The baby monitor buzzes to life at 3:28 a.m.—more dependable than any alarm clock I’ve owned. The room is still dark, but my schedule stopped syncing with the outside world months ago. Sleep, once routine, now comes in fragmented bursts.
I scoop up Sean from his crib. His cries rise with urgency, filling me with both love and exhaustion. The nursing chair has become my command center—where I bond with my son and quietly fall apart.
Before motherhood, I was a sharp, efficient marketing exec. Now my world has shrunk to feeding schedules, diaper changes, and the unending chaos of home life. Success means getting lunch and maybe folding laundry before collapsing.
Trey, my husband, doesn’t get it. He leaves each morning polished and stress-free, returning to a home that looks like it survived a natural disaster. His only comment: “Looks like a tornado hit.” I try to explain, but he brushes me off—insisting I’m home all day, so why can’t I keep up?
When I buy a robot vacuum with birthday money, hoping for a little help, he scoffs. “Lazy and wasteful,” he snaps. That’s when something inside me snaps too.
So I stop picking up the slack. His phone goes missing. Then his car keys. I meet his growing frustration with sweet, sarcastic calm. “People used to send letters,” I say. “You wanted simplicity, right?”
When I finally stop doing everything but caring for Sean, Trey panics. No clean clothes, no food, total mess. He realizes what my “nothing all day” really looks like.
Eventually, he apologizes. I hand him a detailed schedule of my day—hour by hour—and he finally sees it. We start therapy. He begins pulling his weight.
And the vacuum? It stays.
Motherhood isn’t a break. It’s unpaid, relentless work—and it deserves respect.
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