Dear Monster,
Hello again, little Monster. Today I want to talk a little bit about how my love for your Daddy has changed over our 9 1/2 years together. Most of that change is due to you, which is wonderful. You've brought so very many things to our life, including a completely new way to love each other!
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Hello again readers! I hope your July has been treating you well and that you haven't melted in your favorite chair while watching your favorite summer shows...I almost have a couple of times for sure! If you're un-melted and ready for a potentially good read I wanted to talk about my marriage today. I know, I know...marriage after baby and all that. I think I've read every blog, book, and story there is on the subject and, from these informative items, the only thing I have gained is diabetes. "Our love changed but in beautiful and mystical ways that make us better people in the end", "I see my son's father and I love his beautiful father soul", etc., etc., etc....Bleh.
Can we just be really honest for a couple of minutes? Marriage after baby can, at times, be horrible, scary, and overwhelming. These things get so much better once you accept and learn how to incorporate them but, honestly, it is never the same. What they don't tell you or prepare you for is that all that change is completely normal. Every single two-parent family goes through these changes. I don't know why it's not talked about more in the pre-baby preparation phase but it needs to be. I've put together a small list of the main changes that I have noticed in the 3 years that we've enjoyed the presence of our Monster that I hope apply for people other than myself and my little family...if not, I better start looking into therapy.
Here's the basics:
1. My definition of "Romantic" is completely upside down now. Don't get me wrong, my husband is the consummate romantic. He decides on something, then drills his brain forever to figure out the proper and most romantic way to carry it out. He has made me burst into weepy, lovey, blubbery tears multiple times and I love him for it. However, our romance is not your typical romance anymore. There are very rarely the candlelit dinners, dancing the night away, flowers in the morning, and breakfast in bed moments anymore. I now have "You can drive to dinner" (he knows I like driving), "I folded your laundry", and glasses of wine ready for me at the end of my toddler-filled days. This is our romance and this is all glorious. I no longer have time or patience for the tedious dinners where I am constantly worried about whether or not whoever has graciously volunteered to watch our son is getting annoyed because we are out an hour longer than we thought. No longer okay being frustrated that my $30 steak is not EXACTLY how I want it (that money could have gone to gas or diapers, SIR!). No longer dreading the ultimate shuffle home where we have to return to the real world. I'd rather be in my real world all the time and enjoy a new type of romance. Watching The Simpsons with a glass of wine and laughing at the same jokes we've been laughing at for 9 years, sitting on our back porch and talking about work drama and jerk drivers, and quick kisses while making dinner together. This is my family filled romantic life now and I love it!
2. Whisper fights. Remember the fiery days of dating and early marriage? The ones where you would fight all day and make love all night? Remember how idealistic and stuck in your ways and your beliefs you were? Do you remember when small talks would turn into knock down drag outs of opinions based on facts and evidence? Well, those days are gone now. Have something to fight about? You have about a 3 minute window before a child is at your feet asking what's wrong or needing something right now! If you whisper, you can get a solid 5 minutes, but that's it. I'm pretty sure world peace could be accomplished in a matter of minutes if the debate occurred between my husband and I, with our toddler playing in the kitchen. Another reason fights don't last in our home anymore? Our pride and dignity has been stripped from us. We've seen each other at our complete and utter worst. We've seen each other's absolute core and decided to stay together and love each other even more. Trust me, once you've seen your husband explaining to his son why it is not okay to rub his penis on the cat, there isn't much that'll rattle you into an argument and there aren't many things that are debate worthy anymore. He's having a hard enough time as it is. ;)
3. The best thing either of us has ever seen or experienced is now our son. There were these moments between my husband and I where we would just lay in bed, looking into each other's eyes, kissing, cuddling, and just generally being in awe of each other and our love. Gushy, mushy, happy love. Our love and the power of our relationship could easily bring me to tears. All of the new ways that my husband found to show me just how much he loved me had me in a constant state of lovely expectation. Well all of those gushy, lovey, and completely overwhelming feelings we wallowed in have been altogether dwarfed by our son. The complete and immense pride that Sean and I felt when our son took his first steps was nothing we had ever felt before. When he started saying words, we about fainted from an onslaught of emotions. There are now these moments when our son does something unexpected and we look at him then look at each other in shock and awe and tears about fill our eyes. These moments completely rock our foundation of what we thought love and pride were. Don't get me wrong, my love for my husband is pretty darn awesome, but we both agree that our love for our son is astonishingly more drastic and earth shattering.
4. Sex. Yep, sex. What was once savory and sweet is now meticulous and methodical. Ha ha ha! If my husband heard that, he'd be so mad (sorry husband!). So, maybe it's not that drastic of a change NOW but it was at first. It takes a while to figure out exactly how long you have, and how to manage your time more efficiently. Talk about business meetings! Every day our little Monster is up and ready to go around 7am so morning sex is a no-go. We both like every second of sleep we can get before starting our days. The Monster heads to bed between 830-930pm so we have to make sure we haven't had really exhausting days and that we don't watch shows that make us sleepy. This all sounds very easy but we work opposite schedules so every single night is a night when one of us just got home from a generally ridiculous day at work, and the person that didn't physically go to work that day was home with a 3 year old all day. I'd argue that that is worse than my outside-the-home job even on the best of days. So, now sex is an unspoken agreement made in the morning based on how my husband says goodbye to me. I won't go into details but there are signs. Those signs indicate that throughout that day I'm not going to exhaust myself but I am going to exhaust our son so that by 830pm he is out but Mom is not! he he he Day at the park while Mom relaxes on the bench? Heck yeah! Playing in the backyard all day while Mom reads a book on the porch? You better believe it! Glass of wine after putting the Monster to bed? HO-YEAH! Just because it's different doesn't mean it's bad. Our sex life is better than ever, we just have to be a whole heck of a lot more creative than before. But, hey, that can be the best part if you let it!
5. The best is yet to come. Before you have a kiddo you're pretty sure that things will only get better as you grow and learn together. After having our son my husband and I know that the very best of our years are ahead of us. It is yet to be decided whether this is because we will get to watch our wonderful and brilliant son learn and grow and become the adult he has so much potential for, or because we KNOW that someday that Monster will be leaving our house and we'll say "Adios!" to tantrums, school, homework, childhood and teenage drama, and slamming doors in our face. Either way, it is the best kind of comfort knowing that the best times of our lives aren't already behind us, knowing that the pinnacle and absolute very best of our lives is still waiting for us. We've had awe-inspiring, beautiful moments in our lives but because of our son, we know it is only good-times and happy-life from here.
I'm sure as our Monster grows and our relationship changes and reforms in fun new ways this list will grow and, now that I'm on the other side of the really scary stuff, I truly look forward to it. If I was going to give any sort of advice to a married couple with a new Monster it would be: Bend so you don't break. Your marriage is only one of so many things that will change once your little kiddo is here. The thing to remember is that your marriage changing due to baby is actually something you can take control of and decide how to respond to, which is not the case with many of the other changes. At times it is going to feel like things will never get back to normal and that you guys just aren't going to make it. That's okay and very normal. It's how you respond to these moments and the decisions you choose to move forward with that will decide if you'll be looking back on these times from a more bent but less fractured place. Enjoy you child. Enjoy your marriage. Laugh at as much as you can and let the rest become part of your new normal.
What have you noticed that's changed about your marriage? How did you deal with it? Are you expecting? What things do you fear may change?
