It seems like just yesterday that my wife, Kristi, and I were rushing to the hospital. Kristi was about 8 months pregnant and the baby wasn't kicking the way she had been earlier that day. So we sped down to the hospital, had a sonogram and had one of those heart rate monitors strapped to Kristi's abdomen for half an hour. It turns out that the decrease in movement is fairly common in the last months before delivery, so everything was fine.
That baby, Katie, is 18 month's old now and we have another daughter, Emily, that is 6 month's old already. It's amazing how much has changed in the last 2 years, especially the relationship between my wife and I.
When we were newlyweds, we used to go to movies 2 or 3 times a week, take naps if we felt like it and go anywhere we wanted on a whim. In the 18 months since Katie's birth, we've gone to about 5 movies total and had maybe 3 successful naps (and trust me, we've tried dozens of times).
Out of necessity, a couple's relationship changes when the first child is born. The couple is no longer the focus of the relationship; the newborn is now the focus because they are so needy and vulnerable. I call this phenomenon Nurture Shock.
In the first couple of months, Nurture Shock is a brutal slap in the face. The baby is getting almost all of the attention. Both parents are probably resenting the fact the other parent isn't doing more the help them out with the child. The parents aren't getting enough sleep. And sex? …Yeah, right.
During this period, many couples run into the worst fights of their relationship. Between sleep deprivation, the extra burden of caring for the child and all of the extra chores involved, most people become frustrated and irritable. This almost inevitably leads to a distancing of intimacy between the parents.
So, how do you get that intimacy back? The key here, like anything worth doing well, is focus. Anything that you want to excel in, whether golf, work, family, requires focus and effort. Tiger Woods is the best golfer in the world not because he's lucky, but because he spends a lot of time on the golf course.
With everything that a new parent has to deal with, focusing on anything else, even a partner, is the last thing on their mind, but it's important, for the family as a whole, for the couple to spend some time focusing on each other as well as the baby.
The best thing a couple with a newborn can do is find a good babysitter and set up a “date night” for themselves once a week, just to spend time alone, but make sure it's an activity that allows for some communication about things other than the baby. If you go a movie, make sure you go out to eat too. Better yet, maybe even go to a hotel…
