Member-only story
Surrendering to Motherhood with my au pair’s help
I met my husband a bit later in our lives. He was 30 and I was 32. I had been married 7 years before that, and it was very brief and pretty much a mistake (neither of us were ready to be married I think). So I was a little skittish and was enjoying living alone.
We met at work and I became close friends with Rich pretty quickly. I remember offering to help him with a project that he had to get out the door and I realized we were already great partners and there was a lot of trust there. I fell for him hard, and he for me.
So we married when we were 32 and 34, and we were really happy. We bought a house and tried to get pregnant. It took me a little bit of time and a bit of Clomid, but it finally happened and I gave birth to Katherine just shy of my 38th birthday. I was sort of shell-shocked because it was really hard at first — Katherine had colic and we were up nights trying to help her stop crying and feel better. Rich devised a method to help her release all the gas trapped in her system by walking up and down the stairs, sort of stomping, and tapping her on her back. It did seem to help. She finally was better by two months or so.
There were times that we were really tired and we agreed that we would let her cry for 10 minutes and then one of us would pick her up to soothe her. I remember those 10…
