Celeste Erlach adores her husband. “He is loving and compassionate,” the Nevada-based mother of two tells Us Weekly. “I’m blessed to have him as a partner.” But earlier this month, an exhausted Erlach nearly lost it on the 50-year-old dad.
“Dear Husband, I. Need. More. Help,” Erlach, 38, began in a March 17 post that appeared on the Breastfeeding Mama Talk Facebook page. “I asked you to watch the baby so I could go to bed early. The baby was crying. Wailing, really. I could hear him from upstairs and my stomach knotted from the sound, wondering if I should come down there and relieve you or just shut the door so I could get some desperately needed sleep. I chose the latter.”
She didn’t get the chance to drift into dreamland.
Twenty minutes later, the door opened. It was Erlach’s husband and their son. “You placed the baby in the bassinet and gently pushed the bassinet just a few inches closer to my side of the bed, a clear gesture that you were done watching him,” she wrote. “I wanted to scream at you. I wanted to launch an epic fight that very moment.”
Erlach, a marketing professional, noted that she had been watching the baby and his 4-year-old brother “all damn day” and was going to be waking up throughout the night to breast-feed. “The least you could do is hold him for a couple of hours in the evening so I can attempt to sleep,” she added.
But Erlach doesn’t just crave shut eye. “In the morning, I need you to get our toddler ready so I can care for the baby and make everyone’s lunches and drink a cup of coffee,” wrote Erlach. “And no, getting the toddler ready does not mean plopping him in front of the TV. It means making sure he went potty, giving him some breakfast, seeing if he wants water, and packing his bag for school.”
Her message resonated with other drained moms. “This is exactly what I’m going through with my husband right now,” wrote one. Added another: “I have felt this exact way all day today.”
Erlach isn’t surprised her post has been shared more than 3,000 times so far. “We saw our moms taking on all the family responsibilities when we were children, and we want to do the same,” she tells Us. “We we are conflicted with new expectations to return to work, stay in shape, and make it all look easy and Pinterest worthy. We juggle it all and feel like asking for help is a sign of failure.”
