Chap. 7

Closer to my due date, two weeks before my mother finally comes to my rescue, I call her and explain to her what was going on. Her answer was that I am exaggerating and being a spoiled daddy’s girl. It is all in my head. After all, he is a wonderful man and he is taking excellent care of me.  No matter how much I tried to tell her otherwise, she did not hear any of it.

Of course, she wouldn’t. Why would she? After all, whenever I travelled to Lebanon to visit my parents, he would send me flowers to their house and love letters. Also, when she came over he showered me with kisses and attention, I was going crazy? What am I dealing with? Am I imagining things? Is it true that am being a brat? Am so confused!

After a visit to the gynaecologists, it was finally decided that the induced labour would be on May 28. I will never forget that day. Words do not even start to describe what I was feeling. On May 27, I get admitted to the hospital and I tell Mr Harm that I want my mother to come with me to the delivery room along with him. I was scared and wanted her by my side.  Mr Harm agrees, but only on one condition that his mother would come in too. I was not comfortable with the idea of my in-law being in there. That is a very private moment. My relationship with his mother was not one that I would describe as intimate. No matter how much I beg him, he does not budge. Either both of them come in or no one will, but him. After all, he does not want his mother to be left out.

Is he serious? Am going to give birth and all he could think about is his mother? I tell my mom and she advises me not to fight with my ex-husband on a special day like this. She will be outside the room cheering me on.

Thus we decide that it will only be him and I. The delivery was fairly easy; although I was at some point unconscious. I remember asking him to keep talking to me as I could only hear him and his voice allowed me to hang on to dear life (how ironic!). Afterwards, we get informed that the baby is low on oxygen and that I had to deliver immediately. As soon as I heard my baby daughter cry I was in love all over again. I was in tears her father, too. He quickly goes to check on her and leaves to watch them giving our ray of sunshine, her first shower. Once I get transferred to my room, they bring in my ray of sunshine and her father and I spend the night together. Will this be a new beginning for us? Will our little girl bring back the love we had lost? I forgot about our earlier disagreement and basked in the joy of having my first born and her father with me.

In her article ’12 Ways to Spot a Misogynist’, Dr Berit Brogaard, talks about “a form of narcissism that seems to affect men more than women…it stems from a very close and unhealthy mother-son attachment relationship.” The problem is you married a man that did not and will not separate emotionally from his mother. To a narcissist’s mother, you can marry her son, but she will remain number one in his emotional life.