Dear Husband,

I put on my wedding ring to remind myself how much I love you.  Maybe you have noticed its absence in the last few months, but maybe not.  You see, my ring has been off for months now – toward the end of pregnancy when we were preparing for the hospital, I took it off and put it away for safe keeping as I knew I couldn’t wear it during surgery. When we came home, I simply didn’t put it back on.  I have always been one to take off my rings each night before bed and put them on the next day for work when I get out of the shower.  It is normal to see me on the weekends without them because it is common for me to forgo the shower first thing in the morning on those lazy days.  One thing led to another and I never put them back on after T4 was born. 

Being a mom of two has so many more challenges than being a mom of one.  This time around I have struggled more with postpartum depression than I did when S was born, and, in many ways, I feel like I am letting someone down most of the time.  There is never enough space on my lap for the kids.  S is frustrated that T4 has to eat so much.  T4 has to wait to be picked up when S needs me.  There is endless laundry that needs to be folded and put away for my own sanity.  Dinner is never cooked as early as we want it to be.  And some days, when these things happen at the same time, you are the person that bears the brunt of my frustration.  Sometimes it is a frustrated look, or a tone of voice that is sharper than I want it to be.  And as we have both acknowledged in recent days – tone of voice can mean a million things.  The thing is, this isn’t me and it isn’t how I feel about you.  To the very center of my core, I love you and this life that we have built. How come it is so easy to get caught up in life and forget to voice it?   It wouldn’t be fair for the tiny humans to feel my frustration, why would it be fair for you to feel it?

So, I put my wedding ring back on.

I put on the ring and haven’t taken it back off.  It is a reminder to me that we are in this together.  The frustration that I feel can be echoed in your face and when I am calmer you seem calmer.  It has been a nice change for me to feel the weight of the white gold on my finger.  As I move through my day, it sometimes catches me off guard, and I find myself thinking about what a nice evening we are going to have when you get home from work.  Thinking of all of the fun things that I have to tell you about T4 and S that you might have missed.  Above all it is a reminder that we chose each other for life and you should always feel loved.  None of this is new to you as we have talked about parental challenges more than a few times lately, but I wanted you to know…I put my ring back on because I love you.