It was just one pot
I’m tired, boss...
Tonight, my husband threatened not to cook dinner because I asked him to please clean up after himself. It was literally just the inner pot from the Instant Pot. Empty it and put it in the dishwasher. That was it.
Last night, I asked him to clean up after himself in the kitchen... especially because he had been handling raw chicken. The response? “It’s almost 11pm.”
So I went downstairs and did it myself before my 11:30pm pump. Emptied the clean dishes from the dishwasher. Loaded the dirty ones. Started the cycle. Took the clean baby bottles out of the bottle washer, assembled them, loaded the dirty ones in, and ran another cycle. Then disinfected the counters and sink. The whole thing took maybe 15 minutes.
But I’m exhausted from constantly following behind another adult with a dustpan. Sweeping up crumbs. Picking up messes. Managing everything.
And tonight, the threat about meals just broke something in me.
I carried our daughter through a high-risk full-term pregnancy with gestational diabetes and hypertension. I labored for 24 hours, had an external version, then ended up with a traumatic c-section where I lost more than half the blood in my body. I struggled to breastfeed and spent a month on Reglan trying to make it work. I am still deqling heavily with the physical afyermath of pregnancy and childbirth... englarged liver and spleen. Significsnt abdominal edema. Not to mention, that, generally it can take a year or more to fully recover from childbirth. Our baby is 14 weeks.
Even during pregnancy, I tried to show up as a good partner. I packed his lunches for work when I could. I paid for our East Coast trip ... airfare, rental car, meals, bike rental so he could explore, beer tastings. Meanwhile, I sat in the hotel room most of the time because I was seven months pregnant and physically miserable.
His car needed maintenance because it was neglected for so long... cost me $1,700. He needed his credit cards paid off. Yep. I took care of that, too.
Now he only works weekends because childcare fell through days before we were both supposed to return to work. I went back full-time. So the pressure of making sure we keep a roof over our heads, food in the fridge, bills paid, health insurance active. everything. falls heavily on me.
And I’m working from home. So when I’m not in meetings or managing projects, I jump in and help with childcare during the workday too.
This isn’t even about one Instant Pot or one comment. It’s the accumulation of carrying the mental load, the emotional load, the physical load — and still somehow being made to feel like asking for basic partnership is asking too much.
It was just one pot that needed to go in the dishwasher. Why does everything feel like an uphill battle?
I’ve really hit my limit tonight.