Finding Time for Your Partner
After time for yourself, time for your partner is often the next thing to get lost in the busy days of motherhood. Making time to connect with your partner and share things together is an important way to keep your relationship alive.
Once you become parents, it can be hard to find time for just the two of you. For many months, you may feel as if you're just trying to survive and get enough sleep. Once you've settled into your routine, finding time for the two of you can be complicated, involving babysitters, feeding schedules, naps, and considerations of what time you have to get up in the mornings.
Here are some ways you can find time for each other:
Schedule time together at home when you'll simply talk, snuggle, or watch a DVD together. Planning at-home dates means much less pressure than trying to go out and doesn't involve a babysitter.
Talk on the phone and use e-mail and IM. You don't have to be in the same room to communicate and feel close to each other.
Support each other's interests. If you don't allow each other time to do the things that inspire and interest each of you, when you are together, you will have nothing to talk about other than the baby.
Plan to have sex. It may be the last thing you're interested in, but if you do it, the ingrained reactions will kick in. You will rediscover how nice it can be, and it will help you feel closer to each other.
Rely on relatives. It might feel like too much to book a sitter so you can go out to dinner. Not only is it complicated, but it can be expensive too if you're living on reduced income due to maternity leave. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other relatives adore having time with the baby, and the baby deserves to get to know them, so rely on them some of the time. It's a win/win situation for everyone involved.
Connect while the baby is occupied. If she's happily drooling away in her bouncy seat, use this as a few minutes to talk about something important.
Make chores work for you. Washing the dishes together is a great time to just kid around or talk about something that's been on your mind. Link your minds while your hands are occupied.
A twenty-year study performed by the RAND Institute on Education and Training found that children of older mothers had higher test scores than children of younger mothers.
It is not uncommon for your partner to feel a bit left out in the early months of your baby's life. Particularly if you are breastfeeding, you are using a lot of your time and energy to care for your baby. Even if you aren't breastfeeding, becoming a mother is a very physical commitment. Many women feel too tired for sex, and some partners feel they are somehow left out of the very intimate mother-baby circle.
In addition to finding time for you and your partner to connect as a couple, it is also important to find ways for your partner and the baby to have time together. It can sometimes be tempting as a mom to feel like you're the only one who knows how to care for the baby; if you spend all day with the baby, it is likely you will be more skilled, at least initially. However, your partner deserves a chance to parent, too, and that means walking out of the room and letting him change the diaper, do the feeding, or soothe the baby, even if he doesn't do it quite the way you would. He needs time and space to learn his own parenting techniques, and he needs your support to do that.
