Raising a newborn is hard work right, but before this becomes an article on babies, I’d better steer it back to marriage. This is all about managing your marriage relationship once a baby comes into the picture, and basically turns your world upside down (in a good way of course!). When my hubby and I had our baby, we had no help (meaning I did not go away to my mom’s place for 3 months, nor did she come over). It was ‘Hubby’, ‘Baby’ and ‘I’.
Now you might understand my opening rant of this article. But, jokes aside, yes, it was super hard work, and we had to become Supermom and Superdad overnight. Were there stresses and strains and tensions? Yes! But what about stresses and strains and tensions in our marriage? One might think, it should have caused some tiny cracks, but strangely it didn’t! Could it be that somehow I have stumbled upon a perfect partner, or is it perfect principles, or is it the perfect God that we serve who’s kept things together? Is it all of it?
I don’t know, nor am I trying to gloat about having a perfect marriage. What I am trying to do is to step aside and view our ‘post-baby’ journey from the outside and see what went right, so that I can share that insight with you.
These are my findings:
- The Right View
We all love a good view, right? The one overlooking the sea, or in the case of Bangalore we may have to settle for a lake. But what’s the view we have when we look at marriage? How we perceive ‘marriage’ can make or break it. For example, if your partner and you view marriage in the traditional way, as the husband being the bread-winner of the family and the wife being responsible for all things indoors (baby included), then, I think being in a situation like mine, would have driven the mother to insanity and the marriage would have surely suffered strains. - Partnership
Marriage is meant to be a partnership, among many other things. So yes it could just as well be that as a partnership, your spouse and you decide on one holding a job and the other handling all home affairs. That’s perfectly fine when you are still viewing your marriage relationship as a partnership. So when that ‘baby-situation’ does arise, you reassess your responsibilities and work together to support one another as best you can.That’s what my hubby and I did. He stayed with me in the hospital, somehow juggled looking after baby and me, including attempting to change the diaper of a just-born! We hired a maid for the household chores, hubby did all the grocery shopping, a bit of cooking and managed a hectic work schedule, while I learnt to cope with all the nuances of a new-born. Did this last forever? No.
After a couple of months, when I could resume driving again, I took over all the shopping, doctor visits etc., so that my hubby could get back to a proper work- life balance, as well as work-wife balance. So there you go – we were constantly stepping out to help each other rather than stepping on each other’s toes.
- Patience
A time-tested virtue, that is hard but definitely worth it. We definitely had tough moments but we had to learn to be patient with each other since, we were both sleep- deprived creatures (for a couple of months but felt like years!), we were learning so many new things overnight, we were trying to take the best decisions for our baby, and the list goes on. - Prayer
No matter what, we prayed! Be it a two-minute one liner (that would be my hubby) or a heartfelt lament/thanksgiving (that would be me) that would cease only with the start of a bawling (and that would be the baby), we just prayed! Because we knew we couldn’t shoulder this massive responsibility of another ‘life’ without help from the Creator of that ‘life’. - Forgiving and Encouraging
We had to remember to forgive! I’m not talking about forgiving the other, but forgiving ourselves! We were hardest on ourselves when we made mistakes or took wrong decisions and we had to talk to each other saying ‘It’s okay, because we’re not perfect, each baby is different, and God’s got our back!’ - No Blame-game
Play any game but never the blame-game (oh yeah, avoid Bluewhale too). Thankfully we never struggled with this, because like I said in the previous point, we were always hardest on ourselves, but kind to each other.
Now we’re way past that initial phase, our little one has crossed many milestones and is the joy of our lives! The rocky mountains we climbed all seem a blur now, because now we see the beautiful view of the God-given gift called ‘Family!’
So wherever you are in your journey, I encourage you to stand strong, keep striving, there is a silver-lining for every cloud and when the cloud does move away, you might just see the stork too! 🙂
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