Relationships
Divapeachie
member
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Reality of baby
My husband and I are thinking about starting a family. We have been married over a year and both turned 30 this year. We are the first of our friends to be at this point in our lives and wonder how having a baby will change our relationships after baby arrives. I guess if I could get some insight on how having has affected your relationships, I'd love to hear about it! (This no way hinders our thinking that we want a family, just what's it like) Thanks!
Re: Reality of baby
With our first, my mom was always willing to watch her, so it felt like we still could go out occasionally and see our friends (who didn't have kids). So we were able to stay connected and have our special couple time. Although most of our alone time was spent talking about the new baby! But having the 2nd child was the tough part for us. It's harder for my mom to watch two kids, so we ask her less. Also my 2nd is a little bit more challenging.
So I guess my answer is the first one didn't seem like that drastic of a change for us. Of course there's always the possibility of twins...
Everything chnges: from the amount of free time the 2 of you have, to time you spend going on date nights, to finances to pretty much everything else.
kids need everything and in massive amounts -- and don't forget you'll have to set up a college fund -- if you're interested in a good private school for the kiddo, start planning for that now.
You'll have literally zero time to spend with each other once the kid rolls in.:)
It sounds like you mean w/ friends - is that right?
Well, it's a 2 way street. I have friends who had their first at 30. Most of our group rolled w/ it and we were fine to hang out at their house with them, or to make some events kid friendly. I don't know 100% from THEIR perspective how well it worked, but all I know is that their oldest is now 12 and our group is still a "group" and I feel we all navigated kids entering the picture relatively well (although now that I have a child, I'm sure I would have been more empathetic to certain issues w/ them than I probably was at the time).
On their side, they tried to incorporate their baby into their lives as best they could. They were willing to take their baby out and about and just melded, as much as they could, baby into their lives.
They also didn't become uber baby focused. We could still have conversations w/ them that wasn't all 'baby baby baby'.
Basically I felt there was give and take on both ends. So, it kind of depends on your friends. Do they still want to go out and party party party, or are they cool to come to your h ouse and hang out and have a couple drinks w/ you instead?
I'm saying "baby", but I"m channeling the experience from their child being a baby and growing up while they were still the only ones w/ kids.
But - another factor. We all live kind of far from one another. When they were the only one w/ a kid, it was easy to still get all together. But now as more kdis are in the picture, older kids w/ their own schedules - we actually don't see our friends as much as we'd like. That's kind of the biggest downer of them all!
Kind of an "ebb and flow", I guess.
~Benjamin Franklin
DS dx with celiac disease 5/28/10
As far as the friends thing goes...you will have to make sure you set aside time for your friends even in a busy life with kids if you want to maintain those friendships....and the nature of your friendships will likely have to be adjusted (only going out to the pubs 1 night a month instead of once a week etc...or having dinner at your place so you can put your kids to bed and inviting people over instead of going to a restuarant).
Some friendships are strong enough to handle change, and the reality is some friendships are not....as long as you are still putting effort into making time for them, thats all you can do, some will fade away and your good friends hopefully will continue to make time for you if you make time for them.
You also may find you make new friends with people with kids, because its natural to gravitate to people who are at your stage of life and can talk about whats going on with. Find a mom and tot group or something to make these friends, they can be great sources of support.
As far as life in general and your relationship with your H....again things will have to shift but I think you know that, if you want a more "specifics" on what changes...well its different for everyone as every parenting style is as different as every child's temperment, but if you jump over to the bump and lurk on some of the parent boards you might get a better idea of some of the stuff/issues that can come up with kids.
My Blog:Through My Eyes
Quite frankly, I think it has a lot to do (at least at first) with what kind of baby you get. Because there is no way to predict that. If you have an easier baby who sleeps pretty well, naps, has a good disposition- you know, that sounds pretty great. Or you could get a baby like I got- crabby, didn't sleep more in more than 2hr stretches for oh, more than 6months (then I was lucky to get a 3 hr stretch!) & who was pretty much never off my boob. That.was.tough. Then after I finally got her to sleep through the night after she was a year old, she was a terrible napper so I became the 'sleep nazi' and didn't want to interrupt any precious sleep that I got, which caused friction between DH & I. Having a baby like that? Changes everything drastically.
Fast forward 8 yrs & 2 kids & you know, life is busy but manageable in terms of getting couple time. My DH does work a ton so we choose family time over couple time a lot, but it goes in waves. For some people it's more important to prioritize couple time & there's nothing wrong with that at all.
It drastically changed some of my friendships and honestly for a while there it drastically changed my relationship with my own mom. We barely fought when I was a teen then when I gave birth at 20 she was very angry with me all the time and yelled a lot. But luckily this changed over time when she realized I didn't wreck my life by having an unplanned child early.
With the friendships however..eh I lost almost all of my friends except for two. And then gained other friends who wanted to settle down soon. And currently working on gaining some mommy friends. Which all moms need.
Nestie Bestie with the lovely RockABye
Relationships with friends?
It totally depends on what type of friends you have and where they are in their life.
It really depends. DH and I are the first of our friends, and the first in our family, to have a baby. My sister and mom are pretty willing to watch him 1-2x a week, so we do get to either go out together, with friends, or seperately with friends.
As most of my friends are recently married, our relationships haven't changed much - many of them have babies on the brain anyway.
We really try not to monopolize conversations with friends to just baby talk, though. It also helps to have at least one couple friend that has kids or is expecting. My best friend and her husband found out they were pregnant 6 mos into my pregnancy, so our kids are about 6 mos apart.
I also joined a moms group so I could try and make some "mom" friends without exhausting my non-mom friends with baby chatter.