Babyproofing Your Relationship

You already know how important it is to kidproof your home before your new baby arrives on the scene. What you may not realize is that it’s important to kidproof your relationship, too. Here are some tips on staying connected with your partner when baby makes three.

Stockpile plenty of memories before your baby arrives. Enjoy dinner out in a fancy restaurant or schedule one last pre-baby weekend getaway. According to Robert Billingham, Ph.D., professor of human development and relationships studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, the special memories that you stockpile prior to your baby’s birth will help you to weather the challenges that lay ahead.

Find ways to fit “couple time” into your post-baby schedule. Make spending time with your partner a priority, even if that means keeping your eyes open for an extra hour after the baby goes to bed or asking a friend or relative to stay with the baby for an hour or two so that you and your partner can have dinner out at a favourite restaurant. If you can’t bear the thought of being away from your baby for even that short a period of time, have “date night” at home. (Just one word of warning: it’s impossible to predict ahead of time whether the first hot-and-heavy kiss you’ve enjoyed in weeks will be interrupted by the cries of a hungry baby!)

Accept the fact that it may take time to get your sexual relationship back on track. A University of Wisconsin study of 570 new parents found that it typically takes bottlefeeding parents about seven weeks and breastfeeding parents about eight weeks to start having sexual intercourse again. Only 17% of couples who were surveyed reported having sex during month after childbirth. The sheer mental energy involved in being a parent can leave some women fantasizing about sleep—not sex—at the end of the day: (“I describe myself as a ‘born again virgin,’ jokes one mother of three-year-old twin girls.)

Realize that you and your partner are each going to have your own unique parenting style. Not only were you raised in different households: you’re two entirely different people. But, that said, chances are you and your partner won’t go head-to-head on every conceivable parenting-related issue. And if you do, that’s more of an indication of problems in the marital relationship than of differences in your parenting philosophies.

Commit to an ongoing programme of parental development, and encourage your partner to come along for the ride. If you find a parenting book or video that’s particular helpful to you, share it with your partner. (If he’s not the type to read an entire parenting book from cover, act as his clipping service: use post-it notes to flag the parts of the book which serve up the most useful bits of wisdom.)

Remind yourself and your partner that this too shall pass. You won’t always have young children underfoot. The childbearing years typically last for just one-third to one-quarter of a person’s life. Chances are you’ll remember these trying times with the fondest of memories when you look back on this time in your life in years to come. Parental amnesia is, after all, one of Father Time’s greatest gifts.

Above all else, keep your sense of humor. A shared laugh at the end of a particularly rough day can work wonders by cementing the ties between you and your partner and relieving some of the tension of the early weeks of parenthood. Laughter is truly the best medicine, so make sure you keep a large bottle on hand.