I feel like having a baby ruined my marriage
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
Hwtero couple here without any fertility issues. We felt the same way. Kids strengthened our marriage and brought us even closer. I had to "split" time with DH holding DS, he was such a happy new father. He never once complained about late night wake ups and wpuld rock our boys for hours on end. |
Anonymous
I totally understand you. My suggestion is to find help. If you can, put money on the problem. Hire a nanny for a few hours a couple of days every week and spend time with your husband. Leave your child with their grandparents or nanny and go for a weekend away. Your child is old enough to be left with someone else for a couple of days. You both need time with each other to remember why you decided to be together. Your child will be much happier and grow up happier if you are able to fix your relationship. Try to find happiness and joy in your child and in your husband. It's hard, but make the first step... I know I often do with my husband... |
Anonymous
+1 It only solidified for me that I had married the right person |
Anonymous
| No one should get divorced until the youngest is in kindergarten. It gets better, OP. |
Anonymous
|
I'm so sorry you are having a hard time...medically and in your marriage.
It will get better once you all can get some sleep. Have you considered hiring a sleep trainer for your toddler? I also agree that getting a weekend away can be very helpful. |
Anonymous
| Known, proven fact. Married folks, especially the wife, is much less happy post-kids. |
Anonymous
It's an interesting fact and statistically true while parenting but then you measure people's contentedness late in life and those with kids score higher. Kids aren't going to make you happy but they make life more meaningful. Like anything, you derive meaning from effort and love |
Anonymous
I was going to suggest the same thing. Where you can, make your life easier, not harder. When our youngest kept waking up in the middle of the night, searching for a pacifier because it fell out and we were waking up multiple times a night, we decided to put 3 pacifiers in her crib. When our oldest would wake up literally 5 minutes after my DH left for work ...about an hour before I got up, I asked if he would be able to feed her before he left so she would sleep longer ...and that gave me more time to both rest, pump milk, get everything packed up and ready before I woke her up for daycare. We were fortunate our parents would visit and give us a small break. We also would take walks as a family with the stroller during evenings and weekends and that was time for DH and I to talk while the kids were in the stroller. Look for the small changes that can make a big difference to tamp down the feelings of being overwhelmed. It is a big adjustment having kids. I agree though that it brings out the things but that were already there and magnifies it. The flaws are there times 1000 but the strengths are also there. You have to both be committed to coming out on the other side of things with each other and stay on each other's side as a team and remember what it is about the person why you wanted to marry each other. |
Anonymous
| My DH could not have been more of a trooper and really, a total saint during our Dad's first year. But the flip side of his dutifulness and stability is a tendency to not be a super affectionate or communicative spouse. Overall, our marriage is good, but there is an upside and a downside to everyone and everything. The DH who gets "jealous" of the baby and can't cope may overall be a more passionate and emotionally astute partner. |
Anonymous
That is so funny, but oh can I relate. It took about a year before I hit this point but when it hit, oh my. I did go on to have two more kids. And, for the person who asked, yes it got better for us. Eventually money got easier and the kids became less of a time suck and we hit the point where we weren't driven by sleep deprivation, needs of kids and demands of our jobs. Date nights/days (we like to take bike rides) and doing lots of fun vacations (trips in our case because we aren't real relaxers) and activities with our kids helped. Also, when the kids got to be a few years old, we could go back to doing things that were fun individually (golf, scrapbooking, sewing, etc), which made things better. |
Anonymous
Ugh, I am sorry you only got to have one child because you married a man child. Disgusting. |
Anonymous
Did you talk about life after a baby before having one? Did you stop working? Did you start treating him like an idiot (see this quite often, DW always saying don't do it like that no matter what DH does)? You either go into with a plan to be a team, or you have issues. Particularly if the wife is overly critical Non-perfect marriage, yep a baby is the right way to go. It always makes non-perfect worse. |
Anonymous
Sounds like the OP was super-happy as a DINK. Maybe they just assumed the kid would add to that happiness rather than subtract and calculated wrong. |
Anonymous
| Let me guess: you don't have much sex? It amazes me how many times I witness this story: baby arrives, new mom loses sex drive, marriage decays. Sometimes this story continues on towards cheating or divorce. The good news is there is an easy, obvious fix that costs $0. |
Anonymous
Who says they make life more meaningful? Contented Ness and meaning are different things. Maybe they are more content later in life because their point of comparison is 18 years of beING unhappy. I actually think it would be better for all people -- those with and without children -- if we stopped sugh eating the only way a person can have meaning is through kids. It's actually what fuels the mommy martyrdom and that in turn leads to situations like OP has. If we stopped with this, then maybe people would be more practical and honest about sorting out logistics, division of labor, and maintaining a sense of self when they embark on having kids as a couple. |