After reading some posts on the nest and talking to several friend IRL, I'm starting to get really worried about how hard having a baby is going to be on my marriage. DH and I have been married for almost 4 years. We are going to start TTC in May. We have a great relationship now. I cannot remember the last time we had a real fight. We have disagreements over silly things like leftovers or tv shows we want to watch, but that's about it. I'm so worried about that changing since I love what we have right now so much.
The first year we were married certainly wasn't horrible, but it wasn't a walk in the park either. We didn't live together before marriage or share finances so we had to adjust to that and then I learned a lot more about DH's crazy family and how bad they really are with finances. They are always asking DH for money and expect a lot from him since he doesn't have mounds of CC debt. DH's brother (who I love) also messed up in college near us due to his family losing their house, asking him for money and his other brother having a drug problem.
The last thing BIL wanted and DH and I wanted was for BIL to move back home. DH really wanted to get him away so that he could have a better life. So we agreed he could move in with us for the summer, work at getting back into school, get a job.
That turned out not so great. DH's family expected for us to take in BIL for free and feed him/finance him like he was our child. Which was not something we could afford or where prepared to do. We charged him 200/month, just to cover the food he was eating and the higher energy bills. He also helped DH around the house since we were renovating. BIL turned out to be way lazier than I had expected and since DH hadn't lived with BIL ever (half brother), he was not expecting this either. However DH loved having BIL around for help and video games etc. I am an only child and have had roommates before, but BIL didn't act like a roommate, he complained that we never had food (we did, but you had to actually cook/make something) and he would only eat when I would make him something and hand it to him.
Sorry, this ended up way to long, but in the end the BIL moved back home and our relationship has been amazing ever since. And it wasn't bad when BIL was here, but I remember fighting more and felt like we had a child that I didn't want or agree to instead of a roommate. So all in all, I'm worried about us having issues with a baby and it changing our relationship a good bit. Has this happened to anyone?
Besides the normal sleep deprivation causing both of us to be snippy or short with eachother we have done fine with two kids. We have a 2 year old and a 2 month old. Our marriage is fine. We see the changes as the natural evolution of our marriage. We know that every stressful situation is temporary. We tend to be even tempered people to begin with and we have never gotten into huge fights in our relationship to begin with.
Our first child's babyhood was not very hard on our marriage at all. We spent a lot of time cuddled up in bed watching movies or playing Scrabble while I nursed. It was a sweet time. For us, the difficulty came when the reality of balancing life with two kids hit us--there was suddenly a lot of dividing and conquering to make sure both kids' needs were met, which meant less time that DH and I spent together. Now that our kids are older, the four of us are able to really do a lot more together, and our marriage is pretty great.
Honestly for about 8 or 9 months I did not want to be touched and I sometimes I just hated him. It was hard, but we both knew it would get better once we were able to get some sleep and it did. It's crazy what sleep deprivation does to your mental state. My advice is to make sure you line up help or come up with a plan so that you are able to sleep in between feeding sessions.
Honestly for about 8 or 9 months I did not want to be touched and I sometimes I just hated him. It was hard, but we both knew it would get better once we were able to get some sleep and it did. It's crazy what sleep deprivation does to your mental state. My advice is to make sure you line up help or come up with a plan so that you are able to sleep in between feeding sessions.
I am so worried about the sleep/sex issue. I am awful when I don't get my sleep and I am a very light sleeper, so that makes it so much worse. I am going to have to work really hard to be extra nice to DH. Luckily he is very patient and understanding. However, he is overly optimistic and thinks we are going to have the perfect sleeping baby and that we will get pregnant right away lol.
Very very very hard. DH worked a shit ton of hours and I resented him for not spending enough time with LO. When he did I resented him b/c he did everything wrong. I doted excessively on our baby and had no time for DH. To me the only time DH wanted to spend time with me was for sex. (this was all stwisted in my head)
It was hard and horrible and we both had a hard time seeing things from each others perspective.
I have stopped obsessing about the baby, spent more time with DH and he got a job with much less ours. We are still working on it though, no where near divorce.
Pretty much any issue we had pre-DD was exacerbated after her. Where I was mildly annoyed at his work schedule and his inability to reasonably predict when he would be home pre-baby, I was a crazy, raging mess about his schedule post-baby. Where we would occasionally quibble about my family or his family pre-baby, we would have out-and-out fights about who wasn't managing his/her respective parents' expectations about the baby. Etc. etc. etc.
