Reply to tell me about your marriage in the baby + toddler years

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[quote=Anonymous]We have a 12 month old and are first time parents.  Before our son was born, I worried a lot about this issue.  We had been married 10 years already (so we already built a strong marriage) but we have no local family (family is thousands of miles away), very few friends (new to the area), zero support network, my husband works 80 hour weeks and I resigned from my job to be a SAHM.  I worried that even though we had a very strong marriage that these other factors of no support would result in a lot of stress and exhaustion.

The newborn period was tough because our son didn't sleep well (he only slept in 2 hour stretches until 12 weeks).  We were both exhausted and stressed and argued a lot during this time.  We had zero help except for my parents who came in for the first two weeks to "help" (but were unhelpful), and my husband went back to work after a 2 week paternity leave.  I was tired and didn't leave the house for the first 3 months due to exhaustion.  But then things got a lot easier as our child started sleeping better.  I was feeling like everything was back to normal around month 5, and our son started sleeping through the night then.

Now he is 12 months, sleeps 12 hours per night with no wakeups, and we have a great routine going.  I love being a SAHM and I think that my staying at home reduces a lot of marital stress.  Our marriage bounced back from the stressful newborn days and is just as strong as it was pre-baby.

Having no local family (we see the grandparents twice a year) and no support system hasn't been the issue I thought it would be, except for the fact that we never get to do date night (since we're not comfortable with a babysitter at this point, we have not had a date night since I was pregnant).  So besides the lack of date night, I'd say things are really good and there is no stress.  We both started doing our hobbies when our son was around 5 months old (my husband plays a sport two nights per week), and I go out with my friends two nights per week, while the other spouse stays home with our child those nights.  My husband takes over childcare as soon as he comes home from work.  On the weekend, I get one weekend day to myself while my husband takes over all childcare duties.  On the weekend we alternate days of sleeping late and also do things together as a family.

Overall, I have been very surprised and happy about how well our marriage has done in the first year after having a baby.[/quote]

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