If you’re just married and you’re planning a wonderful life together, here are few tips about what to expect when you have your first child together. The birth of a child is a wondrous thing and it will have a profound effect on you and your spouse. But the stresses and changes that occur due to the birth of a child can often lead to the first major blow up in the marriage.
Why?
So why does the birth of a child (this fantastic, wondrous event) because so much stress on a couple? In large part, it’s because Mom now has a baby. Some will argue that mom has another baby and maybe she does, to a point. Before the baby is born, Dad has her full attention. Maybe she cooks, maybe she cleans or picks up after him – but before the baby is born, she showers all of that nurturing attention on her husband.
That attention decreases dramatically when a baby is born. The decrease is natural and it’s not to be ashamed of. It is, however, something you need to be aware of. When our daughter was born, I would be up at all hours, I would look after her throughout the day and it wasn’t uncommon that when my husband got home from work, I needed a break. I didn’t have the energy or the inclination to be as nurturing as I’d been prior to the baby’s birth.
As wives, our focus changes after a baby is born. It’s not uncommon that sex is the first thing out the window after a baby is born. This is partly due to the recovery time associated with vaginal birth and also because mom is usually too wiped once she hits the sheets to do anything more than sleep. A third factor is mom’s personal space. Husbands don’t always understand this, but mom spends all day holding, nursing, carrying and touching in some way her baby. The baby is in her space – it’s nice when baby is asleep and mom is in bed to have some virtual space back again. Wives are not always receptive to being touched at this point.
Resentment
Husbands can love and adore their infants and be a little resentful at the same time. The first time my husband and I talked about having a second child, he mentioned the fact that he wasn’t looking forward to being on ignore again for six to ten months while we coped and adjusted to the arrival of another child. It was one of the first times he voiced his own resentment and we sat down and talked about what happened.
As with most couples, we naturally struggled our way through that period and we recovered, but there were things we could have both done better. What we needed to do was make a night that was just for us at least once a week. We needed to divide up the weekends so that he spent time nurturing me so I could recover the energy to nurture him.
I also needed to learn to nap when the baby did – I did this throughout toddlerhood and my stress levels decreased significantly. He also got into the habit of making dinner 4 nights out of 7 and do you have any idea how much nicer that made things? So there are ways you can cope with this new stress, but you need to do it as a couple and not push each other away.
Married parents have the best support group there is – each other.
How did you and your spouse cope with the first year after the baby was born?
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