how did having children affect your relationship with your partner?

[lazyemma]

I am very close to my husband and one of my main worries about having a child is the impact it will have on our relationship. I remember reading an article by Mil Millington ages ago (before I got pregnant) where he says that in a child-free relationship, your partner is the most important person in your life, but then when you have children of course that changes completely. and if you had to choose between rescuing your drowning child, or your partner who is hanging off a cliff, it'd be the child every time. I know that's a bit of a fatuous example, but it did make me understand properly for the first time how having a child irrevocably changes your priorities.

I can't wait until we have our baby, but I also don't want our relationship to become just about being co-parents to a child. I was wondering how other people have managed this transition to parenthood.

2boysmacca - is this just since the 9 month old? or did it happen after your first ds? Sounds so sad - hope you're cuddling each other again soon.

Our relationship is far more stable (we're both quite volatile people but we've realised we have to both calm it down) but in doing so we have lost a lot of the passion.

Started to go downhill after ds1 but we picked up then started to fall again after ds2. Dh doesn't cope well with lack of sleep (even though both sleep pretty well, just very early risers). I think men don't actually understand how difficult being at home all day can be and don't make the efffort to converse. Don't get me wrong, we do talk, and we do still laugh (occassionally) but I don't feel like we are the couple we were before kids.

I think it is hard - i had to read a book called 'baby shock' when dd1 was born and it helped me a lot.

I think you have to make a big effort to go out - we are in a baby sitting circle and I grin and bear it when mil comes to stay..!

and I try really hard not to talk about the kids all the time even though my Dh is a great dad and loves to talk about them - we try to do lots of other things too.

but I have also been really firm about taking it in turns to get up etc - if not I would seeth with resentment and we have rowed about it but we have now got to a very happy balance x

My marriage has definitely taken strain since we had kids. We still love each other but trying to find time to be close has been hard. Sex is almost non existent. And we argue all the time about who has the harder life, who does more etc etc.

But when we get a chance to be alone together, we remember what it used to be like and it spurs us on to try and rekindle that. lack of sleep makes it hard to maintain - but I am hoping we're coming out of the hardest bit now (we had two 19 months apart and it has been rough going).

The funny thing about having babies in our relationship is it made dh more interested in sex than when we were a childless couple. His way of competing for my attention? He never helped with feeding or anything in the middle of the night and soon learned to sleep through any disturbance but if I'd had a bad night he was available VERY early in the morning to take over.

I think the question should also include - how does NOT having babies affect your relationship?
Relationships don't stand still, and childless couples don't relate to each other in the same way after 30 years as they do at the beginning.

That is a really interesting question Elasticwoman!!

But to add my bit to this thread, I feel on the whole that the whole experience of having a child has brought us closer together.

Of course, there have been a few times when I've felt hard done by, for example, when I've been the one hauling myself out of bed to do the nightfeeds (a hard one to delegate when it's boobjuice, and you find it difficult to 'bottle at source'); and we've rowed a couple of times over things like bringing DS into our bed at midnight - the usual stuff I imagine.

But DP let me brace myself against him, in a pretty uncomfortable position, for 2 hours of (futile) pushing during labour. And when I was fresh out of hospital after what was a pretty traumatic birth, and could barely walk, DP lifted me in and out of the bath and nursed me with real tenderness. He cared for our son in his first week when I lay in bed feeling very sorry for myself, and came home and bathed DS, cooked dinner, cleaned the house (all after a day at work) throughout the early months.

Now things are easier in those regards but he still pulls his weight at home, and when I see him making DS laugh and fooling about with him, it makes me love them both even more.

I would still step on DP's head to get to DS in an emergency situation, but that's just life, innit?

I think you're off to a headstart even considering the idea that things could be tough afterwards. No one warned me that it's virtually expected that you'll be moody for a few months after the birth. The number of times I 'walked out' of the house in tears after ds was born, only to realise that I couldn't possibly leave either of them and walked back in.

One dd later and it's still harder to regain the couple we were pre-children. Still, we've replaced it with a pair of supremely proud parents who talk most evenings about how amazing the kids are. There's nothing like the sense of pride I have when we've work together as a team and had a family day out. Oh, and I don't think I have ever felt closer to dh than when I had just given birth to each of my children. He feels he was pretty useless in the delivery room, but there's no one else I needed more (well, excepting the mid wife, anaesthetist, consultant and pediatrician perhaps).

