Husband (35m) and I (35f) together for 9 years, married for 4.
We began the adoption process 2 years ago, became certified and began submitting applications for kids about 8 months ago. I have been updating my supervisors at work periodically throughout this process, especially because we were "finalists" for a few other children and I thought the more notice my job has, the better. My husband works in a very small office and all of his coworkers know we have been trying to adopt.
I will say, this is all happening very quickly and we feel ready for it. One month ago, we were told we were one of a few families being considered for this boy (6m) and that they wanted to get him into a permanent home before school starts. Last week, they told us "We will be choosing a family next week." We were chosen as his new adoptive family 2 days ago and he moves in next week. All this to say... my husband has had some notice since the very beginning and one month ago. We will have about 2 weeks with our son (wow, crazy to say that!) before he starts school.
Husband says he has a lot of big projects and he would be really screwing over his company if he took off work next week. He says it's too short notice, everyone else is busy, our jobs are just too different and I won't understand. He doesn't say that he can't do it, just that he doesn't want to. He says he is "thinking long-term about all of the other schedule accommodations he will ask of them now that he has a kid." In his defense, he is taking off the following week. There is also a history of him prioritizing work over our plans. At one point this was such a contentious topic that he practically begged me not to ever talk about it again because he doesn't feel like he's doing anything wrong and all it does is make him feel bad.
I always voiced my concern about how hard it would be to suddenly change this behavior when we have kids. And now, for the very first week we will have a child, in what is supposed to be a time of bonding and getting to know each other and forming relationships, he is choosing to work. I am also pretty unhappy with the fact that I won't have help for the very first time I will be a freakin' parent. Husband is right about his big projects; he has been working 10-11 hour days for the past couple of weeks. So I'm gonna be doing a lot of it by myself and I was really looking forward to doing all of it together. It makes me sad and also preemptively pissed off about all the future fights we're going to have.
I guess I am asking for help seeing his work situation from a different perspective? I would love for someone to talk me out of this mindset because I am truly bummed and disappointed in him. Also if anyone has experience with adoption, what do you think about me asking my mom or an aunt to stay with us that week to help out? I want to spend that time normalizing our family dynamic and I worry having an extra person there could be confusing.
tl;dr Husband won't take off work the first week we will have our adopted son.
Edit: confusing pronouns
Submitted August 12, 2022 at 11:01PM by monophthongal https://ift.tt/Tz1wcGK
No comments:
Post a Comment