3184: Marriage Diaries: How Having a Baby Has Affected Us by Kaitlyn with Declutter Your Life on Marriage After Baby

[00:00:00] Wer riestert, der rostet. Zeit, Vorsorge neu zu denken. Mit dem neuen Scalable Altersvorsorge Depot wächst nicht nur dein eigenes Geld bis zu deiner Rente. Du holst dir obendrauf jedes Jahr bis zu 540 Euro Förderung vom Staat. Jetzt für das Scalable Altersvorsorge Depot voranmelden. Kapitalanlagen bergen Risiken. Hey, it's Justin from Optimal Living Daily.

[00:00:23] Before we start, I want to share a super powerful practice I use called NSDR or Non-Sleep Deep Rest. In just about 10 minutes or so, this Yoga Nidra practice leaves you feeling as refreshed as after a nap without actually sleeping. Experience it for yourself on our guided podcast. Search NSDR and look for the one from Optimal Living Daily.

[00:00:46] This is Optimal Relationships Daily. Marriage Diaries. How Having a Baby Has Affected Us. By Kaitlyn. I'm so thrilled and honored to be sharing today on the topic of children and how they can affect your marriage. My husband Ryan and I welcomed our first child, a little girl, Ryland, into our family last September.

[00:01:09] I would never say that having a baby negatively affects your relationship with your spouse. She is an amazing blessing and I wouldn't trade her for anything. But having a baby definitely brings some adjustments to your marriage and some of them can feel quite painful or cause a few tears. Ryan and I were so ecstatic when I found out I was pregnant with Ryland. I had lost the pregnancy prior to that, so finally getting pregnant again and then making it to full term was a huge blessing.

[00:01:38] I always knew that I wanted to be a mother, so Ryland fulfilled many prayers that had been whispered throughout my lifetime. When we finally brought her home, we were really overwhelmed. Were we really ready for this? What if something happens to her? How do we know if we're doing things the right way?

[00:01:57] As a first-time parent, you feel like you're basically out of your mind those first few weeks. Add to that the sleep deprivation and the hormonal mood swings, and I can honestly say that some days I felt like I didn't know if I could handle it all. But I pushed through that month, and things settled back into a routine for our little family. There has never been more love in my heart for Ryan than there is now. Watching him be a dad has made him even more sexy and desirable in my eyes.

[00:02:24] But you don't have very much time, if any, to do things alone. Date nights now have the cutest little third wheel. Conversations you used to have over meals are replaced with taking turns holding the baby and entertaining them so you both can get a chance to eat your food. And if you are blessed to get a night out of the house early on, everything in you draws you back to the house ASAP, because you are so worried about being apart from that sweet bundle of joy.

[00:02:51] Most days when Ryan gets home from work, the next few hours are spent eating dinner and taking care of Rylan, before finally putting her down to sleep. By that point, I'm so exhausted from caring for her and managing the house all day, that all I want to do is sit for five minutes and relax, or sometimes just go to bed. Ryan's tired from working all day, and then helping with Rylan from the minute he gets home, so he's usually on the same page.

[00:03:17] I've laid in bed at night and cried, because I feel like we aren't fun anymore. And I'm afraid our relationship isn't as great as it was pre-baby, because we have such limited one-on-one time together. Other nights I've even wondered out loud if we had a baby too soon. Ryan is so wonderful about quickly reminding me that even though we feel exhausted, our relationship is still amazing.

[00:03:40] It's just different now. We both love each other so much, and are constantly working to make sure the other person knows how much they mean to us. Little surprises, sneakily placed love notes, just a call to say I love you. This season of our life is something brand new, something we've never experienced before. And yes, sometimes that can be really hard.

[00:04:03] But Ryan will also remind me that if we were here without a baby, I would be crying and sad that all my friends have babies and we didn't. My mind would be fixated on having a baby, like it was before we got pregnant, and I would be praying and wishing for the life we have now. Rylan has only multiplied the love within our family, and she is such a light in our lives. When Ryan was unemployed, and we had some very depressing and dark days, we always said that God blessed us with Rylan during that time.

[00:04:34] She was a daily source of joy, and I truly believe she is a huge reason as to why we kept such a positive and optimistic attitude the majority of that season in our lives. A lot of people probably worry about adding children into the mix, but I assure you, I wouldn't give any of it up. Yes, our life has been completely taken over by this tiny human. But it is the best, most rewarding thing I've ever experienced.

[00:05:00] It has strengthened my marriage with Ryan, taught me important lessons on what it's like to be truly selfless, and created more love in my heart than I ever thought possible. It can be hard if you let yourself dwell on the way life was before, but I encourage you to focus on the beauty of what it is now instead. I also believe that it's so important to plan special times where it's just the two of you again.

[00:05:24] Ryan and I make an effort to go on at least one baby-free date a month, and we're taking a trip later this summer, just the two of us. I hope that some of you may find encouragement from this. I'm not saying that everything is easy and perfect when you decide to have children. It will change your relationship with your husband, and challenge you to still make your marriage the priority. But having a baby will never be something you regret.

[00:05:47] It is the greatest decision that we ever made, and I look forward to adding more children and love to our family in the coming years. You just listened to the post titled, Marriage Diaries – How having a baby has affected us. By Kaitlyn. Wer riestert, der rostet. Zeit, Vorsorge neu zu denken. Mit dem neuen Scalable Altersvorsorge Depot wächst nicht nur dein eigenes Geld bis zu deiner Rente.

[00:06:16] Du holst dir obendrauf jedes Jahr bis zu 540 Euro Förderung vom Staat. Jetzt für das Scalable Altersvorsorge Depot voranmelden. Kapitalanlagen bergen Risiken. Hey, it's Justin from Optimal Living Daily. Before we start, I want to share a super powerful practice I use called NSDR, or Non-Sleep Deep Rest. In just about 10 minutes or so, this Yoga Nidra practice leaves you feeling as refreshed as after a nap, without actually sleeping.

[00:06:45] Experience it for yourself on our guided podcast. Search NSDR and look for the one from Optimal Living Daily. And thank you so much to Caitlin for this post. An honest one that I think does such a good job of articulating how it can be both incredibly taxing and incredibly rewarding to have a child. I really enjoy these types of articles because I've always been of the mind that before making the decision to parent, it's incredibly important to consider the sacrifices.

[00:07:15] And not just the sacrifices, but also if you are prepared to both make the sacrifices and still love your child no matter what. Now certainly we have to be aware of those beginning stages as she talked about, but what about other possibilities? Are you prepared to love your child no matter what happens? What if they are disabled? What if they hate you? What if they grow up to commit serious crimes?

[00:07:41] Surely our capacity to love is often kicked into a different gear once we have children. You know, a gear that's hard to even make sense of or know that we have beforehand when just asking these questions. But I do believe it's every parent to be's duty to choose love for the children they're yet to have no matter the circumstances or at least try to. It can be an intense line of self questioning, but to me it's a really worthy one.

[00:08:07] So, on that incredibly light note, we are going to wrap things up for today, parents. Thank you so much for being here and listening all the way through, as always. I hope you enjoyed this post and if you did, be sure to come on back tomorrow because there will be another one all about parenting. Hope to see you there, where your optimal life awaits.