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Pssst…. Pssst. “Hey, doc,” The man says while giving a furtive glance at his wife. “Can I talk to you a second about my wife?”
While the new mom bundles up their baby after her check-up and shots, the new dad tries to pull me aside. One of the joys of what I do as a family physician is that I get to take care of this beautiful new baby and the parents.
“She’s not the same....like I can’t do anything right. We used to never fight. But now I’m always getting yelled at…can’t you give her something?”
Uh, like what, a happy pill for the wife? (Wouldn’t every man want one?) So this big burly dad is living in fear of his sweet, diminutive, but very tired looking wife.
Ok, dude, here’s the deal. Maybe it’s you.
Let’s say you carried a bowling ball around for about nine months inside your pants.
That’s not fun, but what if in order to get rid of the bowling ball you have to plop a golf ball out of your you-know-what (dinky). Ok, while you’re blanching and making all kinds of faces as you complete that visual, imagine that every time the baby cries one of your two “boys” down there swells up. And that happens, oh, say, more times than you check the scores on your ESPN Smartphone.
“Ohhh…so maybe I should hold off a bit on pushing intimacy, doc? It’s kinda making her testy.”
(Ya think so?)
So, while you’re sore and feeling like someone put clothespins on your nipples too, you gotta clean the baby poop and take care of all the extra cleaning and house care. Why? Men usually have a different “standard,” so moms have to keep checking up on them, even having to take care of them, too.
For instance, if you had a big dump in your pants, would you be happy with someone taking two big swipes across your rear and slapping the pants back on? Probably not. In fact you’d probably be outside power-washing yourself.
“Ok doc, I get the picture…I’ve gotta be part of the solution, help out more, or not be part of the problem, like making more messes and being more understanding. But she’s still sooo emotional!”
Have you ever gone without sleep every single night for a long time straight?
Think of the brain as having two parts: the very deep, primitive emotional side which functions on reflex and instinct and hasn’t changed in thousands of years. The other half of the brain is our cognitive, rational, logical center, which today, in modern times probably has to deal with more gigabytes of information per day than ancient man had to in a whole year.
We need sleep in order to process all that information. When we sleep and dream at night, think of it as your computer defragmenting its hard drive. The brain is really not sleeping; it’s sorting out information, analyzing it, storing some, discarding others. Ever heard the terms “let me sleep on that” or after a good night’s sleep, I came up with a better idea”?
Taking most medicines, or alcohol, to sleep is like just shutting the computer down. Ok, it’s off, but is it defragmenting? When you turn it back on, i.e. wake up, is the cognition, or processing speed still slow and glitchy?
A new mom, even without sleep, still has to get up and function every day. If the logical rational part of the brain, with no defragmenting restful sleep is slow and glitchy, guess which part of the brain she’ll resort to? The emotional brain, which will not be nice to you if you test its patience.
“Ahhh, ok doc, so she’s gotta get some recovery sleep…I can handle that…”
Can you? It’s not just the time you give her taking care of the baby, it’s also how well you do it—to the level that she feels comfortable your poop-cleaning skills for the baby are as good as you’d clean yourself……Ok, I can hear the snide comments now….
So for all you new moms out there, hope this helps. We men love you and our new babies dearly. Sometimes we feel helpless; truth is, we’re just clueless. But we’re trainable.
