To think babies shouldn’t ruin relationships

[lighttheresomewhere]

It’s so interesting and genuinely so heartwrenching to see the amount of posts on here (and hear it in real life too) about the amount of relationships that drastically change for the worst and even break after having a baby/babies.

we have a 11 month old and I feel like it’s brought us even closer. My husband is a fantastic dad and husband and last night I got all dressed up for him coming to bed and when we were going to sleep he said thank you for making sure we didn’t lose us. I said what do you mean? He said ‘we haven’t lost us’. He started saying about the roommate phase and how we never went through that etc. I said it wasn’t a conscious decision it was just natural that I wanted to have sex pretty early on again, I wanted us to still have date nights and be us but it subconscious. I told him I fell in love with him all over again in a whole new way seeing him bond with the baby.

im not trying to be antagonistic or anything I just genuinely don’t understand how relationships go to shit so much after babies.

Surely you can’t be that naive to not know that abuse often starts in pregnancy. you’ve got a relationship that is working well- lots of people discover theirs has crack.

Also (and I say this kindly)- you’ve got one. One child is significantly easier than two in the early years for many people because it is easier for them to fit in with you and you can still get some adult time. I found when we had the second, the balance shifted where we were then fitting in with the kids. If they both don’t sleep, you’re often waking multiple times a night at different times which is more exhausting. A baby plus a toddler can be the point where relationship issues emerge even if things were fine with the first child.

What did you dress up us?
Please tell me you were in a Godzilla suit 😂

Oh, have just read that it was sexy pants, disappointed.

im not trying to be antagonistic or anything I just genuinely don’t understand how relationships go to shit so much after babies

I don't even have kids, and I get it. It's really not difficult to wrap your head around.

OP, I don’t think you are naive enough to truly not think of or understand a single reason why transitioning to parenthood might cause issues in a marriage. I think you would have done better to have posted elsewhere to say how happy you were, rather than use AIBU for a not very stealth brag. You’ve obviously been through a lot and overcoming an ED is a big thing. But it’s something not everyone has experienced, can you imagine how it’s possible to understand and empathise with an issue, even if it is one you haven’t experienced yourself?!

For me, having children deepened and strengthened our relationship. We had a LOT less sex though! Fortunately, sex wasn't what either of us used to "find" each other.

Look, this is really nice for you but honestly, what are you trying to get from this thread? Because it comes across as, "Question: why is it that everyone not as perfect as me and my husband?"

I'd have thought that two minutes thought in your part might give you some answers as to what underlying things could cause things to go wrong:

• bad reactions to sleep deprivation;
• post-natal anxiety or depression;
• other unexpected life shifts at the same time (money issues, bereavement);
• one or both of you not parenting in the way you'd imagined;
• physical (or mental) trauma caused by birth making sex painful or otherwise difficult;
• generally working out how to incorporate the demands of a child into a busy, demanding life (particularly if you both work out have other responsibilities).

The list goes on. It's not rocket-science, is it?

I say this as someone with a wonderful husband, who is very happy in marriage. But we definitely had some hard periods during the early child years due to a combination of the above, and had to learn to go easier in ourselves and each other. For the benefit of anyone reading this thread and feeling bad, I think that's completely within the range of normal when figuring out a seismic life-shift and nothing to be ashamed of.

OP, I wish you the best but I suspect that life may humble you a bit at some point! If not this, something else will test your marriage at some point and if you're too caught up in the idea that any conflict or difficulty means failure you're going to find it even harder to get through.

I think the nominations for beatification have opened, butt not sure which category..
Patron saint of paronising one's wife by congratulating her for keeping the relationship together by having sex early doors post-partum?
Patron saint of keeping marriages together by getting dressed up in bed for your husband?
Patron saint of gloating about perfect babies and perfect husbands?

@lighttheresomewhere OP, you're going to have a hard time here.

I am in a similar situation to you because I have a decent husband and he's an amazing father (aside from the dressing up for bed thing, ick, maybe think about whether that's for you (in which case great) or just for him). But we're further down the track than 11 months post partum.

I have an "easy" child. She's been delightful for the majority. And she still causes sleep deprivation. There is still bills to pay, only now they're even more important because we have a small person to house and raise, it's not just us. So stress levels around money are higher.

So a couple of years down the line from you, we're tired and stressed and having to make sure we perform well at work whilst tired and stressed, in order to not fail the person who makes us tired and stressed. Without work from both of us, it could easily go to shit. We both work, we both pull our weight at home and with DD. And we both make sure we don't "lose us".

Now imagine your DH isn't a hands on dad. He isn't interested in the baby. So that's all on you. And imagine you've gone back to work (because at the point you are, lots of people have) so you're doing ALL the tired on your own and trying to work. You come home to a tired baby (nursery can be great for them but does wear them out), and as well as take care of their needs there's dinner to sort and the housework. And DH is just sat on his phone refusing to help. Come bedtime, are you getting dressed up to make sure you don't "lose us"? Or are you going to sleep because in a couple of hours (at best) you're being woken up?

Would you feel the same?

im not trying to be antagonistic or anything I just genuinely don’t understand how relationships go to shit so much after babies. you genuinely don't understand? How can you not understand?

Well you've a 50% chance of your marriage lasting so good luck to you. There's a bit of a red flag in your husband's desire to hang on to the pre children you though, and the value he places on that, as the most resilient marriages grow and evolve to take account of changes rather than require one party to ensure everything stays the same for the other.

My personal problem with this is that the OP (well, mainly the OP's partner actually!) is conflating two things- relationships failing due to rubbish unsupportive partners, and relationships lacking in sex.

On the former, I agree with her- you would hope that in a good relationship you would come together to look after this wonderful baby together and it would bond you (although there are obviously challenges). And yes, I also love my DH in a whole new way now.