Next step now is to sort out dd's sleep so we can once again have the odd evening out together as a couple.

all of your posts have been really helpful and interesting, guys - thanks very much for replying. And that is a good point, Elasticwoman, and one I hadn't thought about - even if we weren't going to have children, our relationship would gradually change anyway as we get older and stuff happens in our lives. Change is a positive thing, really, as frightening as I find it.

My DH is a great dad and he adores his kids. This is just as well because motherhood affected me more dramatically than fatherhood for him. I think you have to be realistic that things will totally change but it does for everyone and go with the flow.

Lazyemma - I so know what you mean about frightening! My relationship with dh is the best thing ever to happen to me so it is sooo scary to think of disrupting it... On the otherhand, our own family life is something we're both really looking forward to and, yes, we both would have been different people - and have a different type of relationship - if children had never been on the agenda. But, eek, what if ... (I've just ordered the Babyshock book - thanks for tip Rookiemum and Newgirl!)

Spoke to my dh last night about this thread to see what he thought. He said that he understood about the 'mother and child' couple thing and how men get jealous but he was trying to prepare himself for that. 'And, in the end, children do fly the nest and we'll go grey together' so I was relieved he was taking a long term view of it!

Nonetheless, I would be soooo interested to see what most dads would respond to this post. Would it mainly be about BD? Or about the confidence knock of knowing your dp would throw you off said cliff infavour of someone else, even if that someone was your child, when once you'd have been there number one for saving?

A lot of good advice has already been given but my DH was worried that he would be pushed out once DD arrived. I made it a priority to ensure that he knew how to bath, change and cuddle the baby lots right from the beginning so that he never felt that he didn't know what to do. To be honest, I was the one who did most things as I BF for the first few months, so he couldn't help with the mighttime feeds. He knew, however, that if I was having real trouble, he was my backup and he relived me when tiredness or dispair got to me and I could not get the baby to sleep. Knowing I had a backup was very good for me.

The other thing I would say is that if you are strict with routines, and if you are lucky enough to have a baby who is happy to conform to routines, then you can still have quality time with your partner once the baby is in bed. This is obivously after the first few weeks/months. Our DD slept well from 2 months old and so our evenings were our own. Having a baby doesn't have to change EVERYTHING - but your priorities do change by default.

back to the question of childless couples, probably not very likely to hear on here, being mn!

It seems to me that having a child is a bit of a nuclear bomb in my relationship. Not sure if this is because I had my first child aged 34! I did feel unsettled for a few months but my relationship with DH does get better! No-one warns of this. I watched my Sisters struggle in their relationships and didn't realise that this would happen to me too (daft I know). The new person(child)in your life, you "give" so much too and sometimes there is only enough "give" left for yourself. We tried having a date night once a week to get a takeaway and a chat and that seems to help. Being a Mother is a wondeful job, sometime you can just lose your way a bit eh?

This was one of the main things i was worried about when i was pregnant also, i doted on my DH and we spent every bit of time outside work together drinking, eating out and relaxing together and when i also heard that your child becomes more important to a degree I vowed to him i would never love the baby more than him and he vowed likewise back. The unspoken thing is that when she arrived we both instantly loved our baby more than absolutely anything else in the entire world and never saw the point in stating this to each other as i guess we know we still love each other as much as before but we both now include our DH in our little gang!

The scenario of saving my daughters life over my husbands would be simple, he would INSIST i help my daughter first anyway and i would instinctively know that. If i was hanging off a cliff and my DH was also in need of rescueing, i would need my daughters life saved first and foremost by my DH because without her I'd want to die anyway - does that make sense?? How would we feel if I were saved and our little girl was put second - I'd kill my husband!! He would be likewise! We don't battle for attention because as long as you both understand that loving your child unconditionally and putting their life first is something you both feel the same way about it shouldn't affect the deep love you have for each other. And yes watching him being such a great dad does make my heart swell also...

Of course it changes things! It's natural for your child to be the one you'd save from the edge of the cliff. Is it different for fathers, though? I have finally persuaded DH to save the children rather than me -- but he has only agreed because I said I would kill myself if he saved me and not them!!