My son works hard. His wife\u2019s a SAHM. Every time I visit, she\u2019s on her phone while the baby cries. Yesterday, I found my son cooking one-handed with the baby. My DIL was in bed. I went to her room and said, \u201cMust be nice to nap while my son raises your child.\u201dThe words tasted sharp even as I said them, but in the moment, frustration guided my tongue more than wisdom. My daughter-in-law looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes, startled but strangely resigned, as though she had already heard every possible criticism before. She didn\u2019t argue or defend herself\u2014she simply pulled the blankets closer and whispered, \u201cI\u2019m trying.\u201d I left feeling oddly unsettled, carrying irritation on the surface but an uncomfortable heaviness underneath. Something about the whole situation didn\u2019t add up, but I pushed the thought away.<\/p>\n
Later that evening, after the baby had fallen asleep, my son walked me to the driveway. His voice was low, weary in a way I had never heard before. \u201cMom,\u201d he said gently, \u201cshe\u2019s not napping because she\u2019s lazy. The doctor thinks she may have postpartum depression. She barely sleeps. She barely eats. She stays in bed sometimes because she\u2019s terrified she\u2019ll mess something up.\u201d The weight of his words hit me harder than any reprimand could have. Suddenly, every moment I had silently judged replayed itself in my mind\u2014the phone in her hand, the unwashed dishes, the dullness in her eyes\u2014not as evidence of neglect, but signs of a woman silently drowning. I realized then how quickly I had assumed the worst simply because I saw only a fraction of their reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My son works hard. His wife\u2019s a SAHM. Every time I visit, she\u2019s on her phone while the baby cries. Yesterday, I found my son cooking one-handed… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26940,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26938\/revisions\/26940"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}