He kept going. “You’re just lazy. Honestly, I think you just don’t want to work anymore. It’s not like you’re the first woman to be pregnant. People do it all the time. Don’t expect me to suddenly support everything.”
I sat there, fork frozen mid-air, the meatball on my plate rapidly cooling like my affection for him.
But instead of flipping the table and storming out, I smiled. “You’re right. I’ll push through.”
That smile? It was fake. Because the plan I came up with next? That was very real.
I didn’t take leave. I didn’t slow down. I ramped up.
The next morning, I was up at 6 a.m., cleaning the kitchen, prepping his lunch, hand-scrubbing the bathroom tiles—waddling like an Olympic athlete doing it all. I worked full days, then came home and cooked elaborate meals. Chicken piccata. Lemon risotto. Lasagna that nearly took me down.
“Wow,” Doug said one night, wiping sauce from his lips. “Told you it was in your head. You just needed to push through.”
Smile. Nod. Sip water.
But the wheels were turning. Oh, they were spinning hard.
Enter Shannon. My doula, postpartum coach, and newly minted partner in a very special kind of revenge. Shannon runs a parenting bootcamp for dads. And she lives for this stuff.
“You in?” I asked her.
Shannon grinned. “Say less.”
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