Читать книгу The Fussy Baby Book: Parenting your high-need child from birth to five - Martha Sears - Страница 25

As a mother, I realized I had to take good care of myself so I could take better care of my baby.

Having a high-need child helped us communicate more maturely with each other. There was always the “our needs versus her needs” dilemma. We had to steal time for ourselves, realizing that even the best parenting can be undermined if the marriage falls apart. I saw how important it was to Martha for me to validate her mothering. I frequently offered not only a reassuring “you know best”, but when I saw that her drive to give was outpacing her energy reserves, I realized I needed to intervene and help. I sometimes wondered when I would ever have my wife back, but then realized we couldn’t rewind this parenting tape. I was an adult, and Hayden would go through this stage only once.

From Martha’s perspective, this balancing act was more easily said than done. There were plenty of times when I managed to let my own neediness send Martha double messages (“I’ve got needs, too, you know”). She would feel this pressure even when I thought I was doing a good job putting Martha’s and Hayden’s needs ahead of my own. And we both quickly found out that it is difficult for some women to accept help with the responsibility of baby care even when they need it a lot. They often can’t see that they need nurturing for themselves. Nor do they know how to make their own needs a high priority. We discovered that Martha was very good at taking care of everyone else but really did not know how to take care of herself. (We are still working on this seventeen years later.)