Life
Usually when we hear about relationships post-baby, it's negative. When there's not enough time spent together, you're focusing only on the children, and getting very little sleep, it's easy for marriages to change for the worse after children. Not my marriage, though. Don't get me wrong, those tough things made days (and even months) hard, and we're only on kid one in year two. However, despite those obstacles there were unexpected ways my marriage changed after baby that were downright awesome.
My partner and I married when were were pretty young, at only 23 and 24 years old, and were married for a few years before we started trying to start our family. We had a strong marriage before that, tested by moving to a different country and being very poor for several years while we started our lives together. However, becoming parents together made us even stronger as a couple, and in so many ways. Those ways definitely take a little digging to find some days, but they're under there, serving as the foundation for our family as we continue to work to make it happy and full.
We've had hard weeks where we lose sight of these things and the smaller daily struggles or annoyances are much easier to see. But taking a step back to remind ourselves that our relationship after kids is stronger than it ever has been is pretty lovely.
We Became Even More Of A Team
My partner and I had been married for seven years before we became parents, so I was pretty sure we were a strong team after all that time together. But it turns out, becoming parents made us even stronger as a team. We had to be even more aware of the other person's needs as we simultaneously took care of our new baby girl.
We Had To Sacrifice For Each Other
All of a sudden, we went from living our lives with very little sacrifice to having daily choices where we needed to sacrifice for each other. Before we became parents, we mostly lived our own lives, just together and shared. If either of us wanted to do something, we typically just made it happen without much fuss. When we became parents, small sacrifices made our marriage stronger as we coped with adding a new member to our family.
We Had To Show Extra Compassion Toward Each Other
I thought I was compassionate and thoughtful before I became a parent. However, once I became a mom I had to look at my husband with much more compassion than I ever had before. I had to hold my tongue when I started to snap at him out of sheer exhaustion, and he had to do the same for me. We had to choose to come from a place of compassion in how we treated each other, when the stress of being parents was much more than we'd ever experienced in our marriage.
Seeing My Partner As A Father Made Me Love Him More
It's cliché, but seeing my husband as a father instantly made me love him even more. There is something about watching him fall instantly and repeatedly in love with our girl that made me melt.
I Was Grateful To My Partner For Helping Make Our Adoption Happen
Knowing what he was willing to give up in order to make her adoption happen was even more appealing and I will forever be grateful to him. It wasn't the easiest choice to move to a new country, start a new life, find a new job, and make new friends, but we chose it in order to start our family. The sacrifice my husband made is something I am and will be grateful for forever.
Becoming A Parent Made Trivial Things Seem Silly
Becoming a parent made some of the trivial things we used to argue about seem downright silly. Now, some of those trivial things we replaced with other trivial things, like who was the last one to empty the diaper pail or put the screaming toddler in her pajamas, but overall the silly things we argued about seem, well, silly. The big things are what matter more.
Parenthood Helped Us Distill Our Goals And Values For Our Family
Parenthood made the little, trivial problems mostly seem small, but it also helped us see what the big problems or questions were and forced us to answer them. What kind of family did we want to be for our daughter and future children? What kind of a relationship did we want to have? What were our biggest goals and most core values, as a family? They were all questions we were pushed to consider together once we became parents.
We Fought For Time With Each Other
There's nothing like a tiny human who demands all your attention to make you fight for time with your spouse. In the first few months of my daughter's life, I missed my husband. We were together a lot, but we were rarely alone and I was rarely not thinking about my daughter's needs. We just didn't have time together like we did pre-kids. But fighting for time together made us even stronger as a couple, because we knew just how valuable that time would be.
