It’s been tough on us, most of all - as others have said - from the sleep deprivation. For a while we’ve often felt like roommates who happen to be parents of the same child. That’s starting to change now. But, funnily, even in that time of feeling more apart it’s like we work together better too - we’re a better team. I think looking after the baby puts some things in perspective.

Perhaps the biggest thing I’d advise - and that I think we’ve done well mostly - is having a mindset of family instead of romantic relationship. The romance is something wonderful within the family, rather than the family is an extra thing that comes from the romance.

So if romance takes a back seat for a while, it’s not like, “oh no, now I have all this hard work and responsibility… one day I’ll be back to the thing I like.” Instead, where ‘couple’ used to be the most important focus of relational life, now ‘family’ is. So all that effort going into baby, baby, baby, is every step investing goodness in your family - so that builds up your relationship too.

Sorry, maby that’s a bit confusing at the end, I don’t know how to write it well.

To answer some questions directly,

Does this phase eventually runs its course?

The phase of tiredness and struggle, yes… kind of. There’s always new things to cope with with children! But the change in what your relationship looks like? No. You still have a good relationship, but what ‘good’ looks like becomes different, just like what ‘attractive’ looks like becomes different when you go from 20 to 50. Some people don’t handle it well.

How do you find the mental fortitude to ignore the stupid bs your partner does or says?

By recognising that you do just as much stupid bs, and by being much quicker to forgive and apologize than to judge. Also by realising your partner’s way of doing something is legitimate even when it’s not the way you’d do it, and knowing when to step back and let them - even support them - rather than butting in with how you should do it different.

How would you describe love to your partner a year after having a baby?

Stronger. Stronger on a deep level. We’ve fought so hard to keep our love from being bashed around by stupid bs from outside and inside, both before our child and after. But we have some re-learning to do for how to help our closeness flourish now the baby is less ever-present and all-consuming!

Is there any way to know if you and your partner are going to make it and remain a couple after having a child?

Probably not for certain, but there’s many things you can do / look for.

• be a Family not a Couple. Is life just about sex and the pleasure you get from your partner? Make life about pouring your love and creative expression into your family.

• Are you married? What holds you together in the hard times? Be truly committed to each other, “for better or for worse,” having absolutely no place for thinking about cheating or breaking up. That clear mindset of faithfulness and together-to-the-end will help you through the hard times.

• be humble, quick to apologize, quick to forgive, quick to think your partner’s perspective is important even when it seems dumb to you at first glance.

• how well do you make up when you argue? Can you go to bed after, even during, an argument, and know you love them? Or do you fight and break up until they admit they were wrong? Do you feel together again afterwards, or after each argument do you feel more like it’s time to leave?

• do you have people around you? Community? Family? Does your partner have friends they can go to and bitch to, to let off steam when things in your little family of you/them/baby feel too intense? Do you have such friends? That’s often more important for women.

• are your finances ready? And can you talk together about them? Stress from finances often causes big stress in the relationship. But even if you’re poor and financially struggling it doesn’t have to, if you know how to feel together about budgeting, and respect each others’ decisions.

…well, I’ve rambled on long enough! Hope some of that is helpful.

One thing that’s overlooked is the catalyst for all these changes is the same thing. Massive massive sleep deprivation.

Honestly, to start with, some days you’ll be surviving on two hours of sleep. And it takes years to get back to feeling ‘normal’.

I won’t tell my whole story but things were pretty bad for me. When we had a baby my wife quickly changed from a lovely person to just being abusive all the time. Abusive to me and the baby all the time, and told me it was my fault she was behaving that way, and telling me I should stop getting sad and offended because me getting sad is abusive, and that I shouldn’t try to stop her being abusive to the baby, and I can’t stop her being abusive to the baby. Then when our baby was older she would react to her mum’s temper by sending me away and screaming at me to leave. I often had to make a choice between just walking away from my wife being screaming abusive to our child or pushing through and intervening even when they both screamed at me that they just wanted me to leave, which is what I always chose. Years of that has irreversibly mutilated our relationship. We’re still together but we’ll never be the same. Our child is nearly three now and has only recently stopped asking me to go away, and become very affectionate. My wife has been very slowly returning to someone I recognise, only losing her temper a few times a week, which is what I prayed for but it can’t undo the damage.

I think part of it is maybe people change or are shocked by the realization of the immediate added responsibility, but also remember that you’re certainly not going to sleep as much, like ever again. Losing sleep regularly when you had so much control over your sleeping habits is really impactful to your mental state.

My wife and I didn’t really get angry with each other or change our behavior towards each other, but we definitely were much more tired. At the same time though, you have this wonderful little person that you are shaping (that shits and eats ALL the time) - it’s a massive change of routine. People inherently don’t like change.