It's hard to list all the stuff, but you get the idea. The combination of sleep deprivation, added stress and then the fact that all non-baby couples time has to be planned and plotted in advance (and can be easily thwarted by a sick baby or a sick babysitter or some work emergency) made it easy for me, at least, to explode much more quickly than I did pre-baby.
It took us a while to work through that as a couple and we had to make some big, drastic changes in the meantime. Hiring extra help and reducing my own work load was key for my sanity and getting DH to the point where he admitted his work-life balance (or lack thereof) affected other people besides himself were big steps.
I had to come a long way myself in all of this. Before DD was born, I was never the type of person who felt comfortable asking for help with something. I kept feeling like a failure anytime I was overwhelmed by the baby in front of me, like it should all be really natural and I just didn't get it. And then I would take out my frustrations on DH, which was no good. It was only after I was well past the baby stage that I realized none of the other new moms I saw around had any idea what they were doing, either.
DH has been very supportive and plays the daddy role very well. I could have not done it without him. Having a kid was very stressful in the beginning days. But overall it did not interfere with our marriage. It only strengthened it.
Honestly not that bad. Maybe a little snippiness due to sleep deprivation with #1 (he was an awful sleeper early on) but no major fights or anything. We had a couple kinks to work out when I stopped working after #2 but we ironed those out pretty easily by hiring more help. If anything, I feel like having kids has brought us closer together. They're kind of like this strange, ongoing project we share And I have to say I've been really impressed with how DH handled DD's clocky stage. He really took the lead on that one and sat with her almost every night.
I think the fact that you're already thinking and talking about this before ttc bodes well for your future. GL!
Post by gibbinator on Oct 23, 2012 11:44:52 GMT -5
The main change for us is a practically non-existent sex-life. We're just too beat by the end of the day to have any energy for intimacy. When ds goes to bed we usually just sit on the couch mindlessly watching tv.
We also spend a lot if time at home doing separate things. Like taking turns eating supper so one of us is free watch ds. I'll watch ds while dh does school prep. He watches ds and I make supper or fold laundry. I think we've eaten supper together at the table 3 times since ds was born. (Keep in mind that while my kid is generally not a fussy baby, he is high maintenance and hates nit being the centre of attention so we can't just put him in the exersaucer and eat).
Otherwise having a baby has highlighted what a great team we are and we go out and do a lot more things now.
Having a regular attempt at date night once a month helps keep us connected as a couple. I think we'd feel a lot like roommates if we didn't get away once in a while.
Post by dcrunnergirl on Oct 23, 2012 11:44:54 GMT -5
We have not found it hard on marriage at all. To be honest, the key to this is early bedtimes for the kids. We started bedtime routines at 4 weeks old, and had them in bed every night by 7:30pm (and since about 4 months, the kids' bedtime has been 6:30-7pm). This has always allowed DH and I to have time to get stuff done, decompress, talk, eat dinner together, watch TV together, etc.
That has made a huge difference for us. This isn't to say we haven't had a few fights due to sleeplessness, but probably less than 5 times in 2 years. Honestly, DH's unemployment a few years ago was much harder on us.
Being sleep deprived is hard but otherwise not really. We have had rough patches here & there but generally we've had a great 10yrs married. Our sex life has just gotten better & better through the years.
Not very. My PPD was a little bit rough but my husband is a very mellow, roll-with-the-punches kind of guy so he rode it out. I'm lucky that he understood very well that anything I said in a state of depression or sleep deprivation didn't count--and in fact we had an agreement going in that anything nasty that was said in the first 3 months just did not count and would be swept off the table when the dust settles. Surprisingly we didn't really even need to refer to it that much.
Having a kid brought us closer together for sure. I have no complaints.
We have not found it hard on marriage at all. To be honest, the key to this is early bedtimes for the kids. We started bedtime routines at 4 weeks old, and had them in bed every night by 7:30pm (and since about 4 months, the kids' bedtime has been 6:30-7pm). This has always allowed DH and I to have time to get stuff done, decompress, talk, eat dinner together, watch TV together, etc.
We do this too and I think it makes a big difference. One of my friends doesn't put her 2.5 yo to bed until 9, 9:30 and she has to go to bed with him so he'll sleep (they have a family bed). I seriously don't know how she stays sane with this schedule. She gets so little time to herself or alone with her H. I keep telling her she needs to be stricter wrt bedtime but she says it doesn't work and he won't go to sleep. I would be pulling my hair out in that situation.