On the latter, I find the implication that women who have given birth are just not making the effort to get back to a sex life really hurtful. There have been physical and hormonal barriers for me (and so many other women). I'm thankful that my DH doesn't see this as me "treating him like a room mate".

I’m really surprised you choose to even write this? It’s coming across like you’re playing in people’s faces. Never seen a couple whose relationship wasn’t affected by having babies. Doesn’t mean everything goes to s* but definitely a baby will come with its challenges. How far this goes towards affecting the relationship is about the two adults involved.

Also there is something weirdly icky about your husband praising you for wanting to have sex with him, and for you, that being the measure of a good relationship. Even though I feel like you made up what he said, it seems like a weird thing to say. Lots of relationships can still have a sense of “us” without sex for periods of time. But it’s clearly the sex part that is important to your DH. Make sure you don’t let that slip…!

To be fair YOU focused on the lingerie thing

Your OP comes across as really smug. I’m not sure why posters write this type of thing. Can you not imagine why some (I’m not saying all) women or also men may find parenthood hard:

Postnatal depression
loss of career opportunities
challenging financial circumstances
trauma around birth
lack of family support
SEN children
Blended families
Being a much younger or older parent

@lighttheresomewhere I think it's genuinely great your marriage is still happy and feels stable , seriously ! But .. you're less than a year in with only one child. Throw a few more in and having to be in 4 different places at once, different stages , illnesses things may change

Not quite sure how you’re defining “going to shit”?
Having less sex?
Not having “date night”?
Not dressing up for bed?
These don’t equal a relationship “going to shit”, they are reasonable adjustments when a tiny human being enters your lives following pregnancy, birth and the many possible complications of that. Lots of couples would find these things irrelevant to a contented and loving relationship even without having a child. I had to explain the concept of “date night” to DH and we both agreed neither of us could be bothered, rather stay in!

Well it's great for you right now. You obviously haven't suffered horrendous birth injuries or had a child then screams non-stop for hours at a time. There is a good chance your child is neurotypical. You have a husband who does his share. Let's just hope it carries on for you and that you feel similarly frisky when your teenager is out doing who knows what with whom or when you are breaking the news to your teenager that they have cancer. When I was a young law graduate one of my tutors told us in relation to family law that some of our clients would be dealing with stuff that we couldn't even begin to imagine and that has stuck with me for decades. It probably stopped me from being a totally smug prat.

Yeah I'd quite pleased that my relationship with my husband isn't based on me servicing his needs regularly tbh

Sounds like you've had a smooth run of things.

What about people who have terrible pregnancies, emergency c-sections, sepsis, premature delivery, baptising baby within 24 hours using hospital priest as advised could die, spend months in hospital and have to travel to hospital every single day - so no rest for either of you at home.

Then when you are discharged after passing a baby cpr unit so you can try and keep your baby alive until paramedics get to you...just in case.

So your now at home with a poorly baby to nurse with medicines every 4 hours for the first 6 months before the medicines taper off over y1/y2 and having non-correcting sleep apnoea so you wake with an alarm every single night for a year before that also starts to taper off over y1/y2.

You spend years under children's hospital travelling for regular appointments. Meanwhile some people might have alway had shit family who now really don't understand the situation and because you are so stressed you decide I have no space for your shit or pain anymore so now you'd rather have no support network than their shit. But you and partner have went into survival mode and push through.

Honestly at this point in my life I don't quite blame you for your naievity and good for you you got a clean run of things.

But not everyone gets a healthy baby and that path will be like a bomb imploding your mental health, your partners mental health and therefore the health of your marriage. I'm nearly a decade down the line and pregnancy and caring for my poorly baby was the hardest time of my life.

Husband and I managed to stick together but once we were finally discharged from hospital more than 3 years down the line, we then spent a year in marriage counselling as we realised we were broken, lost and in hindsight, shellshocked. We're still together but that time in our lives caused deep scars in our marriage as the situation itself is difficult.

And also when you are living through a situation like that you are not your best self and can say hurtful things to one another in heat of the moment, which can be forgiven but some things not forgotten.

So like I say it's good you've had a nice time but be mindful not to go round making sweeping judgements about why women aren't making an effort dressing up for their man in bed.

Maybe the wife is just mentally preparing herself for the breathing alarm to go off again that night and crashing out and maybe the husband is the same but they are holding on and share a cuddle as they go to sleep to wake by said alarm to fly out of bed and immediately start to rouse their non-breathing baby under the high pitched beep, beep, beep... And then go back to sleep cuddled up once more once their baby is breathing and the alarm is reset.

Some people just have to survive and thats the hand they are dealt. Not everyone gets the "nice" outcome.

2024..Well exactly....me and DH are equals.
You however sound stuck in the 1950's.
Like pretty much everyone has said on here...I just feel very sad for you in that sort of relationship. But each to their own.

Even if everything is fine with baby and baby sleeps well there is a MASSIVE change that comes with becoming a parent. For me I really struggled and felt my body wasn't my own any more it was all about looking after someone else and if they wanted to climb on me (as they got older) or need cuddling then I had to. I got touched out. I'm pleased my husband was understanding and didn't start going on about "losing us" when I didn't want sex but I can see a lot of people wouldn't be.

It’s not always as easy breezy as that OP. I’m happy for you but we’ve just had our second and our relationship is in the gutter because he simply will not prioritise his family or children over his work or hobbies. Getting dressed up for him is the very last thing on my mind.

What a naive, ignorant and hilarious boast post. 😂

I think it really depends on a little bit of luck but mainly knowing your partner really well.
Some relationships have red flags all over them but people plough ahead regardless.