#01: Letters to My Husband

The Newborn Stage, Postpartum Recovery, and a Husband Who, Physically, Couldn't Relate.

An ongoing series called Letters to my Husband. The first of which was published by Hatch. Letters to my Husband is an anthology of the good, the dark, and the messy that we endure with our partner that, for whatever reason, we omit from talking about.

I imagine many things can throw a marriage into a meat grinder. There are the big things, of course: infidelity, grief, lack of eye contact, lack of sex, lack of time, lack of connection. But, there are also minor crimes that are committed every day, on a regular basis: the daily stressors that we project onto the other just because they’re there to take it, the patriarchal division of roles, the fears of unworthiness, the complaints that we receive from the other about not feeling seen or heard and our narcissistic way of turning the tables back on them. Maintaining a relationship is just that - maintenance. 

This came to me suddenly like a rapture. Last year, raising an infant amidst a new pandemic, me and the human I married became blocked. Up until the point of becoming parents, our relationship didn’t need maintenance. Before baby, we had balance. We had lives independent from one another but also ones dependent on one another. Things flowed and came together naturally. There was no need for ear-splitting conversations, necessary topics of adjusting to this “new normal” of parenthood that made me prefer I was at the OBGYN getting my uterus squeezed. 

When I gave birth to my son, these minor crimes became much bigger crimes. Once the adrenaline of a new baby wore off, I was overwhelmed with exhaustion and pain and despair. My husband, with his brain and body still intact, unlike mine, carried on daily life as usual. He was able to put on his suit and go to work, he was able to walk up a flight of steps, he was able to work out, he was able to stay present. 

Hatch published this letter I had written to him. Letters (or emails) became a way for us to still find the connection we had seemed to lose amidst all of the minor crimes we inadvertently committed to each other when the baby arrived. It was a way for him to understand me, as I can say now that a lot of what I blamed him for wasn’t his fault. I blamed him for being a man, getting by the baby-making stage completely unscathed. I blamed him for my loneliness, for feeling shackled at home to nurse our new baby, for being in so much pain I couldn’t make it to the bathroom without his help. 

A baby split my body in half and it split part of my brain, too. My map of “reality” that took me 32 years to build now vanished. To communicate with my husband amid new baby fog was the equivalent of trying to learn Japanese. I resented the sun, I resented the darkness. I resented the food in front of me because it would soon enter a body I no longer knew and, as a result, didn’t like. I resented rest because I’d wake up to a life of endless demands. My husband was handed a baby and learned how to love in his own way, on his own time. To me, freedom still served him.

I can’t speak for what it was like for him, but I can imagine he had his own shit he was going through. While I spent countless hours soothing and nursing our baby in the nursery, he felt helpless, trying to adjust to a change in his life where he wasn’t really needed. He felt challenged. One can forget the power of motherly instinct and how it leads the charge in stressful situations. He, not bestowed with the gift that nature bestowed me with, didn’t feel like enough. Helplessness took many shapes in our house. And instead of feeling united in this same feeling, it deterred us further apart. At home, it was as if we were a magnet and a metal, repelling from each other, remaining parallel yet vigilant as to not get too close.

So on one rare day, a day with a blue sky and a baby sound asleep, a body without pain and a mind seemingly conscious enough to let words flow from my fingers, I decided to write him an email. In person we were hurt, frail narcissists who got used to turning the table onto the other and deeming them out to be the lousiest person who ever stepped foot on earth. We had let our scales come out. We had shown the other person just how low we felt by bringing down the other person with us. Letters to my Husband began with all of this. Like I was somehow trying to convey a coming-of-age chapter but in a very emotionally volatile way. 

Egos are a weird thing. In one way, they protect us but in another way, they are the reason for our own destruction. I did not expect to be so angry. After I gave birth, I fully expected to be living on a cloud of MotherWorld fantasy: me and my baby and my perfect breasts and his perfect latch and my structured organic diet and my zero temptation for alcohol or Tranzenes. My baby would totally abide by the “wake windows,” which would allow me to read about postpartum recovery, meditate, wrap my belly in bandages soaked in hot tea. I’d drink ‘lots of water so my swollen body could start to heal, and so my first poop would be just another peaceful experience in MotherWorld and not something excruciatingly painful that still brings me PTSD. My baby would cry and I would understand his every need. Mother Nature and I would be in sync, and every situation would be approached with knowledge and confidence. What was that? No, I didn’t tear during pregnancy; why do you ask? I pushed calmly and efficiently, not at all subdued with panic that he was passing through my pelvic bone, desperate to hear him cry. 

We each had different expectations for what parenthood would look like. It was hard to come down from my fantasy, I’ll admit. Conflicting egos are always up at-bat. But, in marriage, I have found my obstacle stems from lacking to find true acceptance for my husband. Not embracing him, flaws and all. All of his good and all of his ugly. That only derives from one thing: not finding acceptance for myself. 

What were my desires? What were his? Could there have been a way to satisfy both of them? What exactly was so miserable about being blessed with a son, something I wanted so badly?

