Needing Encouragement: Feeling alone in my homemaking

Alone in my homemaking.

This was how I felt recently when my sweet sister came for a week long visit.

Let me explain, and I hope that in doing so I can connect with someone who could offer some support.

In our household, we follow traditional household roles: I do the housework that is indoors and most of the child-related stuff, and my husband is the breadwinner.  He works outside the home all day from 7am-6pm, and does our yard work and takes care of the trash.

Right now I am expecting our 3rd child, and I of course mother our 1 year old and our 3 year old.

So the way I see it, both my husband and I work very hard pretty much all day long, at different tasks.

But here's what happened.

My sister is an excellent houseguest, she pitches in with whatever needs doing, cleans up after herself, is a model auntie with the toddlers, and is just all around great to have here.

However, she was ultra sensitive/aware that my husband was not helping with house stuff.  I cook every meal, change most diapers, clean up everything, do all the laundry, you know, all that stuff.

When my husband comes home, he is of course a good father to the children, but household stuff isn't part of what he does.  So I felt Very Very Awkward when my sister got fairly huffy about this.

Since I am having a somewhat taxing pregnancy and am feeling sick and exhausted all the time, things seemed even more difficult at home.

"You do everything!" she announced, fire in her eyes.  "And that is all I'm going to say," she finished, I think slamming something in the kitchen for emphasis.

It was 12 hours into a hard day of homemaking.  I had no words.  No anti-feminism philosophies to share, no reasoning to give, no explanations at all.  In fact, I felt wrong. I felt tired. I felt ill. I felt judged, I felt alone.  My sister has never made me feel alone before.  I'd never felt ashamed of my marriage before - but I felt vulnerable and exposed, I felt like a failure who had been found out.

Sigh.

Can anyone relate to this?

I stood by the sink and just felt like that, and thought of all the ironing, all the dishes, all the cleanup that remained.  And my husband was sitting in the next room, getting to rest because when he is at home, he is at rest. But because I am a homemaker, home is not a place of rest for me until a certain amount of work is done.

And that amount of work had not yet been reached.

I know in my head that everything is fine and that I have just been recently bullied into thinking this way - - but? Oh, I need some encouragement.