Seriously, Poor Me. I'm looking for pity even though I likely don't deserve it.

I am so distraught about what is going on in my home that I am sharing this "poor me" letter that I wrote to my mom who is coming to visit and to help out now that my wife has given birth to our B"H beautiful daughter. Look, I give tremendous credit to my wife for everything she is going through, and I commend her for her strength. I just wish sometimes that she was superhuman and/or perfect.

Hi mom, you're lucky that you are coming when you are, and not when you planned to come when Jenny's (my wife's) brother-in-law left. Jenny got sick a day or so after giving birth, and so Alex was no help because all he did was sit on the computer and chat with his buddies. I exhausted all the remaining available days off from work to take care of Jenny and the house. Then Danny (our son) caught Jenny's cold -- he was sick for over a week now, where his nose was FULL of snot dripping everywhere. I took very good care of him, even sleeping one night on the floor of his room where I was holding his wet slimy hands all night even though he was sick. Around two days afterwards, it appears that I caught what Danny had, and even though I have been literally knocked off of my feet from this flu-like cold, I have been showing up to work each day because I have no sick days left, and I've been trying to rest as much as I could in the evenings, sometimes going to sleep an hour or so after coming home from work. Even with all this and alternating between taking Theraflu and Robitussin, I have not been able to get one night of restful sleep because my being ill is interfering with me being able to get a restful night of sleep (I've been waking up totally achy and unrested as if I was up the whole night).

Jenny has not been doing well either. She has been unable to sleep because between Danny waking her up crying in the middle of the night and Julia (our daughter) also being awake and crying for most of the night, Jenny has been unable to function far beyond the basics (e.g. feeding the babies and maybe doing one or two small things each day). To that end, my getting sick has been an "inconvenience" for her, and she has started complaining to me about how tough she has things, and I believe her, but only to a degree. On top of that, I feel that she has been hindering my attempts to get better by objecting when I try to do anything that does not involve taking care of Danny (e.g. I've been talking and trying literally for days to get over to a steam room at the gym and to sweat out this cold, and each time I try to go, she finds a reason to object), and I have been unable to get to work on time because I'm taking care of things in the mornings to let Jenny sleep. That being said, I don't thing she understands or appreciates what I am doing for her, as I have taken over most of her responsibilities since the birth, and that is causing much tension between us because I am beginning to resent her. On top of that, I have been becoming increasingly thin on my tolerance for the buildup of the mess that has been growing in our home these past two weeks, and that led to an eruption between us this morning when I asked her to pick up after herself when she said the mess was not hers, my request escalated into an argument where I called her a slob and she denied that she had any responsibility for anything and out of spite, refused to take any steps to make it better.

So in short, you should know that you are coming into a very tough situation where all of us are exhausted and have been ill for the past week or so and Alex did nothing to help and only made things worse. On top of that, things appear to be getting more tense by the day (obviously I will be diffusing this as soon as I can) and so I wanted you to know that we are really looking forward to you coming in and helping out. Alex made the mistake thinking that helping out would mean playing with, holding, and cooing the baby all week, and he thought his week would be filled with fluffy cuteness and warmth. The days and nights of crying and needy children was not something he could handle and so he isolated himself in his room or on the couch and offered little help with housework, chores, or anything that needed to be done.

I'm hoping that you have realistic expectations and that you understand what you're walking into. My goal aside from resting as much as I can over Shabbos and hopefully finally KILLING this flu-like cold that has been plaguing me all week is to at least get things under control and in order in the house so that when you arrive, you'll arrive to a pleasant atmosphere. I'll be expending extra energy doing cleaning, housework, and chores over the next few days that will hopefully put things back in order. That being said, I wanted you to know what you were walking into.

Please e-mail me (if you can) a copy of your itinerary so that I can know the flight number and be sure about which airline you are taking. I also want to confirm which airport you are flying into, and get an exact time you are scheduled to arrive.

Lastly, I'm not so sure that having Liz and/or other guests over is a good idea. The earliest I could possibly see guests coming over is later in the week, but we'll all need to judge that by how things are going the first few days you are here.