Last updated on October 23rd, 2023
Inside: Learn how the mental workload can affect your marriage, how to learn to communicate with your spouse, and begin to parent equally during your first year as parents.
Parenting Can Be Really Hard
Y’all, parenting is hard, no matter what phase your child is in, but there is nothing quite as challenging as adjusting to life as brand new parents though. Even if you’ve checked off all of the nursery checklists and read up on all of the postpartum articles, one thing that is nearly impossible to prepare for is how a newborn will change your marriage.
Becoming a parent for me, was almost something that I couldn’t quite picture. Not because I couldn’t picture myself with a baby, but because I couldn’t picture what that would feel like. I had no idea how becoming a mom would change me. I also had no idea how deeply it would affect my marriage.
Online Mom Support Groups
Pretty much as soon as our son was born, I was completely engrossed in his every waking moment. Even when he was sleeping, you could find me reading up on baby topics, and speculating with my online mom friends on whether something was normal or how best to troubleshoot a nursing or sleep related issue.
My online mom community became my lifeline. They saved me so many times and helped give me the confidence that I needed in my ability to handle anything that came my way. I relied on my village so much in that first year.
My mom group may span many countries, but I found it so incredibly easy to connect with and open up to these women. As my hold on things began to slip in that first year, I leaned on them big time for support and was comforted to know I wasn’t alone nor was this abnormal.
In being part of such a large community of women, I started to realize that it was common for the first year to be really tough on marriages. Because once you bring home that beautiful baby, your entire world changes. And it can take a while for you both to learn how to fit those pieces back in and find your new groove.
Having A Baby Can Affect Your Marriage
I honestly never once thought my marriage would be affected by our new baby. After all, we worked so hard to have our sweet boy. I wanted this mom life desperately, and my marriage was always solid; we never argued or bickered. I don’t think we ever even got mad at each other or annoyed in any real way before having our son.
But once we had our first child, things began to change. From the very beginning, I did everything. Not because my husband didn’t want to, but because I was very controlling over every little thing about our son and I didn’t let him help. I later learned that this was due to postpartum anxiety.
But there is only so much that one person can do, so of course, after a while, I buckled under all of the pressure. But I never said anything. I didn’t want to admit that I was failing. So I pushed on. But I held this secret resentment towards my husband at all he wasn’t doing. In my eyes, all I’d see were the things he wasn’t doing, but I refused to bring it up.
So of course, this feeling festered. Until one day, I just completely blew up. But by then, there was so much of a disconnect between my needs as a mom and our life that I just kept repeatedly blowing up. This was due to a combination of postpartum anxiety and postpartum rage, I later learned.
Admitting There Is A Problem
We finally got to a point where we said, “okay, this is clearly not working. This is not how we are as people and most certainly not how we treat our marriage and we want to do better“. And we laid it all out on the table; everything that we were both feeling. And we repeated this process again and again, as many times as it took until we got on the same page and supported our marriage in the way that it deserved.
Once I finally got talking about how I had been feeling and tried to put into words what was going on in my head, I realized that my husband, this whole time, had been doing everything that most people fight about their spouses not doing.
He was cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, sharing baby duties, taking care of the dogs, doing laundry, going to work everyday. So why did I still feel like he wasn’t helping?
The Mental Workload
It’s because of the mental workload. The silent workload that weighs us down and drowns us without being visible to anyone else.
I was completely drowning in tasks, but my husband just didn’t see it, so he didn’t know how to help. And I was unfairly mad that he didn’t just know.
Examples of My Mental Workload
So I began creating a list of all of the things that contribute to my mental load:
- Upcoming first birthday planning: cake, presents, wrapping paper, decorations, outfit, invites, menu, photo ideas
- Milestones: constantly checking apps and guidelines for meeting milestones
- Activities: Am I doing enough with him all day? Maybe I need more structure? More activities? Let’s spend time on Pinterest looking up new activities
- Nursing: am I producing enough milk? Eating healthy for milk production, planning opportunities to pump at work, coordinating clean pump parts, ensuring pumped milk in fridge for when I’m at work, wondering when and how to wean, do I have enough freezer stash
- Growth and development: looking up teething remedies, making sure growth is on track, figuring out what foods are safe, coming up with food ideas everyday, learning what to do for choking, teaching him how to drink from a cup and drink cow’s milk, is he talking enough? walking on track?
- Clothes and Seasons: planning next size up for all clothes and seasonally appropriate items, pants, shirts, coats, bathing suits, hats, pjs, which sunscreen is safe, sunshades for stroller, sticking to a clothes budget, how to figure out his shoe size?
- Toys: Spend hours creating a wishlist for birthday, researching developmentally appropriate toys for learning, and then later buying toys and making sure sticking within a budget
- He is sick or has a rash: countless hours in and out of doctors coordinating with schedules, googling ‘is this normal?’, finding remedies for handling a sick kid, the constant worry caring for a sick baby
The Mental Workload Can Overwhelm You Without Help
My goodness, I could just go on and on and on forever. Just reading this list gives me anxiety. And yeah, I know, I worry about things more than most people, even on a good day.
Postpartum anxiety certainly wasn’t helping my frame of mind. But this was all only the mental workload related to my child, it wasn’t even including the mental workload relating to my own self, or the house, or my marriage, or anything else.
Communicating Your Needs As a New Mom
Once I explained all of this to my husband he was kind of like, wow, I can see why you are feeling overwhelmed, now how can I help? And this was hard for me, because I truly didn’t know. I didn’t want to give up control over a lot still at that point, and also, some of the stuff just had to fall on my shoulders because I’m the mom.
That’s just part of what goes with being the mom. Some things, only you can research and learn about, such as, what weaning looks like and how you want it to work for you, or coordinating pumping at work.
But a lot, he could help with. And I had to let go of that control and get out of my comfort zone and let him parent with me.
Learning To Parent Equally
Our son was due for new sized clothes at the time, so we used the opportunity to shop online together as our first shared activity. Normally, I buy the new size all at once online after scouring my favorite clothing sites for the best deals and cute styles. It’s a process, as you know, making sure you have enough clothes and for all of the seasonally appropriate needs, while also being budget conscious.
I used to spend my evenings after our son was in bed doing the online shopping and I’d be mad that my husband got to relax while I spent my free time doing more ‘work’ after parenting all day.
But this time around, he suggested we do this together. And it was so much more enjoyable having someone to help decide and bounce ideas off of. Afterward, my husband was so proud of the outfits he helped pick out and we were both so overjoyed to have done a parenting task together.
Commit To Keep Working On Your Marriage
It took a lot of practice, but we slowly started doing more of this. I learned how to speak up about my mental load and my needs right away, before things festered and I learned how to let go of the control so we could parent together.
The weight of the mental workload will absolutely crush you if you try to shoulder it alone. Lean on your partner, ask for help, work together in your marriage.
And most importantly, if you are behaving in ways that aren’t characteristically you, I cannot stress enough how important it is to reach out to a counselor for support. It may take just a few sessions to start feeling like yourself again, or it may take longer. Either way, trust in the professional resources out there, they are there to help you through these hard phases in life.
If you’re in the middle of your first year as a parent right now, I can absolutely promise you that it gets better. It does get easier and your marriage can survive this, but it’s going to take a lot of honesty and communication.
Later, you will look back at that first year as both the best and the hardest year, but also, the year that made you and your marriage strong.
Did your marriage become tense during your first year postpartum? How did you learn to cope? Let me know by leaving a comment below.
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