When I was pregnant, I heard from more than a few people that my relationship with my husband Chris would be rocked when our son arrived. But…please.
At the time I was working at a magazine that devoted a large chunk of every issue to relationships. I talked to marriage therapists every day for stories. I could go over the ways to keep a relationship healthy in my sleep. My marriage was going to be the model for how to ace this whole relationship-with-baby thing.
I was such an idiot.
Having a baby changes everything. And I mean, everything. Don’t get me wrong: Parenthood is amazing, but it completely shakes up your relationship—at least, it did for us.
I noticed the change in myself seconds after our son was born. For a moment, Chris was frozen to the spot while doctors bustled around, unsure of whether he was supposed to take care of me or our squawking infant son. I finally snapped, “Go to him!” I’d never been a snapper before. Where the heck did that come from?
We had always sworn that we’d be laidback parents—we watched “Die Hard” with our son the night he came home from the hospital, which, in retrospect, is probably not the most kid-friendly flick. But we were all happy and snuggled inside together like the perfect little family. “This isn’t going to change a thing,” I remember thinking.
That glow lasted for all of a few hours. We quickly became sleep-deprived. Chris went back to working long hours at his job as a chef and I was home, mostly alone, with the baby on maternity leave.
Overall, it was a really special time in our lives. We were in love with our son, and I loved maternity leave so much that I started calling it "maternity vacation." But I started to notice that Chris and I were interacting with each other differently.
All of the sudden, we found hidden criticisms in things we said to each other when there were none. I had always taken a soft approach to arguing, using “we” instead of “you,” and working to find compromise in everything. That quickly went out the window along with my inability to hold back tears during greeting card commercials. We started bickering over everything, from how to take care of our son, to who got to carry him home from a restaurant (Juvenile? Totally.). We stopped laughing about things and started taking ourselves way too seriously.
I became a worrier. Instead of laughing at a photo Chris texted me of our baby gnawing on a chopstick, I texted back a warning about splinters. I got freaked when Chris wanted to carry our son around our neighborhood without a carrier, worried that he would drop him. Even my self-sufficiency became a problem for us: Since Chris was working such long hours, I wanted to be supermom; Chris wasn’t thrilled that he didn’t have a larger role in our normal routine.
I finally got so annoyed with things that I took my parents up on their offer to join them on their vacation with the baby while Chris stayed behind to work. The break did help, but it would be months—many months—until we were back to "normal."
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Parenthood also took some adjusting for my friend Laura and her husband. We recently traded new mom stories, and laughed at how she just warned a pregnant friend to “get ready, because a war is brewing and it’s going to be with your husband.”
While that was true for both of us, it wasn’t for my friend, Becky. She says she and her husband quickly banded together after their daughter was born and became even more of a team. "Sure, we don’t have as much time for each other now, but we depend on each other more," she said. "It sounds cheesy, but I really love him at a different depth now than I ever thought I could love someone."
Okay, clearly I went about this whole thing wrong. Curious to know where Chris and I screwed up, I asked psychotherapist Tina B. Tessina, Ph.D., author of Money, Sex and Kids: Stop Fighting about the Three Things That Can Ruin Your Marriage, for her input.
She says I need to cut us some slack, since it’s very normal for a relationship to take a hit after a baby is born. Sleep deprivation, the required six weeks of no sex post-partum, and learning to care for another human being would throw any relationship off. But she also pointed out that Chris and I started our relationship-as-parents on the wrong foot, having completely unrealistic expectations of how it would play out between us. “Your relationship will not be a priority during this time,” she said. “The more realistic you are about that beforehand, the less resentful you'll be when it happens,” she said. Uh…oops.
Tessina also said new parents should talk to each other more—about how you're both coping, whether the status quo feels fair, and any frustrations that need to be expressed so that they can be addressed ASAP.
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Finally, she suggest new parents really work harder to go out more. We did have a friend babysit once or twice, but Chris had to drag me out each time and I couldn’t get back home soon enough. It was hard to leave my son behind—it still is—but Tessina says that taking time to reconnect with each other sans baby really helps you band together more in those earlier months.
So, okay: We didn't do everything exactly right. We didn’t have fellow parents falling over themselves for our tips on how to keep it together after having a baby. I can live with that. We had a rocky start, but it feels like Chris and I have finally hit our stride. We laugh together about the occasionally bone-headed parenting moves we make, tag-team for cheesy renditions of "Old McDonald," and cut each other slack when we need it most. We work hard to spend more time together as a family, but also go on dates alone at least once a month. We make an effort to thank each other for the little things, like emptying the dishwasher or folding the laundry.
We still bicker sometimes, but it’s usually about less serious things, like how to dress our son. (I’m going for a Euro baby vibe; Chris digs the mini-skater boy look.) I have no idea how we’re going to figure that one out (Euro skater?), but I know that we will.
And finally, we regularly talk—sometimes ad-nauseum—about how lucky we are to have this little guy in our lives. Having our son was an eye-opening experience for our relationship, and it shook us to the core. But looking back, being married without a kid is like riding a bike with training wheels. It’s ridiculously easy compared to what comes next. It isn’t until you remove them that shit gets real.
In retrospect, I think it was important for us to have the experience that we did. Yes, it was hard on us, and there were many times we weren’t exactly thrilled with each other, but we came out together on the other side closer than ever. And I’m so glad that we did.
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Korin Miller is a writer, SEO nerd, wife, and mom to a little one-year-old dude named Miles. Korin has worked for The Washington Post, New York Daily News, and Cosmopolitan, where she learned more than anyone ever should about sex. She has an unhealthy addiction to gifs.
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