Filed under: Uncategorized
July 11, 2009 • 6:11 pm 0
Parental Love
Why I Love My Child More Than My Husband
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Jeanne Sager:
When your three-year-old climbs onto your lap and asks, “Do you love me the best, Mama?,” what do you say? “Well, yes, but not as much as I love your Daddy?” I don’t think so. And yet, when I got pregnant, I received some not-so-gentle advice from the older women in my life: “You’re going to love this baby more than life itself. Just don’t tell your husband,” said one. “You don’t want to neglect your husband, dear. Let him know he’s still the most important person in your world,” said another. I didn’t take their arguably sage advice. Here’s why.
Since the 1980s, at least two dozen studies have posited the idea that the quality of a marriage drops once the couple has kids. These studies say that marital dissatisfaction comes from parents’ loss of freedom and their childless status quo.
And when kids leave the nest, studies show that parents are happier than at any other time in their relationship. Although they miss their kids, they revel in their new freedoms and revisit old marital activities, sometimes ones they haven’t experienced since before the first child was born. All this should have terrified me and my husband when we started The Talk — the one about trying for a baby. After all, I’d heard for years that kids could break a marriage. But instead, my husband and I talked about money.
My biggest worry was that the mounting cost of diapers would revive our old checkbook quarrels, so we agreed not to fight about spending on the baby. Research shows that parents who plan ahead avoid the relationship-ruining discord the old studies talk about.
A recent study by professors at the University of California at Berkeley found a flaw in the bulk of the “kids ruin marriage” studies: they didn’t take into account parental mindset before baby made three.
Parents who disagreed about making a baby, parents who were complacent about the process, and parents who never had the chance to plan (the so-called “oops” pregnancy) were much more likely to struggle post-birth. Professors Philip and Carolyn Cowan report that parents who walk in with their eyes wide open and all their wits about them are in for a pleasant surprise.
Planning parenthood makes for happier parents, in other words. When I gave birth to my daughter, we weren’t looking to fix our marriage with a baby. We weren’t on two different pages, one of us baby-hungry and the other just going along for the ride. We — both of us — wanted to be parents, which left us both open to falling in love; this time, that all-consuming love you have for your child. And while we loved — and still love — each other, when we looked at the little bundle placed in my arms in the delivery room, we were — as a couple — hopelessly, totally gone. We love each other as two best friends who have shared passion and triumph and had a meeting of the minds. In the other, we found our other half, and we were fulfilled. And we love our daughter, too. Fiercely. And in ways that we can’t love each other.
It’s partly because we created her — although I firmly believe that parents who adopt have as strong a claim to the love of a child as we do. It’s also because we chose her — we actively made a decision to become parents. Since our daughter was born, love is Saturday mornings when I stay in bed while he gets up to turn on cartoons and pour cereal in bowls; it’s the Sunday mornings I let him doze while I cuddle on the couch with our toddler and a pile of books.
It’s a kiss and a hug on the way out the door to work … followed by a high-five, as directed by the three-year-old who gets the same routine. And I love him all the more for letting her play cruise director. My husband and I became parents because we want to give everything we have to our daughter, and the reward will be watching her walk down a graduation aisle, get married, have children of her own.
When she makes a mistake or lets us down, it doesn’t decrease the love, it makes us work harder. But perhaps the biggest difference lies as much in the past as it does in the future. With a child, you will always be her parent. Without me, there is no her. With a spouse, there is still that life before you met, the period of time when you were two distinct people. I am still me without my husband. Our daughter isn’t. Together we fell in love and made a child. Together, we fell in love with that child. As my husband says, “It’s just a different kind of love completely.”
He calls how he feels about our daughter a complete attachment, a bond that he never saw being created and yet can’t imagine ever undoing. He picked me (well, he asked me out!), he dated me, and he slowly fell in love with me, but he loved our daughter from the second she came screeching into the world.
So when my three-year-old works her way into my lap and asks, “Do you love me the best, Mama?” I wrap my arms around her and reassure her, “Yup, Mommy loves you more than anything else in the whole wide world.” Because I do. And her daddy is OK with that — because he does too.
Filed under: Uncategorized
June 28, 2009 • 6:44 pm 0
Custom Carseat Cover
I’ve been thinking about getting a new carseat cover for baby2 since I don’t particularly care for the one we got for baby1, and there’s really no point in buying a whole new one.
