Marriage After Babies: How Our Marriage is Doing After Baby #2

It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post about marriage. I have been pretty quiet postpartum after having Lennon for a few reasons, but I am ready to open back up and begin sharing candidly on this space.

This time around, I felt like I have been very protective about not sharing too much too soon. I have needed time to process events such as my birth story (which I promise, I will share in the near future), adjusting to a family of four and how my son’s birth has played into my ever evolving identity as both Terra and a Mom.

When Winter was little, Perry and I were operating under VERY different circumstances. Winter had colic and cried for up to two hours every single night. When she was a mere 12 weeks old, I went back to a job that drained me both physically and emotionally .

I was suffering from extreme postpartum depression/OCD, and the kicker- sleeping maybe 2-3 hours a night. It was the perfect storm and proved to be disastrous for our marriage. Perry and I became so intolerant of one another, took score on who was doing more or who was more stressed and tired. We failed to make time to connect and worst of all, began to resent each other.

We have come so far. It hasn’t been without significant effort on both of our parts. It is incredible to say that this time around, we have focused so much on making sure we are communicating our wants and needs, giving each other the benefit of the doubt that our intentions are in the right place, and really focusing on what brings us joy.

We check in with one another often, try to bring humor into our daily interactions and above all, put each other first. Now I don’t want to make this sound like we are perfect...we are FAR from it. We’ve definitely had our disagreements and had one epic fight that resulted in me taking my ring off my finger for a day which I had NEVER done and will never do again. It was so childish. We laugh about it now.

But all in all, I think going to counseling before this baby came helped us to normalize our expectations with each other during this sensitive time, encouraged us to make a plan for worst case scenario (if my depression came back) and pushed us to actively talk to each other about our hopes and fears of bringing a new baby into this house.

Another reason why I feel so unbelievably close to him was how amazing our partnership felt while enduring 12 hours of unmedicated labor with a posterior baby (talk about epic back labor) and a challenging recovery (I broke my tailbone during the birth process). I don’t think he has ever looked at me the same since that day. He told me that he has never been more proud to be my husband and the father of my children and it’s an expression and sentiment that was etched deeply into my soul that day.

I plan to open up more about our marriage and what action steps we have taken to get to where we are today, but I will close with this…

“A great marriage is not when the ‘perfect couple’ comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.” – Dave Meurer

What qualities do you think makes for a successful marriage? Comment below :)