I haven’t blogged once about our marriage since Max’s birth. Things change when you have a baby. I always feel the desire to write about everything up to now, but that would take longer than I have time for, so here are a few thoughts about our first year with our first baby.
The birth was an amazing experience for us both, we both felt closer than we ever felt before. The few weeks after the birth were good, but we also started to have different roles and experiences. I laid in bed all day, breastfed, stayed home for 3 months, had all kinds of hormones, changes and feelings, felt the ups and downs, was trying to get used to my body, and wasn’t stressed but did have to go hours at a time without eating or peeing while I was home alone with the baby who was sleeping on my breast. Joel on the other hand, experienced a bunch of things to do at first, diapers, diapers, and more diapers, and had to get used to dealing with me and the baby, but didn’t have all the experiences of sleep deprivation and not getting to pee when he wanted to. He had to run all the errands (since me and the baby stayed home for the first 3 months) and he went to work. We tried to keep talking and sharing our experiences to stay connected even though we were going through different things.
The first few months got progressively harder, there were many times of us arguing or getting disconnected. We realized a few things that helped us work through our problems. For one, we didn’t touch much anymore, so we tried to work on touching more. We also just found that we both had very little time to sit around and do whatever we wanted, like watch movies, blog, read a book, etc… It was certainly an adjustment, but a good one since we loved the baby so much and we loved each other. I am so thankful that I married Joel since everything is so different now. My body is so different than before, and sex isn’t something that I am interested in and that makes me happy that our relationship doesn’t just revolve around looks or sex. Joel makes me feel like a beautiful person and makes me appreciate the changes that becoming a mother brings. I also had a lot of working through ideas regarding valuing what I do by staying at home. Joel has been a wonderful supporter of that too. I know that when I am doing is important and valuable, but I can get caught up in the current worldy values and forget sometimes. I am happy to become a mother because I feel like the experience does make you see so many things that you don’t see when you aren’t a parent. I feel like Joel and I have a more mature relationship with each other and we spend our time a little better and we think about important things more. Having a baby has helped us to not be so selfish. It also brings us more in a community, everyone seems to enjoy babies!
I feel like we have come a long way now, my ideas about so many things have completely changed, and my relationship with Joel has gotten stronger. I now cant fathom being apart from Joel. Thanks Max for making us better people! I cant imagine having a second baby right now though! I will have to watch how Steph does it since she is just about to have her second baby, then maybe I will feel like we can do it too! (we still want to have many children, and we will, I just cant imagine it! Haha)