It has been tough. We've been through a variety of issues, lack of affection on my end toward DH, which was just more clear after DS was born. Our sex life has never been awesome, but it has gone downhill since DS was born. We're working on it. Basically, whatever was a minor issue beforehand is now a bigger issue.
We've had issues with getting everything done and not feeling like we have a huge to do list still at the end of every weekend. We were admittedly bad the first several months with DS about taking "us" time together-we always told each other to go out on their own, but we didn't go out a lot together. We got into that roommate feeling, running parallel lives. We're working hard now to do a date day/night every 2 weeks. The only rules are no talking about DS and no talking about work. DH has made the complaint previously that there's so much to talk about on the weekends (we work opposite schedules) that it feels like a business sometimes.
The main change for us is a practically non-existent sex-life. We're just too beat by the end of the day to have any energy for intimacy. When ds goes to bed we usually just sit on the couch mindlessly watching tv.
We also spend a lot if time at home doing separate things. Like taking turns eating supper so one of us is free watch ds. I'll watch ds while dh does school prep. He watches ds and I make supper or fold laundry. I think we've eaten supper together at the table 3 times since ds was born. (Keep in mind that while my kid is generally not a fussy baby, he is high maintenance and hates nit being the centre of attention so we can't just put him in the exersaucer and eat).
Otherwise having a baby has highlighted what a great team we are and we go out and do a lot more things now.
Having a regular attempt at date night once a month helps keep us connected as a couple. I think we'd feel a lot like roommates if we didn't get away once in a while.
You might look into one of these for dinners. It reclines so babies as young as 3 months can sit at the dinner table.
An early bedtime for DD would have done nothing for us since the primary problem was DH not coming home until I was already in bed.
But, kind of related to this is the fact that I was the only person who could put DD to sleep due to DH's schedule. Once I hired a regular sitter to come and put her to sleep 1-2x/week so I could have some time to myself, my life outlook radically improved. Next time around, I would love it if DH's schedule was such that he could regularly put the baby to sleep, regardless of whether I am BFing or not. But if it's not, I will hire a regular evening sitter much earlier on.
This thread makes me feel like crap. It was horrible for us. I wrote it all out, but couldn't bring myself to post it. I think we did a lot of things wrong from the beginning.
If you feel like you are taking too much on, ask for help. I worried about looking weak and didn't ask my husband for help. It made him feel useless and unconfident. He felt he couldn't do anything right, so he didn't do anything. I started to agree with him and resented him. I pulled away and he did some lousy stuff that rocked our marriage. Lots of counseling and we are getting to a good place. But it's been two rough years.
Honestly, it didn't change things much for us. But when we married, I gained an 8yo SS as well, so we were already used to parenting, had figured out our parenting styles, and were used to arranging our lives around someone else. (Yes, the first year of marriage and figuring out how to parent together were hard, but that was 4 years before baby.)
Sure the sleep deprivation and me being uber-hormonal didn't make for the best of times, but compared to the bouts of depression we'd both been through from 2 years of infertility treatments and shitty ass jobs, it wasn't that hard on our marriage.... or maybe it's just that we spread out the pain over a much longer period than most people.
Hugs, crazygame. It was no walk in the park for us, either. I totally hear you on the worrying about looking weak thing. I wish my current self could go back in time to talk some sense into my new-mommy self.
Not hard at all, we work as a team against the kids. Lol. We are more tired, but we agree not to hang on to any nasty comments made due to sleep deprivation.
This thread makes me feel like crap. It was horrible for us. I wrote it all out, but couldn't bring myself to post it. I think we did a lot of things wrong from the beginning.
If you feel like you are taking too much on, ask for help. I worried about looking weak and didn't ask my husband for help. It made him feel useless and unconfident. He felt he couldn't do anything right, so he didn't do anything. I started to agree with him and resented him. I pulled away and he did some lousy stuff that rocked our marriage. Lots of counseling and we are getting to a good place. But it's been two rough years.
I'm sorry I'm glad you are getting to a good place now. I am worried that I am going to be awful to DH. I am such a bitch when I don't get sleep now. For example, the other night, DH woke me up trying to find the remote I had fallen asleep on. He accidentally tickled me (I am the most ticklish person on the planet) and I threw the remote at him I was so mad.
I also am a very light sleeper and can't get back to sleep after I'm woken up. Last night our puppy woke up at 4am which he hasn't done in months. DH didn't even hear him. I finally took him out (poor thing had to pee so bad) and I'm a crab this morning.
DH has been great with our puppy, but honestly our puppy has been very easy. There have been only a handful of times where he hasn't slept thru the night and he was potty trained really quickly.
