theancientmarinader for her description of how a relationship can change after children, which I saved on my computer;
“It all sounds boringly normal tbh. Having a baby and feeling trapped in the home, being exhausted and resentful of the person who gets to leave and carry on with normal life, feeling as though you are doing everything... it's having a baby 101. None of this shit is even touched on by the glossy mum and baby mags, or if it is, it's pathologists and called PND and medicated.
The absolute truth is, having a baby is isolating, bastatdingbastarding hard work, and it never ever ends. If you are in a marriage with the right person, who is genuinely pulling their weight and understanding what an absolute mind fuck it is, you can usually grit your teeth and get through the first five years without divorcing. But that means the partner actually has to understand that you spend six hours a day feeding unable to move, and six hours a day crying because you are trying to get the baby to go to sleep, and all day every day longing to get out of the house.
Are you getting up in the night? How many times is your baby waking? Are you coming in from work and taking over the baby for an hour or two (completely) so that do can leave the house, go anywhere to reduce the cabin fever, or just sleep? Is she getting a few weekends to just disappear and leave you with your child, and go and stay with friends?
Her feelings are quite normal. Most women don't act on them (they frankly don't have the time or the energy as baby care is so exhausting) and marriages scrape by. Both of you understanding that would go a long way to getting through this together. It's easy to believe that other couples are having a fabulous rosy time and feel even more isolated, but this period is seriously hard work, especially for 21st century mamas who have been told they don't need feminism because they are completely equal to men.
Then you have a baby and suddenly you realise you have been fed an absolute lie. Your job is to keep the baby alive and your male partner goes out to work. His life carries on as normal (with the extra kudos of having sired offspring and collected a few adornments to his success story) and the wife's world has reduced to four walls and a baby.
Women get through this a number of ways. They grit their teeth and drag themselves throu (usually by ensuring they get out of the house every single day), they find childcare and go back to work, or they realise that what they are feeling is beyond the normal grim stage and see their gp or HV for advice about PND.
In case you are at all concerned about my cynicism, I've had three kids and been happily married for 19 years. And have absolutely felt the same way as your wife after every single baby, for at least the first year. Once they start walking and talking, it's less traumatic. Fortunately, dh and I were teeth gritters.
Of course, there is the smallest chance (infinitesimal) that this isn't anything to do with having had a baby and her whole life changing (like, seriously, every single facet is no longer about her). In which case, she's still better off co-parenting with you to get through the baby years, with the understanding that you are co-pRenting. And then you can both sort out the new world order, custody, housing, and agree an amicable separation in time.”
Marriage-saving. Sanity-saving.