Daddy's Intuition

Moms get a lot of credit for their "mother's intuition", and for good reason!  Mama's have a great intuition when it comes to their baby's needs.  We are good at knowing when something is more that just the sniffles, when something is just "off" with our children, or when someone is telling you a tall tale that is slightly less than the truth.  It's an amazing superpower that develops when you become a mom, but I think it happens to daddies too.  They just seem to get overshadowed by the mamas sometimes.  You see, their intuition is just a little different than ours.

While I was pregnant, I could be a bit …well…moody at times (to say the least!).  This was most likely a shock to my husband due to the fact that general crankiness is pretty far out of character for me.  God love him though, he never complained.  In fact, he said a few times that he felt lucky that I was a pretty calm and happy pregnant lady and he didn't have to deal with the types of things some of his friends did.  I think he was making it up to be nice.  It's either that, or his friend's wives did some seriously nutso stuff while preggers!  You ladies know who you are! ;)

We were out at Babies "R" Us one day shopping while I was around 8 months pregnant with Ben. We were picking up a few odds and ends that we needed, and Mark was dead set on finding a mobile for the crib.  I didn't get it.  He was so flipping determined that we needed this damn mobile that we were looking far and wide for the perfect one.  I'm gonna be honest here…I didn't get it.  Why did we need one that bad?  We had one of those lights and sound thingies for the crib, and that was fine!  And…on top of that…his "mobile" was totally ruining my BFF's design for my nursery.  That just wasn't in the design plans.  I especially realized how much it ruined the aesthetics of the room when he finally found the one he wanted.  This thing was seriously so cheap looking.  It was a standard mobile made of white plastic with stuffed footballs, baseballs, and basketballs hanging from it.  It wound up, and played some type of lullaby while it spun.  I looked at it and, picking my battles, said it was fine.  He was so damn excited about this thing that even my pregnant, cranky ass didn't have the heart to burst his bubble.  

After the mobile was installed, the nursery finished (hahaha actually that still hasn't completely happened and Ben is 5 months), and the baby had come home, this is when I started noticing the Daddy intuition.  It seems to happen at the times I really need it.  I will be absolutely at my wits end with exhaustion, and somehow Daddy will find a way to make Benny giggle.  He always makes him giggle.  He doesn't want to eat, so Daddy comes up and grabs him for a few minutes.  Suddenly he is eating like a champ after I get him back.  He doesn't want to stop crying, a little Daddy snuggles will do the trick.  It seems like my husband, Ben's daddy, fills every gap in my mama abilities just perfectly.  

There's a funny thing about these Daddy moments too.  Once I get over my selfish moment of thinking, "SURE he laughs at you and fusses with me!", every time I see them interact I find myself falling a little more in love with my husband.  He makes my little man light up like no one else can, and that makes him even more irresistible than I ever thought possible.  Every time he thinks of the magic solution to making Ben calm down, when I myself could not, I thank God for him one more time.  Every time I catch him out of the corner of my eye staring at our baby boy with so much love he could burst, singing him a song he is making up on the fly, and making him giggle hysterically by bouncing him up and down, I feel so blessed that those men belong to me.  I don't even get that mad when, inevitably, Ben spits up all over me because Mark has just shook him all up.  

Don't get me wrong.  I know mamas do a lot.  Often we tend to do more than our fair share, but isn't that just what we do?  Isn't that kind of how we are all hard wired?  Don't we tend to just take on more of the fair share of the responsibilities with the house and kids without even thinking about it?  I know we do.  We all do it.  Just don't let your exhaustion blind you from noticing what the daddies do too.  They are special, they are needed, and they have a special intuition as well.  I had this realization tonight as I put Ben to bed (while Mark was playing video games, but we will complain about that at another time. LOL).  He has been fussy lately, and when I put him to bed there is only one thing that seems to calm him right down.  You guessed it.  That damn mobile.  That cheesy, cheap looking thing brings more smiles to that baby's face that anything else we own.  Every single night when I put him in his crib, he immediately looks up at that thing and gets a HUGE smile on his face.  He just watches it and stares and smiles away.  He absolutely loves it.  If he's fussy, it doesn't matter.  He instantly calms down and watches that mobile.  It makes me wish it just had an on/off instead of being wind up so it would go for longer sometimes!  On the fussier nights, it needs to be wound quite a few times until he falls fast asleep staring at it.  

It's so easy to begin to turn on each other when you have a newborn.  You are both tired.  You are mentally and physically exhausted, and sometimes don't really know how you are functioning.  I am so glad that, during this time, I have been blessed enough to see exactly how blessed I am and not focus on the hard parts.  I am so lucky to have the husband and the son that I do, and I will never discount Mark's daddy intuition again.  Well, at least, I'll try really hard not to.