Luckily for me we discovered at the Babytime Expo that people make them now. There are sellers on ebay and etsy. I’m talking to an etsy seller about doing something similar to this, except in lavender, baby2′s color 
Filed under: Uncategorized
June 7, 2009 • 7:34 pm 0
The Smart Crockpot
So we got a crockpot, just like everyone else and their mother does, when we got married. I actually registered for it b/c it looked nice online, haha! But I only used it like maybe once in the almost 4 years we’ve been married. Since we’ve been in law school, 3 years now, it has been accumulating dust along with all of our other marriage procured kitchen accessories, b/c let’s face it, neither of us ever have time to cook. Thus, the micro, and occasionally the oven have been our primary means of eating.
Life will never be the same.
I hadn’t used the crockpot b/c I thought you could only do like 8+ hours, meaning it would have to be on when we weren’t home & the house would burn down, etc. But, now that the nanny is here w/ DD during the day, I decided to give it a shot. That is when I discovered it has 4 settings!!! 4, 6, 8, and 10 hour! How could I not have known this? That means that I can throw stuff in there when I get home from work at like 1:30 and we have food that actually tastes good by dinner time. I have cooked 3 times in the past week, which is like how much I would cook in a year. I know they have liners now too so you don’t have to wash it. However, washing it hasn’t been that bad b/c nothing has gotten stuck on yet. Having a 1-2 day turn around & keeping the lid on has kept anything from getting baked on.
This is awesome. Every mother/person with no time to cook/monitor timers should get one of these, ASAP!
Filed under: Uncategorized
June 2, 2009 • 5:54 pm 0
An Awesome Lawmama Day
I think it started last night when husband texted me that he would get Carl’s Jr. on the way home from his Bar study session at the library. A $6 burger, chocolate shake, and chili fries make any normal night great. Plus Big Bang Theory and Rules of Engagement are on, totally awesome.
I spent the morning with my friend and her husband at the California Bar Swearing in Ceremony, and it was so fantastic. The judge-speakers emphasized several themes including living a whole life (with several mentions of family, and a statement that having the kiddos there was ok-this was the admittees’ day!), maintaining your integrity/reputation, giving back–especially in the given economy, and making the profession proud. Solely due to pregnancy hormones, I’m sure, I almost wept everytime they said something that really hit home, which was mostly everything. It was also so funny to see my Criminal Procedure professor seated up front with the rest of the CA Ct. of Appeals
After a wonderful lunch & good conversation, I headed home to hang with kiddo and husband, and our grocery delivery finally came. And so did our replacement video monitory, finally! It is so funny to watch a toddler falling asleep, and kiddo is incredibly active, constantly standing up, laying down, rolling around, playing with her feet! No wonder her baby sister is always beating me up from the inside, she’s just training for her post-natal lifestyle!
Then, baby girl started her winding down with almost no crying, which is the opposite of how she has been lately because of her teething (we think). Anyway, it was just such a great, typical, nothing out of the ordinary day. Just another reason I love my life.
Filed under: Uncategorized
May 31, 2009 • 6:41 pm 0
The CA Bar Exam Sucks!
And I’m not even preparing for it. My husband is gone almost all day and night, and even when he is here, he’s not really “here” mentally, I mean how could he be? It’s the most all consuming thing ever that takes every ounce of energy and brain power to prepare for–3 days of hell to be exact. And yet as much as it sucks for him, it really sucks for me too, and bebe. I know I’ve got it easy compared to him, and oh won’t my turn come soon enough, but I still hate how much it sucks, and I wish that it didn’t. I guess that makes me feel minutely better, but not really 
Filed under: Uncategorized
May 31, 2009 • 6:37 pm 0
The Perfect Desk
Is the subject line, or something similar to it, of the email I received from PBK. What’s funny is that it’s all about finding the right desk for “your child.” Funny, didn’t think a 17 month old needed a “study space.” This one’s cute anyway:
PBK desk
Filed under: Uncategorized
April 28, 2009 • 11:00 am 0
Victory Gardens
I am so excited about this! I applied last night, but regardless of whether or not they pick me, I am pretty sure we will do it. Very cool.
Filed under: Uncategorized
April 26, 2009 • 11:24 am 0
Urban Farming
This is something that currently has my interest. I want to learn as much as I can in the hopes that I can one day grow (at least) all of the vegetables my family will eat. Very cool.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Recent Comments