Don't Cry Over Dried Laundry

After a six month hiatus, my husband is helping with the laundry again. While this does speak for how much my love cares for me, it speaks even more for how much my postpartum hormones have finally started to normalize. This past January, Bill came under the harsh wrath of my after-baby blues while in the laundry room. He had made what should have been a harmless decision to switch a load of clothes from the washer into the dryer. Little did he know the chaos this would cause my fragile post-delivery brain, only a couple weeks following the birth of our beautiful Lydia. As the dryer came to a stop, I opened the door, and- to my absolute horror- realized the gravity of what my husband had done. In his attempt to help me, he had used regular heat on the normal cycle, and he had used a dryer sheet. A scented dryer sheet. My eyes immediately welled up with tears. I felt panicked. I didn't know what to do as I felt my entire world cave in around me. I knelt to the floor, picked up a warm onesie, and buried my face in it as I wept. My unsuspecting husband walked in at that moment, stunned to see me hysterically crying. My tears then turned to anger as I let him have it- asking him how he could possibly think it was ok to use a dryer sheet with baby items?! Didn't he realize that the high heat would shrink the clothes, and the normal, nongentle cycle would wear them out faster? And what if there had been a stain on something (which there wasn't) but what if there had been and he didn't know it and the hypothetical article of clothing would have then been ruined??? Bill looked at me- a crumpled mess on the floor wearing a milk-stained nightgown now soaked with crocodile tears. He quietly apologized, promising to not ever do laundry again. I wiped away the tears and removed myself from the floor, carrying my unperfectly laundered clothes with me. So last night, when I saw Bill switching clothes from the washer to the dryer, it took me back to that crazy moment. And instead of crumpling up hysterically crying in front of the washing machine, I gave my love a hug and kiss, and thanked him, happy that both my brain and my heart were finally in unison once again.