From the title of this post, you are undoubtedly expecting to read that Jill and I are enjoying a baby-free weekend. You imagine that perhaps we’ve gotten a hotel room, turned off the ringers on our phones, and are enjoying thirty-six hours of exquisite debauchery without the slightest reminder of parenthood to in any way throw us off of our rhythm. Maybe we’ve even caught a flight and are planning to meet one or more of our blogging or Twitter friends for some glorious no-strings-attached fun.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. We are spending this weekend more or less the same as we’ve spent all weekends in recent memory. Since becoming parents, Jill and I have never had a weekend to ourselves. Did I say weekend? I meant night. We’ve never had a night to ourselves. I’ve spent the occasional night away from Jill and the baby, though it’s been almost a year. My wife, on the other hand, has never been away from the baby all night. Now that our daughter is quickly approaching two years old, it’s something we’d like to try. It is with equal parts admiration and good-natured envy that we read about the occasional weekend-long adventures had by our friend A Husband of Two Sexual Minds when they leave their son with his grandparents. We need weekend-long adventures. It feels like it’s been forever.
There are many reasons why we haven’t spent a weekend away from our child. None of these reasons happen to be that Jill is an overbearing helicopter parent who must constantly chopper above our child lest she bump her head, or even get lonely. Neither of us has any interest in being that kind of parental watchdog. No, the primary reason seems to be Jill wanting to miss as little of our daughter’s upbringing as possible. On any given weekday I spend as much as twelve solid hours of quality time with the baby while Jill is working. This is admittedly more time with her than I ever thought I would be able to handle.
Jill, on the other hand, is lucky if she manages six hours with her per day, and she savors every moment. Jill already misses most of the day-to-day raising of our child; being a stay-at-home Dad, I am the one who experienced most of the milestones. Though we make use of willing babysitters on occasion, we didn’t have a baby simply to fob her off onto someone else. We actually do enjoy having her in our lives, interacting with her, and watching her develop into a little girl.
Another reason why we haven’t left the baby with a sitter overnight is that she is not a very sound sleeper. She invariably wakes up at least once during the night. I would go so far as to say that she’s never slept the whole night through. (This explains why Jill and I frequently have sex in the middle of the night.) We don’t really want to inflict a child with such psychotic sleep patterns on a babysitter who might conceivably value sleeping in on a Saturday and/or Sunday morning.
We also suffer from a dearth of willing or able babysitters. Locally, there is no one we know personally and trust who would be willing to watch our daughter overnight. Certain family members don’t mind watching her on a Friday or Saturday night provided she’s picked up by midnight, or one o’clock at the absolute latest. Others are very likely to become overwhelmed after a short while, and call to ask us to pick her up.
They don’t make babysitters like they used to.
The only people we know who would be able to watch our child overnight – and for that matter willing or even enthusiastic to do so – are my parents. The catch is that they live two hours away from us. When they’re in town, they generally stay with us at our house. For this reason, the only way we’d be able to take advantage of an offer to babysit for the weekend is by paying exorbitant gas costs, or getting a hotel. Neither of these options is much better than the other.
I suppose that getting a hotel locally and letting my parents stay in our house with the baby might be, in theory, better than driving two hours each way and getting a hotel in their area. However, I have issues with the thought of my parents in my house while I am there, much less when I am not. Two people who began using compact disks less than fifteen years ago wouldn’t be able to figure out our complicated home theater setup without multiple phone calls, and if I turned off my phone and found out after the fact that they were unable to watch television while they were staying at our house I’d feel guilty.
My parents remember the days before television.
Additionally, I can’t shake the feeling that if a lightbulb burned out they might go looking for a new one in the same nightstand drawer where Jill keeps her vibrators, as well as lube and porn DVDs. Yes, this may be an extreme conclusion to which my mind has leapt, but the fact is that neither my mother nor my father regard highly the boundaries I expect them to heed when they are in my home. It’s not because they are in any way malicious; they’re just clueless. If Jill is at work and I am in our bedroom, they might knock once on the door and then expect to be immediately let in, or perhaps just open the door. (Our bedroom door has no lock, unfortunately.) They assume that if Jill is not home, then she can’t be changing clothes and thus there is no concern for invading her privacy.
Remember, I said they’re clueless. I can’t say for certain that the following conversation is something my mother and father have actually said to each other while staying in our home, but it might be:
Mom: I need to ask Jack a question but he’s in his room, he’s not answering my knock, and his phone goes right to voicemail.
Dad: Just go right in. He’s married, so he doesn’t masturbate anymore.
The only solution that might work in this scenario is to have my parents come down and watch the baby in a hotel room for which we’d foot the bill. There are two problems with this option, one much worse than the other. The minor problem is that it would be a bit awkward to have them stay in a hotel; were we to leave them at our house with the baby, for all they know we’re going to an out-of-town wedding or other event inappropriate for children. But if we tell them to take the baby and go to a hotel five minutes away, it’s pretty much understood that we want the house to ourselves for the purposes of sex. Yes, we have a baby, so we’ve clearly had sex. No, I don’t want my parents thinking of me as a sexual person. I just don’t. For all my sex-positivity, this is something that really squicks me.
As I suggested above, there is a much more horrible problem associated with this scenario. It’s the opposite of the previous problem wherein I risked bringing to my parents’ attention Jill’s and my sexuality. In keeping with their inability to get a clue, I’m certain that once they were checked into their hotel room and unpacked, my mother and father would call Jill and I and ask if we want to get together for dinner.
Where does that leave us? Obviously not with too many feasible options. We’re certainly open to suggestions.
-Jack
