Why marriage changes after having kids?

[OlalalLlL]

Dont get me wrong. I love my son and we are expecting daughter. I am a happy mum and my husband is an amazing dad.. but.. I feel like all the nice things are gone! Its like we live around our son’s timetable. The most spontaneous thing we have done is a 10pm family trip to Tesco and my leisure time is having lay in while boys are downstairs..

We used to travel, do nice things, spontaneous things, romantic things.. I felt like my husband saw me more of a his life partner. Now I am just a mummy and ‘can we have sex’ answer. I feel my marriage is boring. I love my husband and he is my best friend but everytime I talk to him about it he laughs and says- we have a child darlin, magic is gone...
We dont do much nice things and I havent had a proper make up and dress up for ages. I dont have an issue being pregnant or with my body- is just we dont have an occasion for me to wear nice clothes and make up..

Is there more mamas like me and what do we do girls?!

It’s not that the marriage has changed, it’s the fact that parenthood changes your life in those ways whether you are married or not.
Since you and your life partner decided to raise children, parenthood is a twenty year+ phase of life you have embarked on together. It is a marathon and can test the strongest marriages.

It does get easier when the children are old enough for a babysitter. That’s when you can schedule nights out with your DH and get all dressed up. Children can also be trained to be good travellers- mine were. We didn’t travel as much because six plane tickets, accommodation for six, etc cost a lot more than when it was the two of us. But we took our children all over the world on holiday and had a fantastic time with them. So don’t not travel because you have children, take them with you.

You’re both right.

Having small children does mean there is far less time, energy, money to do things as a couple. It’s a few years out of hopefully a long marriage so one approach is just to say well we just need to wait until the DC are olde and then we get some couple time back.

Having said that, it should be possible to have the odd night out, or even a date night at home where you switch off the screens and properly talk to each other (depends if your dc sleep ok in the evenings of course). Do it now as will be harder when your baby arrives.

So basically why not try to find a middle ground, where you’re not expecting things to be like they were before kids, but you would like to have a few special nights here and there when you can. Date night once a month maybe?

I don't know that it's inevitable that marriage changes - mine hasn't - but the things that you're able to do are different. If the way you connected before was going out for fancy things then yeah, that's going to be different, but you just need to connect differently! Have a night in, sit down, have a film night or an album night, or push the boat out for a fancy dinner at home.

To me, it sounds less like your marriage has changed and more like your life had changed. You're missing travel and restaurants and fancy nights out- those really don't have anything to do with the actual substance of your marriage.