I feel a lot of what you’re afraid of stems from this. Just ensure that you both go into it knowing you will need each other to support each other. Do it as a team, share the responsibilities, and truly enjoy those moments because they go by SO fucking fast.

Treat it like a marathon and not a sprint. Compete with each other to be the first to apologize and diffuse the situation when things get heated. Marriage isn’t easy, but it can be rewarding to share that part with your better half.

I hope you figure out how to weather your storm! It’s an amazing thing to see them grow up and to be there every step of the way as a team.

You can never know.

I’m a proponent of having a long relationship before major decisions. I’m not saying people who have kids in their 20’s are doomed, but I believe that having a longstanding strong relationship prior to having kids is key. The fear is still there, but the knowledge of how your partner reacts to strife and hardship, goes a long way compared to NOT knowing.

As to changes, of course you’ll change. Parenting a newborn is different than parenting a toddler is different than parenting a tween, etc, etc, etc. Embrace the change. Embrace the challenge. Don’t have kids expecting it to be easy.

If you enter into starting a family, adding kids through whatever means, and you think this should not alter the relationship, you have another think coming. Kids are hard work. First your focus is to keep them alive and out of trouble. And over time this gradually shifts towards them not becoming a-holes. This takes energy and time, a lot of it. And that’s the most common reason why some couples have much less bedroom fun. They’re exhausted. They’re stressed. People behave differently when they’re exhausted and stressed. Raising kids is a marathon, not a sprint. Ideally, it’s a series of never ending gut wrenching crises until they move out. And truth is it doesn’t even end there. Some relationships handle this better, some don’t. None stay the same. If you think that your current childless relationship is any indication of how this would work with children, and you measure it by loving attention and how much sex you’re having you’re looking at the sky to measure the sea level. Get your head out of the clouds. You have to look at how you handle problems under pressure together. How you can support each other and not look at it as transactional. If that works, you stand a chance of a less bumpy transition into a functional family life.

Of course, every relationship is different. There are many other factors that will play a part and make shit even more complicated. I’m fairly confident though that I’m more right than wrong here with my generalizations.

You couldn’t survive such a radical personality change? Yours changed too. You will probably not win any argument on the assumption that your partner changed into a version is their folks while you stayed the exact same. You’re just the frog in the pot who didn’t notice it got hotter.

I’m a still married father of two.

I don’t have children but I would say the most important advice for all kinds of relationship issues is communication. Address your thoughts, fears, talk openly about what has changed, what you miss, what you need and wish for. Try not to blame anyone and talk in a calm way. It may sound obvious, but only if you talk to each other, you can find new strategies that work for both of you. :)

This is going to be something that varies wildly from couple to couple, but I can at least speak to my own experience about half a year into our first child.

There is a period where you are supposed to refrain from sex while the mother recovers. The minimum is 6 weeks, but my wife took a bit longer to feel comfortable again. The baby also makes things more difficult logistically, but we definitely didn’t “suddenly stop having sex”. We have to be more deliberate about planning date nights and intimate time as the previous spontaneousness is rarely doable with the responsibilities of parenthood.

The only personality change I have seen in my wife is her fierce protectiveness of our son. She is the same person she was before him, the same person I fell in love with (I think she’d say something similar about me). I think this is also largely due to the intentionality with which we approached having a child together. Everything was planned and discussed at length between us and agreed to well before we even started trying.

Things aren’t all sunshine and rainbows, though. Sleep depravation sucks. There are definitely times when we can get frustrated and a bit short, but we both understand the exhaustion and easily apologize and forgive whenever that happens.

To answer your last question, there’s no way of knowing, but if you love each other and both are in agreement I think the odds of it working out are good.

If you have a good foundation for a relationship, an equitable partnership with open and compassionate communication, shared empathy, and respect for eachother, you are going to be in reasonably good shape.

The thing is, the process of having a kid is stressful, once they are here, it is physically taxing and can be emotionally draining. You don’t get sleep in regular or meaningful amounts or patterns, your pattern is disrupted but you also have to do all the other things you had to do before to maintin your life. Chores and work get less time and things pile up. Which makes it harder to do other things you have/want to do. Even if you find the time, you may not have the energy or mental capacity to do it. It can be a very lonely experience even with a good partner.

That said, if you remember, its you and your partner working together for the baby, for eachother, or against the problem, its manageable. You WILL need to adjust to it but it gets easier over time.

Well there’s the obvious things like not getting much sleep for a while, everyone knows about that. But there’s also the shared experience of it that brings you closer than just about anything else can. However, there’s just so little meat and so much fat on babies, it really put me off it. Next time I’d have the steak instead.

Having babies made my wife more affectionate and concerned about my own well-being. It was so great, we now have 11 children together. She’s a real blessing.