I used to believe that having children would bring out the best in my husband.
I know how foolish that sounds now.
But before our triplets arrived, Ethan gave me every reason to believe we would face parenthood as a team.
He talked about our future children long before we had even started trying.
Sometimes he brought it up over dinner.
Other times, he would stop in the middle of watching television and tell me how many kids he imagined running around our house.
He wanted a big family.
Not me begging him for one. Not me dragging him into something he didn't want.
He was the one who wanted it.
"I don't want us to have just one child," he told me once.
"I want a house full of them."
I laughed and asked him if he planned to help raise them or simply enjoy being the fun dad.
He looked offended.
"Obviously, I'll help. That's what being a father means."
I remembered those words for a long time.
Maybe that was why the change in him hurt so much.
When I became pregnant, Ethan was excited.
He came to appointments with me when he could, asked questions, and told people we were going to have a wonderful life.
Then we learned there were three babies.
Three.
I still remembered the look on his face when the doctor explained what we were seeing on the screen.
He stared at the monitor, then at me.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Afterward, he held my hand in the parking lot and laughed in disbelief.
"Three kids at once. Can you believe that?"
I couldn't.
We spent months preparing.
There were three car seats to figure out, three sleeping spaces to arrange, and more tiny clothes than I had ever imagined buying.
Ethan helped choose some of the things.
He had opinions about the nursery furniture and insisted we needed a better stroller.
He talked about how busy we would be, but he said it with a smile.
"We'll manage," he told me.
"We'll do everything together."
I believed him.
I had no reason not to.
The pregnancy became harder toward the end, and the delivery was worse than I had hoped.
My recovery from the C-section was painful.
Even getting out of bed took planning.
I had to move slowly, hold my stomach, and wait for the sharpest pain to pass before taking another step.
But there were three newborns waiting for me.
Three little people who needed to eat, sleep, be changed, and be comforted.
They did not understand that their mother was hurting.
They only knew when they were hungry.
And they knew how to let me hear about it.
The first days at home blurred together.
Bottles covered the kitchen counter.
Clean clothes sat in baskets because I rarely had enough time to fold them.
The laundry machine seemed to run constantly.
I learned to recognize each baby's cry, although sometimes all three cried together and I couldn't tell whose needs were most urgent.
I kept trying.
That was what I did.
If one baby needed feeding, I fed him.
If another woke up, I held him against my chest.
If the third began crying, I rocked whichever baby I could reach first while trying to settle the others.
I stopped looking at the clock unless I absolutely had to.
The hours did not feel separate anymore.
There was only the next feeding, the next diaper, and the next time somebody needed me.
Ethan, meanwhile, began disappearing.
At first, I thought he was simply tired.
His job involved long days and meetings, and I knew he had responsibilities waiting for him even after he came home.
I tried not to complain.
I told myself we were both adjusting.
Then he carried his pillow into the guest room.
He said he needed to sleep properly so he could concentrate at work.
I watched him put his phone charger beside the guest-room bed.
"Just until things settle down," he said.
I stood in our bedroom doorway with a baby against my shoulder.
"When do you think that will be?"
He rubbed his eyes.
"I don't know. But I can't function on two hours of sleep."
I almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because I had been living on broken pieces of sleep for days, and somehow my exhaustion did not seem to count.
I wanted to remind him that I had undergone surgery.
I wanted to explain that I could not simply close a door and make three hungry babies disappear.
Instead, I nodded.
I told myself I would ask for more help tomorrow.
Tomorrow came with another bottle, another crying spell, and another night in which I barely slept.
Ethan's guest-room door stayed closed.
Sometimes I heard him moving around in there.
Sometimes I heard his alarm go off.
And every morning, he came out looking tired, as though the entire household had been keeping him awake.
I started drinking coffee that I forgot to finish.
The cup would sit beside the sink until it went cold.
Then I would microwave it, take two sips, and leave it somewhere else when a baby started crying.
One afternoon, I found the same cup on the counter for the third time.
I stared at it longer than I should have.
There was a pale ring around the inside, and a little milk had dried near the handle.
I remember thinking that I needed to wash it.
That was the thought I had while standing in my kitchen with three newborns crying behind me.
Not that I needed sleep.
Not that I needed somebody to hold one of my children.
Just that I needed to wash a cup.
Looking back, that small detail tells me more about those weeks than any dramatic description could.
I was so tired that ordinary things had become difficult.
I was so focused on keeping everyone alive and comfortable that I had almost stopped noticing myself.
And Ethan was getting used to it.
He was getting used to me handling everything.
The babies were six weeks old when I finally understood how far apart we had become.
I was sitting on the nursery floor, leaning against the side of the crib because my back hurt.
One baby was feeding.
Another was fussing in my arms.
The third had just fallen asleep, and I was afraid that moving even an inch would wake him.
Ethan walked past the open nursery door with his phone in his hand.
He glanced inside.
"Are they all settled?"
I looked at the baby in my arms.
"No."
He nodded as if I had answered a question about the weather.
Then he kept walking.
I heard his footsteps heading toward the kitchen.
For a few seconds, I sat there without moving.
I had once imagined him coming into that room, lifting a baby from my arms, and telling me to lie down.
I had imagined him noticing the pain in my face without having to be asked.
Instead, I listened to him open the refrigerator.
The door closed.
A moment later, I heard the guest-room door.
And something inside me began to change.
Not all at once.
I was still his wife.
I still wanted him to be the man he had promised to become.
But I was beginning to understand that my wanting it could not make it happen.
That evening, I put the unfinished coffee in the sink and went back to the nursery.
The babies needed me.
So I stayed.
Click here to continue reading: PART 2: Six Weeks After Surgery, He Announced His Two-Week Escape as Though He Were Telling Me About an Ordinary Business Trip
I Thought We Were Building a Family Together, Until Three Tiny Cries Filled Our House and My Husband Started Sleeping Behind a Closed Door
Part 1 of 24