The most significant thing about this, I think, is that no one talks about what happens to you and your relationships after a baby. No one talks about the turmoil that succumbs your entire body like a virus. No one talks about the primal instinct that wears you like a veil, causing absolute panic whenever the baby is not in your sight. No one talks about the recovery process. No one tells you the emotional shift is so aggressive that you finally have come to understand what it is like to have demons follow you around and whisper obscenities into your ear. No one discusses any of this, and as a result, I had to navigate these violent waters of shame and confusion on my own to try to get to shore in whatever way I could.

In my essay, I write about the salt and the sweet. I think it’s about learning to embrace both things, not deterring from one just because it’s uncomfortable. It’s just inevitable, part of the process. Letters to my Husband is about the beauty of sheer effort. The transformation that happens amidst so much change. Sometimes you have to let change pigeonhole you into a corner and let it shape you the way it sees fit. I can see very clearly now that it was always going to be okay, but it was about the lack of acceptance for change and how it correlated with my relationship. 

I don’t know where I’d be without these letters. It served as a way to understand myself, equally as much as it helped him understand me. To be vulnerable in this way was so uncomfortable until it wasn’t. Our letters are like playing our favorite song and starting the dance party, walking towards him, attracted like a magnet. It documented our parenthood: painful, sometimes gross, always full of sacrifice, all sitting on a mound of overwhelming devotion.

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I have linked the essay above, but it’s also pasted below:

“Last year my husband and I experienced a number of challenges revolving around life with a new baby amidst a global pandemic. The stress was insurmountable, our communications were impulsive and aggressive (aka word vomit in the heat of tense moments). Neither of us felt seen or heard. But, thanks to couples therapy, we’ve found and nurtured new ways to communicate, which is to write letters to each other once the dust settles after an argument. I included one here, below, so that if communication in your marriage starts feeling like a losing game, you can try it as well.”

– Stephanie Pérez-Gurri

My Dear Husband,

I want to stitch you a quilt of all the sweet and salty things our union has brought us. Like in that scene in Stepmom, when Susan Sarandon gives her daughter a quilt stitched with all of their memories. I imagine you and I are doing the same thing, building a life that is completely unique, savoring the best moments from our past, but also learning from the growing pains, the salt that sometimes lays on our path, and revere that we made it out on the other side.

Birthing our son, for me, was the sweetest endeavor life will ever bestow. He is the biggest, brightest patch on our quilt. I felt sick with love when he was born, my body was so lovestruck, it made my stomach turn. Our rainbow baby, in the flesh, finding comfort on my chest for hours on end. I wanted to melt into his widow’s peak, kiss his feet until my lips dried out, and never not feel his tiny grip around my index finger. Finally, I felt the love between Mother and Child and it was intoxicating. But, as it pertained to us, bringing our son into this world meant something different. 

There was always the expectation that our relationship would change when the baby came. We read all the articles on how to keep things “light,” we followed the endless bullet-pointed advice on making sure the romance stays intact. In hindsight, there was nothing that could’ve prepared us for such an abrupt change. How could we have impromptu date nights (like the articles suggested) during a nationwide lockdown and a baby who we feared we could potentially contaminate with Covid-19 if we dared leave the house? How could we possibly want to flirt with each other when I couldn’t keep track of whether I had brushed my teeth that day? The pressure was insurmountable, exhaustion to the point we felt drugged, and our egos, on top of it all, each had different expectations for how we would raise our son. 

Communication came to a full stop. I had a tough recovery, thanks to a perineal tear, and felt intense pain coupled with the delirium of exhaustion. Postpartum recovery made me so lonely. Physically, there was no way for you to understand what I was going through. There was no way I was able to form complete sentences. Instead, I just delegated to you. In turn, you felt inadequate in that you couldn’t provide for our newborn at the time (since he only wanted my breasts). The mood between us shifted, we felt consumed by confusion. We realized our relationship was suffering so we sought couple’s therapy.

I admit it was hard not to start out our sessions with You did this and Why did you do that? and a lot of You’re not listening! So ultimately our therapist (or referee) decided we try to write letters to each other. We would write them alone when we’d have time to process our thoughts in a clearer manner, and we would begin the letters with the words I Feel…

A few days later you received an email from me in your inbox. That first email was one of the most vulnerable, cathartic things I’ve ever written. Your response to me was as well. In hindsight, to be seen and heard were the two things we needed from each other, and writing letters was a way to keep it up during the go-go-go of new parent fog and remote working. It’s as if we are now carrying a personal responsibility, to be more in-tune to each other. 

Thanks to our letters, we’ve shed our hard skin to come into a new form as parents. We’ve worked hard to make the salt taste sweet, to make every patch on our quilt worthwhile. I’m so thankful I’ve gotten to know every sliver of you last year, to have watched you come into your own as a dad. I want to tell you there is no villain, only growing pains. I want to tell you how much I love you.

As Always,

Your Pen Pal (aka wife)