As much as I love my husband, he is not the best communicator. And honestly, I don’t think he did a very good job explaining the situation to me before I moved in.
I was still following Hector’s beliefs about certain things, and I didn’t really question it. I figured, this is his family, so I’ll follow his lead. I assumed he knew how things worked, what the expectations were, and how I was supposed to fit into all of it.
Apparently, that was a very incorrect assumption.
The reality is that Hector doesn’t communicate with his family the way he should, and that creates unnecessary misunderstandings between them and me. And I understand that not everyone is going to have the kind of relationship with their parents that I have with my mom and my stepdad. I know I’m incredibly lucky in that regard.
But I really hoped that having a daughter would force Hector to step up a little. To grow up in certain ways. To move past some of the things he’s been stubborn about and realize that things can’t always stay the way they’ve been.
Unfortunately, we’re still working on that.
And I will absolutely take some responsibility here, too. I should have sat down with him and his family and actually talked about all of this once I got here. I should have asked more questions and made sure everyone was on the same page instead of assuming Hector would handle it.
But so much has happened since I got here that it honestly feels like we’ve barely had a chance to breathe, let alone sit down and have a calm, productive family conversation.
And I really do think that’s something that needs to happen.
I don’t want his parents to feel like I’m taking advantage of their generosity. They have opened their home to me, and I don’t want to be any more intrusive than I already am. I also hate that so many things seem to get taken out of context or misunderstood. And I’m not completely innocent in that either. I know there are things I’ve said or done that have contributed to the situation.
But I think the biggest thing that changed for me was getting pregnant.
Before, I could worry about what people thought of me. I could worry about whether his family liked me or whether I was fitting in correctly.
Now?
I genuinely don’t care what they think of me.
It’s about the baby.
Because I don’t want my daughter growing up with the same experience I had with my dad’s family.
I don’t really know them. I don’t know how I’m supposed to be around them. They’re incredibly close-knit, and for a long time I felt like I was the one Hart who wasn’t part of that family.
And for a while, it felt like they blamed me for that.
That part still hurts.
Because I was a child.
Whatever feelings the adults had about my mom, I was still a child in the middle of it. I didn’t have the ability to understand the dynamics, fix the relationships, or somehow bridge the gap between the adults in my life.
And the older I get, the more I realize how unfair that was.
The adults could have reached out to me.
They could have made an effort to know me.
They could have chosen to have a relationship with me that existed separately from whatever problems they had with my mom.
But they didn’t.
And I grew up feeling like I was the odd piece of my own family. Like everyone else had this connection that I somehow wasn’t allowed to be part of. Like there was a family I belonged to on paper but didn’t actually know how to belong to in real life.
I don’t want that for my daughter.
I don’t ever want her sitting there years from now wondering why she wasn’t included, why certain family members don’t know her, or whether she somehow did something wrong to cause the distance.
I don’t want her looking back and realizing the adults around her were capable of reaching out but chose not to.
And I definitely don’t want her thinking that it was her responsibility to fix something that was never hers to fix.
Because I have my own little Sprout now.
Hector likes to point out that we have way too many nicknames for her, and honestly… he’s not wrong.
When I was pregnant, she was our Bean.
Now that she’s here, she’s our Sprout.
And yes, this is connected to my Instagram, which has her real name, but I actually like having a little nickname for her here on the blog. It feels like one tiny piece of privacy that I can still give her.
And I want her to grow up knowing that she has a family who wants to know her, loves her, and makes an effort to be part of her life.
That doesn’t mean everyone has to agree with each other.
It doesn’t mean everyone has to like each other all the time.
It doesn’t even mean we’re going to get everything right.
It just means we show up.
We communicate.
We make an effort.
And when something goes wrong, we talk about it instead of letting assumptions and hurt feelings turn into permanent distance.
That’s what I’m trying to do now.
Not because I think Hector’s parents are my dad’s family. They’re not. And I don’t want to project my past onto them or punish them for things they didn’t do. Considering how amazing they are with her
But my past has absolutely changed the way I look at family now.
I know what it feels like to be the kid standing on the outside.
And I refuse to let my daughter become that kid.
That’s why this matters so much to me now.
There are a lot of other underlying problems between Hector and me right now, and honestly, this blog is a pretty major one. There are things we’ve both said and done, things we’ve misunderstood about each other, and things that have been building for a while.
I’m not writing this because I have everything figured out. I don’t.
I’m trying to find some way to reconcile all of this. I love my husband. I love my family. And now we have this tiny little Sprout who has completely changed the stakes.
I don’t need everyone to agree with me. I don’t need everyone to like me.
I just want us to communicate.
I want us to actually talk about things instead of making assumptions, taking things out of context, or letting misunderstandings pile up until everyone is frustrated.
Because apparently, that’s the glamorous part of becoming parents nobody puts in the baby announcement.
The baby is here. Everyone survived the emergency C-section. The NICU. The sleep deprivation.
And now we apparently have to learn how to communicate like adults.
Cool.
No pressure.
