At 2 a.m., our daughter Rosie had a massive diaper blowout—the kind that somehow ends up in her hair, her socks, and on the walls like modern art. I gently shook Cole, trying to stay calm through the mess.
“Can you change her while I grab a clean onesie?”
He groaned, rolled over, and muttered, “Diapers aren’t a man’s job.”
I stood there, stunned, holding our screaming baby, covered in poop, while her father dismissed his role with one lazy sentence.
For months, I’d done everything. The late-night feedings, the colic, the doctor appointments, the postpartum exhaustion. While Cole played video games and “decompressed” after work. I hadn’t slept more than two hours straight in weeks. But this?
This was the moment something snapped.
I cleaned Rosie up on my own, singing to her through tears. Then I laid her in her crib, kissed her head, and walked into the bathroom. I looked in the mirror—hair a mess, eyes puffy, shoulders sagging.
I didn’t look like me anymore.
And it hit me: I didn’t sign up to be a single parent with a husband.
So at 5 a.m., I made a call. Not to a friend. Not to my mom. To Amy, my best friend and lawyer.
By 7 a.m., she was at my house.
By 7:30, I had a list. A plan.
At 8 a.m., Cole stumbled into the kitchen, yawning, rubbing his eyes, still half-asleep. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me sitting at the table—not alone.
Amy looked up from her coffee and paperwork. “Good morning, Cole,” she said, cool as ice.
He blinked. “What’s… going on?”
I pushed a stack of papers toward him. “A parenting schedule. Childcare expectations. Financial breakdown. Oh—and a list of things you can start doing if you want to keep this family.”
He looked like a deer in headlights. “Are you serious?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Dead serious. Because diapers are a man’s job when he’s a father. And I won’t raise our daughter to think otherwise.”
He stared at the paperwork. Then at me. For the first time in a long time… he looked scared.
Good.
It was about time he woke up. Because Rosie deserves a real dad.
And I deserve a real partner.
Whether that’s Cole—or someone else—depends on what he does next.