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Babies: 9 - 12 Months
is your marriage better or worse after the birth of your child?
I heard tons of times that a child can put strain on a marriage, but I didn't believe it. Now, our child is almost 1, so we are passed the adjustment phase and sleep deprivation, and yet my husband and I don't get along very well anymore. Most of the times we don't really fight, we just snap at each other and don't seem in synch like we were before. And the matters we disagree are seldom related to the baby. So what is happening? Are we just tired? Does it happen to you too?
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Re: is your marriage better or worse after the birth of your child?
we have moments where we really are on the same page, and moments where we are in different books. We had to learn to communicate in different ways. and sometimes, we had to relearn how to communicate.
take it one day at a time, and remember you love him, and WHY you love him.
Some days are better, some are worse. Overall, better. We have this newfound joy (DD) who delights us both.
However, when we have differences of opinion over daily tasks for her (mundane things, like letting her play amongst the shells at the beach), it's more difficult since we didn't have those issues before.
After the Man was born, things were kind of rough with my husband and I. Unfortunately, a lot of the trouble was caused by me venting to a few people when I shouldn't have, because they made it seem like my husband was the worst person on the face of the planet. After ties were cut with them, things actually improved. We had a VERY long talk and realized a lot of it was because of my bad attitude towards him based on the bad suggestions/feedback I was getting.
We're wonderful now. It's kind of like we've been married for 50 years and are the best of friends who work together. We butt heads once in awhile, but nowhere NEAR as bad as it was a few months ago. He's wonderful with the kids, they absolutely adore him, and all is right with the world (where's the birdies and sun? haha).
Seriously though, you may need to sit down and talk things out with him.
I'd say it's better. I'm a SAHM and DH appreciates my decision to do that. He also doesn't expect me to do everything since I am home and helps a lot at night and on the weekends.
Of course there are the days that I want to smash his iPhone b/c it's a total distraction for him but he's getting much better with it.
It's never been horrible, but it's definitely strained us here and there. I just don't see how you can add a 3rd, entirely dependent entity, into your life w/o it causing SOME hiccups in your life and relationship.
But it's a huge mental game to me. When I find myself getting annoyed w/ DH, I have to force myself to take a step back and think about the situation and think about what I"m really upset about. And often times, it's not him.
OR I'm focusing only on the negative and ignoring the positive and I then force myself to refocus. (For example "I can't believe he didnt' wash the bottles. I'm SO fricking tired of washing the bottles all.the.time. Oh, but wait, he was home for 3 days straight w/ DS alone and was doing ___ and___ w/ him, oh, and he also managed to do __ and ___ around the house too. O.k.- I'll let the bottles go.".
~Benjamin Franklin
DS dx with celiac disease 5/28/10
Yes, you are probably tired. And you might still be adjusting. Have you guys done anything alone lately and tried to reconnect? I've found that the smallest of gestures goes a LONG way - like if I rub his back for like 5 minutes or if he makes an effort to kiss me goodbye instead of running out the door. Those small things can carry us through a few days.
I was reading an article yesterday that used the analogy of your marriage is a house and the kids are a hurricane - I thought thaat was a good analogy. You probably need to take some time and effort and put things back together after having a child - and its a continuous thing.
I would say we are on the upswing of the adjustment period. I am sure it takes every couple more or less time. Try to talk to him about it, tell him how important your marriage is to you, and how you would like to work on it - even if it just means taking a night out every once in a while. Try to do something together that makes you feel like the old couple you once were. For my husband and I, we used to always sit on our back porch and drink wine together. When we do this now, it totally brings us back to how we used to be. But taking the baby outside to play on a blanket give us the same feeling, too. When we used to sit on the back porch, we would always talk about how we couldn't wait until we could sit out there with the baby - and now we do.
GL - I hope things get better soon. I think EVERY couple goes through rough patches - baby or not.
I think the tiredness is to blame - even if you're getting enough sleep, your life has undergone a major change, and your LO (no matter how calm and lovely) is taking up a lot of your and your DH's time/strength/concentration. I'm not even sure that a year is enough time to really adjust, as your LOs mood/routine/development is changing so often in the first year.
DH and I definitely have our moments when we sort of snap at each other (and I definitely attribute that to lack of sleep, since DS STTH for about 2 months, and now is back to waking up 2-3 times per night). And that happens more often now than it ever did before DS came along. However, I've also noticed that we are closer now - even if we do snap at each other once in a while, 30 seconds later we're hugging, kissing and apologizing. There's no 'holding a grudge' or spending an extra minute mad at each other. Maybe we're realizing that that stuff is just not worth our time.
After Robbie was born everything was fantastic. Our relationship grew to an entirely different level- I fell in love all over again.
Now that I'm 32 weeks pregnant in the middle of the hot, hot summer I hate his guts
Ditto this, except for the pregnant part. :-) Seeing him as a father gave me a whole new respect and love for him. I guess if he'd been a jackass and never helped me I would've felt differently, but I guess I got lucky.
We're too happy now to want to fight. We went through a rough patch a couple months ago that lasted 2 weeks, and it was miserable. We just want to relax, be happy, enjoy our family and enjoy the summer! We live in a drama-free zone.
are you living in my head? this is us/me EXACTLY and I have to relearn this lesson about once a year/once every 6 months.
I need to remind myself of this and try it. I tend to speak before thinking sometimes; especially when it comes to pointing things out to DH.
It's different. I wouldn't say it's better or worse. We don't get as much time to ourselves, which sucks- but I feel like we're more committed to each other now. Our marriage serves a higher purpose- it's not just about us, it's about our family. We both feel that no matter what happens between us now, we both owe it to our children to find a way to make it work (and by "make it work", I mean make it work happily.) We both feel strongly that our children deserve to grow up in a happy, functional, nurturing home and we know that the cornerstone of that is having a strong, happy marriage. It's hard to explain, but we're knitted tighter together now.
That's not to say that it's all sunshine and roses- our son was extremely colicky and never slept. He's coming up on 16 months and he still doesn't sleep (he woke up 5 times last night, 8 the night before). For the first six or eight months after he was born we barely had a real conversation- whenever our son was finally asleep, we were both so exhausted that we crashed. We couldn't find time to reconnect at all. It wasn't fun. But we knew that that phase was a temporary drought and we would get through it.