I'm just such a worrier, I know I'm not going to be able to sleep at all and I'm going to be so mean
Overall I'd say our marriage is better, but there are still challenges. Finding time for sex (and an interest in sex) can be a big issue in that first year.
There are several other pieces to this.
In the early days of a new baby everyone is tired. I've pulled all nighters before but NOTHING prepares you for the true exhaustion you face when you sleep in 2 hour increments. It makes everything hard. You might get lucky and have a good sleeper but you and your DH should talk openly about coping during the first 4 months because it can really suck. With my first we ended up having someone come 4 hours a day on my mat leave so I could sleep.
You may have some very harsh fights about parenting. We didn't have that many until more recently but the one was have have been our worst fights. It can be really hard because some parenting issues have no great solutions. We have a picky toddler and the normal suggestions don't work with her.
Finally a baby will take up a lot of your time. That is time you spent with your husband but also I assume alone/with friends/at the gym etc. It is easy for the romance you had in your marriage to get neglected and for you to give some of yourself up. It is all a balancing act. The best advice is to keep focus on all the things that matter to you (work, baby, marriage, friends, family) and try to keep some balance in there.
I set my expectations for him as a father before we TTC, I felt it was important that he know I expected him to do everything I could do (short of bf) and I did not want to be the one doing all the baby chores while he just got to play with the LO. And once DD was here I let we really started working as a team and still do, if one of us is getting frustrated then the other will step in and help, other than her laundry we share every other child related chore, alternate bedtime stories, bath time and he drops off at dc and I pick up. The one area that suffered was our sex life because we were both preoccupied with DD and or tired, it has taken a conscious effort on both our parts, but it has gotten more frequent. In the early days we both tried to not take things personally because we were both so tired and could get snippy but we just let it roll off our backs knowing that we were both exhausted. I think we have gotten closer as a couple since becoming parents. SIL lived with us for 6 months when we were 1st married and having a new born was so much less stressful than having a lazy roommate!
Post by cricketwife on Oct 23, 2012 16:02:53 GMT -5
I don't have any real advice for you, but thanks for this post. My H and I are also planning TTC in the spring. I think being nervous about the changes is one of the reasons we weren't sure at first if we wanted kids. In a thread the other day someone recommended Babyproofing Your Marriage as a good book - just thought that I'd pass that on. I haven't read it yet, but it sounds like maybe you'd be interested in considering it.
Post by raylongivens on Oct 23, 2012 16:10:10 GMT -5
We had a really hard time. DH really didn't understand what we were in for, and didn't think it was "fair" that he had to get up at night. (that changed quickly, btw.) I think I had some PPD stuff going on that manifested itself as rage more than sadness. DH traveled a lot for work, I worked FT, DH felt he deserved downtime more than I did, if that makes sense. I blew up at everything. There were no discussions for months - just fights.
We couldn't see the other's point of view. We fought a lot. I was totally overwhelmed, screaming for help, and DH wanted to go camping with friends. Looking back, he was overwhelmed, too. We both handled it poorly.
It took a good year for us to get on track. I've voiced my concerns about a repeat with #2, but DH, the eternal optimist, thinks that we won't make the same mistakes twice.
I set my expectations for him as a father before we TTC, I felt it was important that he know I expected him to do everything I could do (short of bf) and I did not want to be the one doing all the baby chores while he just got to play with the LO. And once DD was here I let we really started working as a team and still do, if one of us is getting frustrated then the other will step in and help, other than her laundry we share every other child related chore, alternate bedtime stories, bath time and he drops off at dc and I pick up. The one area that suffered was our sex life because we were both preoccupied with DD and or tired, it has taken a conscious effort on both our parts, but it has gotten more frequent. In the early days we both tried to not take things personally because we were both so tired and could get snippy but we just let it roll off our backs knowing that we were both exhausted. I think we have gotten closer as a couple since becoming parents. SIL lived with us for 6 months when we were 1st married and having a new born was so much less stressful than having a lazy roommate!
I don't have any real advice for you, but thanks for this post. My H and I are also planning TTC in the spring. I think being nervous about the changes is one of the reasons we weren't sure at first if we wanted kids. In a thread the other day someone recommended Babyproofing Your Marriage as a good book - just thought that I'd pass that on. I haven't read it yet, but it sounds like maybe you'd be interested in considering it.
I will take a look at that book, thanks. I had some friends who read it and thought it was great. Now the trick is just getting DH to read it.