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Is Trying to Have a Baby Limiting Your Personal and Couple Time?
Author: Stef Daniel
If you are like many couples, you decided you wanted to plan your pregnancy. This means birth control and the whole nine yards in the beginning of your relationship so that the day wouldn’t come a day too early. Then, you transition into having a baby mode, and you realize that long before a baby comes into your home, your personal life and relationships are changing. The reasons are really simple. Although you are fanatically excited about starting a family, the entire focus quickly becomes starting a family. This can be frightening, especially when you were such an interesting and varied person before.
Additionally, many couples begin talking about having a baby, looking at baby furniture, planning sex, making life changes like buying a bigger home or car – which can scare the hell out of any person in their right mind. So, while you are excited and your spouse is too – the whole idea of having a baby, especially if you haven’t had one before – can be scary to say the least. Both men and women wonder, worry, and fret about how their lives will change once the baby is born. Women worry about becoming pregnant, about their careers, and about whether they will be good moms. Husbands worry about the same things. Then, there are all the financial obligations of having children, which nobody truly understands until they are in the middle of raising children.
Top that off with the fact that for the first time, you and your spouse will be disagreeing about some things. You will start seeing each other through the eyes of “what kind of mom or dad will you be” rather than those love struck ones that got you together in the first place. In-laws are suddenly becoming linked to your family by the sheer thought of conceiving a child together, and you realize that this baby is far bigger than just you and your spouse.
Couples also start to miss each other. The planned sex, the carefulness, and the lack of spontaneity in the relationship can make you feel old. Friends will warn you, and everywhere you go you will see either a miserably pregnant woman – or a couple making out with the wild passion that only exists in the beginning of a relationship. And here you are somewhere in the middle.
The truth is that you need to take this preconception and conception period to spend time together. Talk about your fears, realizing that both of you feel the same way. Talk to your friends. Take a vacation together. Try to take things one day at a time, rather than turning everything in your life around at once. Most things with the birth of a baby take care of themselves, and you will notice that all the planning in the world means nothing as it pertains to raising children. There will always be surprises. If you take this time to walk together through the new threshold of your relationship, it doesn’t mean you have to give up this time for yourself or time together. In fact, you can make even stronger bonds than you ever imagined.
Baby makes three! That is for sure. Understand that it is both normal and healthy to be apprehensive about the future – but don’t forget that the present you’re in today is what will keep you and your spouse together in the years to come.
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