Lessons from the first year: marriage.

Having a child of my own was pretty eye-opening. I feel like I learned a lot, but haven’t really taken the time to reflect much on it. So I’m going to take the time. Here are a few things I learned about marriage in our first year as parents:

We had to depend on each other like never before. Taking care of Spencer is truly a team effort. Major props to single parents – you do the work of two parents. All I know is when Jordan gets home from work, I’m so ready for a little break… and Spencer is more than ready to hang out with daddy for the evening. 

I had to learn to let my husband really be the head of our household. I have never in my adult life depended on someone else to financially support me, and it was hard to get used to. Maybe it’s pride, maybe it’s how I was raised, but I always planned to be a woman who didn’t need a man to take care of her. It was a huge leap of faith and a major shift in our dynamic for me to go from full-time career to stay-at-home mom, and it was hard at the time, but it really helped us grow as a couple and helped stabilize our family. 

(Surprise) there’s way less time to be just a couple. Overnight, we went from happily married couple to mommy and daddy. Our whole focus (especially for me) shifted from loving each other to taking care of this baby. It was easier for me to sleep in our recliner with Spencer, and I had already been sleeping in it since my 6th or 7th month of pregnancy, so we didn’t even sleep in the same bed for almost a year. It was hard to have uninterrupted conversations and since I was nursing all the time, I couldn’t stand to be touched (even just a hug made me cringe). 

My body just went through a tremendous change and my husband’s did not. I felt so different after I gave birth and I started to resent Jordan because he was essentially exactly the same as before. His body didn’t have to recover, he didn’t have crazy hormones shifting all over, he didn’t even have to lose much sleep. I had to stop blaming Jordan for things that weren’t his fault, and I’m thankful that he gave me the space to recover (physically and emotionally) and grace for each hormonal roller coaster day. 

My husband is committed to our marriage no matter how much we fight. This was a hard lesson for me. We never really got in a fight before Spencer, and when we finally started having arguments, we didn’t know how to resolve them in a healthy way. My reaction to conflict is to split – I want none of it. There were times when I was worried he didn’t love me anymore or that I had done irreparable damage to our relationship… I was ready to pack the baby up and go stay somewhere else for the night. Jordan, on the other hand, just needed time to cool off and then he was fine. It never once crossed his mind that we were having actual marital trouble and he never threatened to leave. My whole life experience has been as the child of a single parent, and Jordan grew up with two very stable, committed parents. I think it took time for me to accept that he really was in this for the long haul, even if I had just thrown Tupperware at him. 

My husband is just as much a parent as I am. Oof… I’m ashamed that I even had to mention this. But since I was the one taking care of Spencer all day and night, I kind of had it in my head that I was a more legitimate parent than Jordan was. Um, not the case, whatsoever. 

It’s hard to be a mother and also a wife. At least it was for me. I was definitely putting 99% of my energy into being a mother, and the 1% I was putting into being a wife was full of resentment and guilt. It was hard for me to remember that I was also a wife. I didn’t care anymore about doing special things for my husband or keeping the house in order or being affectionate toward him. All I cared about was my baby. It wasn’t a healthy balance, obviously, and it caused a lot of tension between us until I finally started loosening up and giving my husband the attention he deserved. 

Our son made us feel fulfilled. We were happy before. We had a good life together. But bringing a child into the mix, a little boy who was a combination of the two of us… well it just made our lives feel more fulfilled, more complete, and more meaningful than before. I remember when we had talked about kids before, it was kind of with a spirit of fear and expectation that kids would mean the end of our fun and our freedom. We couldn’t have been more wrong. That little boy is our whole world.