care what I think. Maybe it's because at the beginning I was so unsure about everything & always asking what I should or shouldn't do with regards to taking care of her. Whenever I got to the point where I did have an opinion about how to do something he'd either ignore me or tell me it needed to be done differently. And whenever I try to tell him he should be doing something differently he gets upset with me & says don't I know he wouldn't do anything to hurt her. I know he wouldn't on purpose but sometimes he doesn't pay attention to what he's doing. Like when he feeds her–he doesn't hold her, he just lays her on his lap, usually while he's watching TV. And the bottle doesn't stay at the right angle. But if I say anything to him he gives me a look like 'mind your own business.' So any more I'm afraid to say anything at all when he does something I don't think is right. Sometimes I feel like I'm just a babysitter, like I'm just the woman who takes care of her til her daddy gets home. Her face just lights up when she sees him. I always have to coax a smile out of her. And she laughed for the first time weekend before last for him. She'd done a little the week before that but this was a real laugh. She won't do it for me though. And she still doesn't look a thing like me, probably never will. If I hadn't been awake when she was born I wouldn't know she was really mine. As the photographer at Olan Mills said, "all that hard work you did & she came out looking like him!" Sometimes I think that maybe when I'm out with her & Guy's not with me, someone will take her away from me because she doesn't look like me and there's no way to prove she's mine.

     Sometimes I wish I'd known beforehand what it's really like to have a baby. Nobody ever talks about how you lose yourself after you become a mother. It's like you've become nothing and the baby is all important. In a way she is. Because really, what life's all about is passing it on to your children. But I never expected to feel the way I do about how much time & attention she needs. I just never have time for myself any more. I'd love to be able to sleep as long as I want, get up when I want, do what I want when I want. But that'll probably never happen again.