Sometimes when you are divorced it’s hard to remember to be grateful for your child’s other parent. There can be so much animosity at times that it’s all you can do to smile and make nice when Daddy comes to pick them up.
I knew my ex husbands shortcomings as a father but there were times when I was grateful for him. Hailey had surgery on her mouth after she got her braces. It seems that her eye teeth were impacted and they needed to hook little wires on them to pull them down into place. This required peeling back her palate so of course she was put to sleep. I was scared, no, I was terrified. My baby! What if something went wrong?
I called Hailey’s father to let him know what was going on. He immediately told me he would take the day off work and go with us. I was so glad. I didn’t want to go by myself and even though we weren’t married anymore just having him there made me feel a little bit stronger.
There is nothing scarier than your child having surgery and even though my ex husband wouldn’t be holding my hand, I still felt better, especially when Hailey came out of surgery. She cried and cried, and couldn’t walk so her Daddy had to carry her to the car and up three flights of stairs to our apartment. It was really good that he was there because at that time she was only about two inches shorter than me and thirty pounds lighter, I could never have gotten her up those stairs.
Once in the apartment we watched her sleep for a while and then when she woke up because her mouth hurt we had to give her pain medication. I was nervous because I’m allergic to all pain meds but luckily she isn’t, however, she started acting very strange so I was glad her father was there.
My kiddo pulled through just fine and her teeth are beautiful. I was very grateful for this co parenting thing that day. On days that I’m not so grateful I try to remember that he did come through when we both needed him.